Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1867-06-26
Chief Justice ChaSe's Opinion of the
Legal Effect Of Secession.

We print at length elsewhere, to the ex
clusion of much other matter, the elaborate
opinion of Chief Justice Chase the effect
of rebellion upon the people of the Southern
States and the states themselves While
this is not to be understood as the opinion o f
the full bench, it may be presumed to be the
opinion of a majority of the Court upon the
important points presented for decision. In
brief. the Chief Justice holds that the rebel
states lost their political organization by the
rebellion and that the individual rebels,
while, a matter Of policy, they were treated
as belligerents, were yet, during all the war,
traitors, and amenable to the laws against
treason.
Without going into the rcfnements of le-
gal argument, this opinion is a simple and
rational statement of the legal consequences,
10 the Southern States and individuals, of
this war upon the Federal government The
Democratic doctrine, t-iat the rebel states
never lost their political character as states
of the Federal Union, has always been ex-
posed in these columns assumption I'M
supported by reason, ar fact. even the
subtility of legal definitions. Neither the
people nor the territory Of the rebel states
ever ceased to be a part of the Federal MON,
but the governments of the states did discon-
tinue the relations which they sustained to
the United States, and formed new relations
hostile to the United States The Federal
government all through the war held this
view, and refused to recognize any right in
the pretended state governments of the South
to control the people or property of those
states and at the conclusion of the war set
aside the rebel governments and organized
others in their places 1t is well to have this
view take the form of a judicial decision, and
pass into the settled law Of the land.
There has been a vast amount of declama
ton and denuciation, from Presidential utter
ances down to the resolutions of Democratic
Conventions, against the Republican party
for holding and acting upon the simple doe
trine of this decision johnson and Doc
little carried about with them, on their travels
last summer, an unknown quantity of flags,
each containing thirty-six stars, and paraded
them on every occasion as incontrovertible
PROOF tDaI sSOuLH SdIOliIld Ildu IL TlBnt W dc
represented in Congress under any state or
ganization which might happen to be in
power in that territory and these cham
pions of the rights of Southern rebels de
nounced Congress, and the people who sus-
tanned Congress. as traitors, for insisting
that the state government of South Carolina
being defunct by its own act, and still more
dead, if possible, by the act of President
johnson in displacing it, state gov
eminent in South Carolina could become a
rightful power in the nation until reOrganized
by Congress. In the light of the Constitu-
ton, and of all presidents, this opinion Of
Congress seemed to be the only satisfactory
or safe one and yet the exigencies of the
Democratic party led partisans to clamor
against it, as the most outrageous and dam
gerous doctrine that ever assailed the SOW
ereignty of the states and the liberties of
the people
1t is hardly probable thfs decision Of C'tIicf
Justice Chase will silence this partisan
elamor, the clamor is the principal polit-
zeal capital of the Democrats but it will at
least, we trust, appeal to the reasonable and
patriotic men of that party sensible as
well as judicial statement of the legal sfatu.
of the rebel states