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feeling. That act of a madman, who had conceived the idea that he might become in our history what Brutus was in the history of Rome, the destroyer of the enemy of his country, was ascribed to a conspiracy of leading Confederates. The proclamation of the Secretary of War, offering a reward for the arrest of parties charged with complicity in the act, gave support to this notion. The wildest stories, now known to have had no foundation, were circulated and obtained ready credence among the people of the North, already wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement. They manifested, therefore, great impatience when a doubt was cast upon the propriety or validity of the acts of the government, or of its officers, which were taken for the suppression of the rebellion or "the reconstruction" of the States; and to question their validity was almost considered proof of hostility to the Union. By those who considered the union indissoluble, except by the common consent of the people of the several States, the organization known as the Confederate States could only be regarded as unlawful and rebellious, to be suppressed, if necessary, by force of arms. The Constitution prohibits any treaty, alliance, or confederation by one State with another, and it declares on its face that it is the supreme law of the land. The Confederate government, therefore, could only be treated by the United States as the military representative of the insurrection against their authority. Belligerent rights were accorded to its armed forces in the conduct of the war, and they thus had the standing and rights of parties engaged in lawful warfare. But no further recognition was ever given to it, and when those forces were overthrown its whole fabric disappeared. But not so with the insurgent States which had composed the Confederacy. They retained the same form of government and the same general system of laws, during and subsequent to the war, which they had possessed previously. Their organizations as distinct political communities were not destroyed by the war, although their relations to the central authority were changed. And their acts, so far as they did not impair or tend to impair the supremacy of the general government, or the rights of citizens of the loyal States, were valid and binding. All the ordinary authority of government for the protection of rights of persons and property, the enforcement of contracts, the punishment of crime, and t
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