original Thirteen had been so designated before the Constitution was formed, but that Constitution destroyed all the sovereignty which those States were ever supposed to possess in reference to external affairs.

"I submit, Mr. Speaker, that the five great publicists-Grotius, Puffendorf, Bynkershoek, Burlamaqui, and Vattel, who have been so often quoted in this debate, and all of whom wrote more than a quarter of a century, and some nearly two centuries before our Constitution was formed, can hardly be quoted as good authorities in regard to the nature and legal relationships of the component States of the American Union. "Even my colleague from the Columbus District [Mr. Shellabarger], in his very able discussion of this question, spoke as though a State of this Union was the same as a state in the sense of international law, with certain qualities added. I think he must admit that nearly all the leading attributes of such a state are taken from it when it becomes a State of the Union.

"Several gentlemen, during this debate, have quoted the well known doctrine of international law, that war annuls all existing compacts and treaties between belligerents;' and they have concluded, therefore, that our war has broken the Federal bond and dissolved the Union. This would be true, if the rebel States were states in the sense of international law-if our Government were not a sovereign nation, but only a league between sovereign states. I oppose to this conclusion the unanswerable proposition that this is a nation; that the rebel States are not sovereign states, and therefore their failure to achieve independence was a failure to break the Federal bond-to dissolve the Union. .

"In view of the peculiar character of our Government, in what condition did the war leave the rebel States?"

He argued that by the admission of a State to the Union, the laws of the United States were extended to it. A State might violate one of these laws, but could not annul it. Each rebel State exerted every power to break away from these laws, but was unable to destroy or invalidate one of them. Each rebel State let go of the Union, but the Union did not let go of it:

"Let the stars of heaven illustrate our constellation of States. When God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, He bound them al by the resistless power of attraction to the central sun, around which

they revolved in their appointed orbits. Each may be swept by storms, may be riven by lightnings, may be rocked by earthquakes, may be devastated by all the terrestrial forces and overwhelmed in ruin, but far away in the everlasting depths the sovereign sun holds the turbulent planet in its place. This earth may be overwhelmed until the high hills are covered by the sea; it may tremble with earthquakes miles below the soil, but it must still revolve in its appointed orbit. So Alabama may overwhelm all her municipal institutions in ruin, but she can not annul the omnipotent decrees of the sovereign people of the Union. She must be held forever in her orbit of obedience and duty.

"Now, let us inquire how the surrender of the military power of the rebellion affected the legal condition of those States. When the rebellion collapsed, and the last armed man of the Confederacy surrendered to our forces, I affirm that there was not in one of those States a single government that we did or could recognize. There was not in one of those States, from governor down to constable, a single man whom we could recognize as authorized to exercise any official function whatever. They had formed governments alien and hostile to the Union. Not only had their officers taken no oaths to support the Constitution of the United States, but they had heaped oath upon oath to destroy it.

"I go further. I hold that there were in those States no constitutions of any binding force and effect; none that we could recognize. A constitution, in this case, can mean nothing less than a constitution of government. A constitution must constitute something, or it is no constitution. When we speak of the constitution of Alabama, we mean the constitution of the government of Alabama. When the rebels surrendered, there remained no constitution in Alabama, because there remained no government. Those States reverted into our hands by victorious war, with every municipal right and every municipal authority utterly and completely swept away."

After citing from the highest authorities on the laws of war, he sums up the legal status of the rebellious states as follows:

"1. That, by conquest, the United States obtained complete control of the rebel territory.

"2. That every vestige of municipal authority in those States was, by secession, rebellion, and the conquest of the rebellion, utterly destroyed.

"3. That the state of war did not terminate with the actual cessation of hostilities, but that, under the laws of war, it was the duty of the President, as commander-in-chief, to establish governments over the conquered people of the insurgent States, which governments, no matter what may be their form, are really military governments, deriving their sole power from the President.

"4. That the governments thus established, are valid while the state of war continues and until Congress acts in the case.

"5. That it belongs exclusively to the legislative authority of the Government to determine the political status of the insurgent States, either by adopting the governments the President has established, or by permitting the people to form others, subject to the approval of Congress.

"It was time for Congress to act. That action should recognize, first, the stupendous facts of the war. By the Emancipation Proclamation we not only declared the slaves free, but pledged the faith of the nation to 'maintain their freedom.' What is freedom? It is no mere negative; no mere privilege of not being chained, bought and sold, branded or scourged. It is a tangible realization of the truths that all men are created free and equal,' and that the sanction of just government is the 'consent of the governed.'

་

"These truths can never be realized until each man has a right to be heard in all matters concerning himself. . . . .

