spite of any doubt as to their regularity. The public safety would be
acknowledged as the supreme law, and they who had placed themselves in
the attitude of public enemies could not complain of the rigid
application of its requirements to them.

The most inveterate of the rebels certainly do not anticipate the
relaxation of this principle. They are careful to make known to the
Southern people the impossibility of returning to the Union, except upon
such conditions as may be prescribed by the conquering power. It is true
they do this to deter their followers from indulging the thought of any
restoration of their former Federal relations; but this fact of itself
shows their consciousness of the justice of the position. They have
betrayed their people into a situation from which they cannot reasonably
hope to escape without making important concessions to the Federal
Government. Their effort now is to convince the misguided population of
the South that the required concessions will be more intolerable than
the indefinite continuance of a hopeless and destructive civil war.

There is no necessity, however, to go beyond the limits of the
Constitution; nor is there any reason to believe that the Government, in
any event, will be disposed to exact terms inconsistent with the true
spirit of our institutions. A great danger, such as now threatens our
country, might, in some circumstances, justify a revolution, altering
even the fundamental laws, for the purpose of preserving our national
unity. The justification would depend upon the nature of the
circumstances--the extremity and urgency of the peril; and the change
would be recognized and defended as the result of violence, irregular
and revolutionary. At a more tranquil period, in the absence of danger
and excitement, it would be practicable to return to the former
principles of political action; or, in case of necessity, the sanction
of the people might be obtained in the forms prescribed by the
Constitution, and the change found necessary in the revolutionary period
would either be approved and retained, modified, or altogether rejected.

But fortunately no constitutional obstacle whatever stands in the way of
making such stipulations as may be appropriate between the Federal
Government and the States; nor would they at all imply any admission of
the right of secession, or of the actual efficacy of the attempted
withdrawal from the Union. On the contrary, any agreement wit