Probably no one will deny that rebellion works a forfeiture of all
political rights to those engaged in it. The subject who renounces his
allegiance can claim no protection: just as the Government that should
fail to protect its subjects, could not claim their allegiance.
Allegiance and protection are reciprocal and interdependent duties, and
the failure of one involves and works the failure of the other. So that
it might be quite correct to declare, in reference to the Southern
rebellion, that a rebel has no rights which the United States is bound
to respect. It will be perceived that the question of _right_ is here
spoken of, and not the question of _policy_. No feeling of sympathy with
a defeated people, not the thousand-fold natural ties that bind the
North and the South, should blind our eyes to the main question of
right. Any policy toward repentant rebels that is not magnanimous and
honorably befitting our complete triumph, can never find favor with the
American people, nor ought to; but the incalculably precious interests
of the Nation will not admit of any uncertain precedents in regard to
secession. The precedent must be perfectly clear. It must be established
unqualifiedly and unalterably that secession is treason, and that
whoever is concerned in it is a traitor and must expect a traitor's
punishment. It has been common to call secession a political heresy. The
rebellion, the fruit of secession, stamps it as more and worse than
simply a heresy. It is inchoate treason, and only awaits the favorable
conditions to become open and flagrant. The patriotism, therefore, of
any man may fairly be suspected, who, refusing to be taught by the
experience of this war, revealing these things as in the clear light of
midday, can speak softly and with 'bated breath' of secession. His
country's baptism of fire has not regenerated such a man.
The attempt, as the legitimate and inevitable result of secession, to
overthrow a Government whose burdens rested so lightly on its citizens
as to have given rise to a current phrase that they were unfelt; and yet
whose magnificent power gave it rank among the first of nations,
securing full protection to the humblest of its citizens, and causing
the name of American to be as proud a boast as Roman in the day of
Rome's power; and withal being the recognized refuge and hope of liberty
and humanity all over the globe, as vindicating the right royalty of
man;--the attempt to overthrow such a Government must stand forever as
the blackest of crimes. For the Confederate treason is more than treason
against the United States: it is a crime against humanity, and a
conspiracy in the interest of despotism, denying the royalty of man.
But, to return to our argument, a distinction is carefully to be noted
between the consequences of rebellion to the individuals who engage in
it and to the State which it assumes to control. It needs no argument to
show that rebellion against the supreme power of a State does not
necessarily affect the permanence of that power. If the rebellion fails,
the rightful authority resumes its functions. If the rebellion succeeds,
the movers of it assume the powers of the State, and succeed to all its
functions. The civil wars of England furnish abundant illustration of
this principle. However the course of Government may for the time have
been checked, and its whole machinery disarranged, the subsidence of the
tumult left the state, in every case, as an organic whole, the same. The
consequences of unsuccessful rebellion fell only upon the persons
engaged in it. So, in the successive changes that befell France after
the Revolution, the state, as the body politic, remained unchanged. In
dealing with the question of rebellion in our country the same principle
applies, only another element enters into the calculation. That element
results from the peculiar character of our Government in its twofold
relation to the people of State and Nation. The Government springs
directly from the people, who have ordained separate functions for the
two separate organisms, or bodies politic, the State and the Nation.
Strictly considered, there are not two Governments, there is only one
Government. Certain functions of it are ordained to be executed by the
State, and certain other functions by the Nation, How, then, can the
State, as such, assume to set aside the ordained functions of the
Nation? How, on the other hand, might the Nation assume to control the
ordained functions of the State? Each to its own master standeth or
falleth, and that master is the people. Hence, the absurdity of the
doctrine which claims the right of a State to resume powers once
delegated to the Nation. For the State, as such, never delegated those
powers. Hence, the absurdity of secession as a dogma in American
politics. And hence, also, it equally appears how absurd is any claim on
the part of the Nation to visit upon the State organism the penalties of
the treason of individuals against itself.
Let it be remembered that the State derives none of its rights from the
Nation. How, then, can it be said to forfeit its rights to the Nation?