"I remember an incident in the history of the eastern church, as recorded by Gibbon, volume two, chapter twenty-eight, which illustrates the power that slavery has exercised among us. The Christians of that day, under the lead of Theophilus, undertook to destroy the heathen temples. Gibbon says:

466

Theophilus proceeded to demolish the temple of Serapis without any other difficulties than those which he found in the weight and solidity of the materials, but these obstacles proved so insuperable that he was obliged to leave the foundations and to content himself with reducing the edifice itself to a heap of rubbish, a part of which was soon afterward cleared away to make room for a church, erected in honor of the Christian martyrs.

"The colossal statue of Serapis was involved in the ruin of his temple and religion. A great number of plates of different metals, artificially joined together, composed the majestic figure of the deity, who

touched on either side the walls of the sanctuary. The aspect of Serapis, his sitting posture, and the scepter, which he bore in his left hand, were extremely similar to the ordinary representations of Jupiter. He was distinguished from Jupiter by the basket, or bushel, which was placed on his head, and by the emblematic monster which he held in his right hand, the head and body of a serpent branching into three tails, which were again terminated by the triple heads of a dog, a lion, and a wolf. It was confidently affirmed that if any impious hand should dare to violate the majesty of the god, the heavens and earth would instantly return to the original chaos. An intrepid soldier, animated by zeal, and armed with a weighty battle-ax, ascended the ladder, and even the Christian multitude expected with some anxiety the event of the combat. He aimed a vigorous stroke against the check of Scrapis; the cheek fell to the ground; the thunder was still silent, and both the heavens and the earth continued to preserve their accustomed order and tranquillity. The victorious soldier repeated his blows, the huge idol was overthrown and broken in pieces, and the limbs of Serapis were ignominiously dragged through the streets of Alexandria. His mangled carcass was burnt in the amphitheater amid the shouts of the populace, and many persons attributed their conversion to this discovery of the impotence of their tutelary deity.'

"So slavery sat in our national Capitol. Its huge bulk filled the temple of our liberty, touching it from side to side. Mr. Lincoln, on the 1st of January, 1863, struck it on the cheek, and the faithless and unbelieving among us expected to see the fabric of our institutions dissolve into chaos because their idol had fallen. He struck it again; Congress and the States repeated the blow, and its unsightly carcass lies rotting in our streets. The sun shines in the heavens brighter than before. Let us remove the carcass and leave not a vestige of the monster. We shall never have done that until we have dared to come up to the spirit of the Pilgrim covenant of 1620, and declare that all men shall be consulted in regard to the disposition of their lives, liberty, and property. The Pilgrim fathers proceeded on the doctrine that every man was supposed to know best what he wanted, and had the right to a voice in the disposi tion of himself."

A second fact to be recognized was that 7,000,000 white men were waiting to have their case adjudged and their political status fixed.

"As to persons we must see to it that hereafter personal liberty and personal rights are placed in the keeping of the nation; that the right to life, liberty, and property are to be guaranteed to citizens in reality, and not left to the caprice of mobs and contingencies of local legislation. As to States, the burden of proof rests on each one of them, to show whether it is fit to enter the Federal circle in full communion of privileges. Men can not change their hearts-love what they hated, and hate what they loved-upon the issue of a battle; but our duty is to demand that before we admit them they shall give sufficient assurance that, whatever they believe or wish. their action in the future shall be such as loyal men can approve."

How far does that speech differ from the reconstruction policy actually adopted?

Thirteen years later, on June 27, 1879, the pending bill being one for the appropriations for United States marshals, General Garfield said:

"Mr. Chairman: To this favor' it has come at last. The great fleet that set out on the 18th of March, with all its freightage and armament, is so shattered that now all the valuables it carried are embarked in this little craft, to meet whatever fate the sea and the storm may offer. This little bill contains the residuum of almost every thing that has been the subject of controversy at the present session. I will not discuss it in detail, but will speak only of its central feature, and especially of the opinions which the discussion of that feature has brought to the surface during the present session. The majority in this Congress have adopted what I consider very extreme and dangerous opinions on certain important constitutional questions. They have not only drifted back to their old attitude on the subject of State Sovereignty, but they have pushed that doctrine much further than most of their predecessors ever went before, except during the period immediately preceding the late war.

"Let me summarize them: First, there are no national elections; second, the United States has no voters; third, the States have the exclusive right to control all elections of members of Congress; fourth, the senators and representatives in Congress are State officers, or, as they have been called during the present session, embassadors' or 'agents' of the State; fifth, the United States has no authority to keep the peace any where within a State, and, in fact, has no peace to keep; sixth, the