It is sometimes said that the States themselves committed _suicide_, so
that as States they ceased to exist, leaving their whole jurisdiction
open to the occupation of the United States under the Constitution. This
assumption is founded on the fact, that, whatever may be the existing
governments in these States, they are in no respect constitutional, and
since the State itself is known by the government, with which its life
is intertwined, it must cease to exist constitutionally when its
government no longer exists constitutionally. Perhaps, however, it would
be better to avoid the whole question of the life or death of the State,
and to content ourselves with an inquiry into the condition of its
government. It is not easy to say what constitutes that entity which we
call a State; nor is the discussion much advanced by any theory with
regard to it. To my mind it seems a topic fit for the old schoolmen or a
modern debating society; and yet, considering the part it has already
played in this discussion, I shall be pardoned for a brief allusion to
it.
There are well-known words which ask and answer the question, "What
constitutes _a State_?" But the scholarly poet was not thinking of a
"State" of the American Union. Indeed, this term is various in its use.
Sometimes it stands for civil society itself. Sometimes it is the
general name for a political community, not unlike "nation" or
"country,"--as where our fathers, in the Resolution of Independence,
which preceded the Declaration, spoke of "the _State_ of Great Britain."
Sometimes it stands for the government,--as when Louis XIV., at the
height of his power, exclaimed, "The _State_, it is I"; or when Sir
Christopher Hatton, in the famous farce of "The Critic," ejaculates,--
"Oh, pardon me, if my conjecture's rash,
But I surmise--_the State_--
Some danger apprehends."
Among us the term is most known as the technical name for one of the
political societies which compose our Union. Of course, when used in the
latter restricted sense, it must not be confounded with the same term
when used in a different and broader sense. But it is obvious that some
persons attribute to the one something of the qualities which can belong
only to the other. Nobody has suggested, I presume, that any "State" of
our Union has, through rebellion, ceased to exist as a _civil society_,
or even as a _political community_. It is only as a _State of the
Union_, armed with State rights, or at least as a _local government_,
which annually renews itself, as the snake its skin, that it can be
called in question. But it is vain to challenge for the technical
"State," or for the annual government, that immortality which belongs to
civil society. The one is an artificial body, the other is a natural
body; and while the first, overwhelmed by insurrection or war, may
change or die, the latter can change or die only with the extinction of
the community itself, whatever may be its name or its form.
It is because of confusion in the use of this term that there has been
so much confusion in the political controversies where it has been
employed. But nowhere has this confusion led to greater absurdity than
in the pretension which has been recently made in the name of State
Rights,--as if it were reasonable to attribute to a technical "State" of
the Union that immortality which belongs to civil society.
From approved authorities it appears that a "State," even in a broader
signification, may lose its life. Mr. Phillimore, in his recent work on
International Law, says:--"A State, like an individual, may die," and
among the various ways, he says, "by its submission and the donation of
itself to another country."[19] But in the case of our Rebel States
there has been a plain submission and donation of
themselves,--_effective, at least, to break the continuity of
government_, if not to destroy that immortality which has been claimed.
Nor can it make any difference, in breaking this continuity, that the
submission and donation, constituting a species of attornment, were to
enemies at home rather than to enemies abroad,--to Jefferson Davis
rather than to Louis Napoleon. The thread is snapped in one case as much
as in the other.
But a _change of form_ in the actual government may be equally
effective. Cicero speaks of a change so complete as "to leave no image
of a State behind." But this is precisely what has been done throughout
the whole Rebel region: there is no image of a _constitutional_ State
left behind. Another authority, Aristotle, whose words are always
weighty, says, that, _the form of the State being changed, the State is
no longer the same_, as the harmony is not the same when we modulate out
of the Dorian mood into the Phrygian. But if ever an unlucky people
modulated out of one mood into another, it was our Rebels, when they
undertook to modulate out of the harmonies of the Constitution into
their bloody discords.
Without stopping further for these diversions, I content myself with the
testimony of Edmund Burke, who, in a striking passage, which seems to
have been written for us, portrays the extinction of a political
community; but I quote his eloquent words rather for suggestion than for
authority:--
"In a state of _rude_ Nature there is no such thing as a people. A
number of men in themselves have no collective capacity. The idea of
people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial, and made,
like all other legal fictions, by common agreement. What the particular
nature of that agreement was is collected from the form into which the
particular society has been cast. Any other is not _their_ covenant.
_When men, therefore, break p the original compact or agreement which
gives its corporate form and capacity to a State, they are no longer a
people; they have no longer a corporate existence_; they have no longer
a legal coactive force to bind within, nor a claim to be recognized
abroad. They are a number of vague, loose individuals, and nothing more.
With them all is to begin again. Alas! they little know how many a weary
step is to be taken before they can form themselves into a mass which
has a true politic personality."[20]
If that great master of eloquence could be heard, who can doubt that he
would blast our Rebel States, as senseless communities who have
sacrificed that corporate existence which makes them living, component
members of our Union of States?