The State is a separate and distinct organism, deriving its rights
directly from the people within its territorial limit. They established
it, and to them alone it is responsible. In the same manner, the people
of the whole country, without regard to the territorial limits of
States, established the Nation. The people of the whole country,
therefore, have a permanent interest in the Nation, and no one portion
of them may rightfully assume to set aside its supreme obligations, in
disregard and violation of the organic law. If certain of the people of
any State have rebelled against the National Government, attempting thus
to set aside its paramount obligations, undoubtedly their lives and
property are forfeit to the Nation. But how can their individual treason
work a forfeiture of the State powers and functions? These have been
usurped, indeed, by the armed combinations of the rebellion, but they
are still complete, only awaiting the overthrow of the armed
combinations to be resumed and controlled by those persons within the
same territorial limit who have not rebelled.
It is objected to this view that it assumes a substratum of loyal people
still existing in the rebel States. The assumption is certainly
warrantable when we read of the scenes--witnesses against the Southern
Confederacy whose eloquence surpasses speech--that have attended the
overthrow of the rebellion in Tennessee; and when we remember that even
in South Carolina there are such names as Judge Pettigrew and Governor
Aiken; and when in New York city alone there is to-day a large body of
Georgians, whose loyalty has made them exiles, and who only await the
day of their State's deliverance to return and restore their State's
loyalty; and when the signs in North Carolina are so positive that a
Union element yet survives there; and when even far-off Texas has her
loyal exiles in our midst. Considering those 'signs of the times,' the
assumption that there are loyal men in the rebellious States seems
certainly a valid and proper one, and one on which fairly to rest an
argument. But it is believed that the argument is good without this
assumption. Suppose that, the rebellion being overthrown, not even one
man remains loyal to the Nation within the territorial limits of any
single State, has the State ceased to exist? A State is called, in the
language of publicists, a body politic. It is, in effect, a sort of
corporation, administered for the benefit of its inhabitants by trustees
whom they appoint. One of the maxims of law is that a trust shall not
fail for lack of a person to execute it. It might, therefore, in such a
case as the one supposed, be competent for the United States to
designate persons who should take charge of the State Government, and
administer it in trust for the children of its former recreant
inhabitants, and as their legal and political successors. Reverting to
the settled principles of the law, we find that the essential idea of a
corporation is its immortality, or individuality, or the perpetual
succession of persons under it, notwithstanding the changes of the
individual persons who compose it. The State, like a corporation, has an
individuality of its own, which is not affected by the changes of the
individual persons composing it. It has an immortality, not affected by
their entire extinction. Its own organic existence is not thereby
extinguished. In other words, the State cannot be merged, or swallowed
up, in the Nation.
It seems, then, that the doctrine of State suicide, as propounded in so
many words, by its author, in the original resolutions offered in
Congress, is equally repugnant to the Constitution and good sense. It
is, in effect, revolutionary; for it would dismember the Union, by
striking out of existence States as purely and completely sovereign
within the sphere of their functions as the Nation itself. It is idle to
deny that it thus recognizes and gives support to the doctrine of
secession; for it accepts the results of secession, and supposes that
accomplished by the rebellion which the war is meant to thwart and
prevent, to wit, the disruption of the ties that bind the States and the
Nation together in one harmonious whole.
What are we fighting for? To restore constitutional order; to vindicate
'the sacredness of nationality.' In other words, to combat the principle
of secession, by force and arms, in its last appeal, just as we have
always combated and opposed it hitherto on the platform and in the
senate. But what right have we to oppose secession by coercion? The
right of self-preservation. For secession loosens the very corner-stone
of our Government, so that the whole arch falls, breaking the Union into
an infinity of wretched States. Admitting secession, our Constitution
is, indeed, no stronger than 'a rope of sand.' We fight to maintain the
Constitution as an Ordinance of Sovereignty (as it has been forcibly
styled) over the whole Nation. We must so maintain it, or surrender our
national existence. This being so, we cannot admit any such right as
secession; for that would be to sanction the revolutionary doctrine
that a body of men, usurping a State Government, and calling themselves
the State, can absolve their fellow citizens from their allegiance to
the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. The rebel States are,
then, still members of the Union. Otherwise, we are waging an unjust
war. Otherwise we falsify and contradict the record of our Revolution,
and are striving to reduce to dependence a people who are equally
striving to maintain their independence. There is no justification for
this war save in the plea for the National Union; no warrant for it save
in the preservation of the Constitution, which is the palladium and
safeguard of the Nation. The Southern rebellion has usurped the
functions and powers of various State Governments: when it is
overthrown, the victims of its usurpation will be restored to their
former rights. _Their_ allegiance is still perfect. Nothing but their
own act can absolve them from it.