Nation

CONTROLLED MEANING: A body of people under one government. A union of "states" or "provinces" under central rule.

CORRECT DEFINITION: A tribe or race of people (as the Cherokee Nation). From the Latin "natus" – to be born. Nationality should designate race or tribe. "Nation" is not the preferred term for The United States because its citizens are not racially alike. The term as been stretched, however, to mean the land and the people who are born in the land.

According to the Law of Nations: Nations or States are political bodies, societies of men who have united together and combined their forces, in order to procure their mutual welfare and security.

From Law of Nations (written before our form of government):

In American constitutional law the word “state” is applied to the several members of the American Union, while the word “nation” is applied to the whole body of the people embraced within the jurisdiction of the federal government. Cooley, Const. Lim. 1; Texas v. White, 7 Wall. 720, 19 L. Ed. 227