That said, there was one very powerful part of the Constitution that would resonate through the ages. Its three most essential words stand at the very beginning of the document: “We the people.” It is the people, not the states or the federal government, that hold ultimate power. As James Madison would later write, “If we advert to the nature of republican government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.”
