726
Opinion of the Court
(quoting with approval Wilson's statement that " 'the government of each state ought to be subordinate to the government of the United States' "). Nor do the controversial early suits prosecuted against Maryland and New York reflect a widespread understanding that the States had surrendered their immunity to suit. Maryland's decision to submit to process in Vanstophorst v. Maryland, 2 Dall. 401 (1791), aroused great controversy, see Marcus & Wexler, Suits Against States: Diversity of Opinion in the 1790s, 1993 J. Sup. Ct. History 73, 74-75, and did not go unnoticed by the Supreme Court, see Chisholm, 2 Dall., at 429-430 (Iredell, J., dissenting). In Oswald v. New York, the State refused to respond to the plaintiff's summons until after the decision in Chisholm had been announced; even then it at first asserted the defense that it was "a free, sovereign and independent State," and could not be "drawn or compelled" to defend the suit. Marcus & Wexler, supra, at 76-77 (internal quotation marks omitted). And, though the Court's decision in Chisholm may have had "champions 'every bit as vigorous in defending their interpretation of the Constitution as were those partisans on the other side of the issue,' " post, at 794, the vote on the Eleventh Amendment makes clear that they were decidedly less numerous. See supra, at 721.
In short, the scanty and equivocal evidence offered by the dissent establishes no more than what is evident from the decision in Chisholm—that some members of the founding generation disagreed with Hamilton, Madison, Marshall, Ire-dell, and the only state conventions formally to address the matter. The events leading to the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, however, make clear that the individuals who believed the Constitution stripped the States of their immunity from suit were at most a small minority.
Not only do the ratification debates and the events leading to the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment reveal the original understanding of the States' constitutional immunity from suit; they also underscore the importance of sovereign
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