What then do the people of the several States that seceded lose by secession? They lose, besides incurring, so far as disloyal, the pains and penalties of treason, their political rights, or right, as has just been said, to be in their own department self-governing communities, with the right of representation in Congress and the electoral colleges, and to sit in the national convention, or of being counted in the ratification of amendments to the constitution--precisely what it was shown a Territorial people gain by being admitted as a State into the Union.This is the difference between the constitutional doctrine and that adopted by Mr.Lincoln's and Mr.Johnson's Administrations.But what authority, on this constitutional doctrine, does the General government gain over the people of States that secede, that it has not over others! As to their internal constitution, their private rights of person or property, it gains none.It has over them, till they are reconstructed and restored to the Union, the right to institute for them provisional governments, civil or military, precisely as it has for the people of a territory that is not and has never been one of the United States; but in their reconstruction it has less, for the geographical boundaries and electoral people of each are already defined by a law which does not depend on its will, and which it can neither abrogate nor modify.Here is the difference between the constitutional doctrine and that of the so-called radicals.The State has gone, but its laws remain, so far as the United States in convention does not abrogate them; not because the authority of the State survives, but because the United States so will, or are presumed to will.The United States have by a constitutional amendment abrogated the laws of the several States authorizing slavery, and prohibited slavery forever within the jurisdiction of the Union;and no State can now be reconstructed and be admitted into the Union with a constitution that permits slavery, for that would be repugnant to the constitution of the United States.If the constitutional amendment is not recognized as ratified by the requisite number of States, it is the fault of the government in persisting in counting as States what are no States.Negro suffrage, as white suffrage, is at present a question for States.
The United States guarantee to such State a republican form of government.And this guarantee, no doubt, authorizes Congress to intervene in the internal constitution of a State so far as to force it to adopt a republican form of government, but not so far as to organize a government for a State, or to compel a territorial people to accept or adopt a State constitution for themselves.If a State attempts to organize a form of government not republican, it can prevent it; and if a Territory adopts an unrepublican form, it can force it to change its constitution to one that is republican, or compel it to remain a Territory under a provisional government.But this gives the General government no authority in the organization or re-organization of States beyond seeing that the form of government adopted by the territorial people is republican.To press it further, to make the constitutional clause a pretext for assuming the entire control of the organization or re-organization of a State, is a manifest abuse--a palpable violation of the constitution and of the whole American system.The authority given by the clause is specific, and is no authority for intervention in the general reconstruction of the lapsed State.It gives authority in no question raised by secession or its consequences, and can give none, except, from within or from without, there is an overt attempt to organize a State in the Union with an unrepublican form of government.
The General government gives permission to the territorial people of the defunct State to re-organize, or it contents itself with suffering them, without special recognition, to reorganize in their own way, and apply to Congress for admission, leaving it to Congress to admit them as a State, or not, according to its own discretion, in like manner as it admits a new State; but the re-organization itself must be the work of the territorial people themselves, under their old electoral law.The power that reconstructs is in the people themselves; the power that admits them, or receives them into the Union, is Congress.The Executive, therefore, has no authority in the matter, beyond that of seeing that the laws are duly complied with; and whatever power he assumes, whether by proclamation or by instructions given to the provisional governors, civil or military, is simply a usurpation of the power of Congress, which it rests with Congress to condone or not, as it may see fit.Executive proclamations, excluding a larger or a smaller portion of the electoral or territorial people from the exercise of the elective franchise in reorganizing the State, and executive efforts to throw the State into the hands of one political party or another, are an unwarrantable assumption of power, for the President, in relation to reconstruction, acts only under the peace powers of the constitution, and simply as the first executive officer of the Union.His business is to execute the laws, not to make them.His legislative authority is confined to his qualified veto on the acts of Congress, and to the recommendation to Congress of such measures as he believes are needed by the country.
In reconstructing a disorganized State, neither Congress nor the Executive has any power that either has not in time of peace.
