The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1866-11-15

" ItyIH' hS5CiHDItu III conventions o.
their people, they passed ordinances o.
secession, withdrew their Senators and
Representatives from Congress, and
began the war by assaillng a fort of the
United States The Secessionists had
trusted to the silence of the Constitu
tion in relation TO the act they perform.
ed. A State in the American Union, as
distinguished from a Territory, is con.
stitutionally a part Of the government
TO which it owes allegiance, and the Sc.
ceded States had refused to be parts oi
the government, and had forsworn their
allegiance. BY the Constitution, the
United States, in cases Of domestic vio-
lence" IN State, is to interfere, son
application Of the Legislature, or of the
Executive when the Legislature cannot
be convened" But in this case lcgis-
latures, executives, conventions of the
people, were all violators of the domes-
tic peace, and of course made no appli-
cation for interference. BY the Consti-
tuition, Congress is empowered to sup
press Instructions; but this might be
supposed to mean instructions like
Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts and
the Whisky Insurrection in Pennsyl-
vania, and not to cover the action Of
States seeding from the Congress which
is thus empowered. The seceGers,
therefore, felt somewhat as did the abb
sconding James II. when he flung the
Great Seal into the Thames, and thought
he had stopped the machinery OF the
English government.
Mr. Buchanan, then President of the
United States, admitted at once that the
Secessonists had done their work in
such way that, though they had done
wrong, the government was powerless
to compel them to do right. And here
the matter should have rested, if the
government established by the Consti-
tuition was such government as Mr..
Johnson's supporters now declare it to
be. If it is impotent to prescribe terms
of peace in relation to insurgent States,
it is certainly impotent to make war on
insurgeut States, If insurgent States
recover their former constitutional rights
in laying down their arms, then there
was no criminality in their taking them
up; and if there was no criminality in
their taking them up, then the United
States was criminal in the war by which
they were forced to lay them down.
On this theory we have government
incompetent to legislate for insurgent
States, because lacking their represen-
tatives, waging against them a cruel and
unjust war. And this is the real theory
of the defeated Rebels and Copperheads
who formed the great mass Of the dele
gates to the Johnson Convention.
Should they get into power, they would
feel themselves logically justified in an
nulling, not only all the acts Of the
"Rump Congress" since they submitted,
but all the acts of the Rump Congress
during the time they had Confederate
Congress of their own. They may deny
that this is their intention; but what in
tention to fortgo the exercise of an as
sumed right, held by those who are out
of power, can be supposed capable of
limiting their action when they are in I?
But if the United States is govern
ment having legitimate rights OF sover-
eignty conferred upon it by the people
of all the States, and if, consequently,
the attempted secession of the people of
one or more States only makes them
criminals, without impairing the sover-
eighty of the United States, then the
government, with all its powers, re-
mains with the representatives of the
loyal people. BY the very nature of
government as government, the rights
and privileges guaranteed to citizens are
guaranteed to loyal citizens; the rights
and privileges guaranteed to States are
guaranteed to loyal States; and loyal
citizens and loyal States are not such as
profess a willingness to be loyal after
having been utterly worsted in an enter
prise of gigantic disloyalty. The Or
ganic unity and continuity of the gov
ernment would be broken by the return
of disloyal citizens and Rebel States
without their going through the process
of being restored by the action Of the
government they had attempted to sub
vert and the power to restore carries
with it the power to decide on the terms
of restoration. And when we speak of
the government, we are not courtly |
10 mean by the expression sim
ply its executive branch The question
of admitting and implicitly Of restoring
States, and of deciding whether or not
States have a republican form of gov
ernment, are matters left by the Consti-
tuition to the discretion of Congress.
As to the Rebel States now claiming
representation, they have succumbed,
exhausted, in one of the
costliest and bloodest wars in the history
of the world,-a war which tasked the
resources of the United States more than
they would have been tasked by war
with all the great powers of Europe
combined, "a war which, in 1862, had
assumed such proportions, that the Su-
preme Court decided that it gave the
United States the same rights and priv
ileges which the government might ex.
ercise in the case of a national and for
eign war. The inhabitants Of the insur-
gent States being thus judicially declar-
ed public enemies as we'll as Rebels,
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