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