ere are other positive
words from him on this important point:--

"We are not to take the will of the people from public meetings, nor
from tumultuous assemblies, by which the timid are terrified, the
prudent are alarmed, and by which society is disturbed. These are not
American modes of signifying the will of the people, and they never
were....

"Is it not obvious enough, that men cannot get together and count
themselves, and say they are so many hundreds and so many thousands, and
judge of their own qualifications, and call themselves the people, and
set up a government? _Why, another set of men, forty miles off, on the
same day, with the same propriety, with as good qualifications, and in
as large numbers, may meet and set up another government_....

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to ascertain
the will of the people on a new exigency, or a new state of things, or
of opinion, _the legislative power provides for that ascertainment by an
ordinary act of legislation_.

"What do I contend for? I say that the will of the people must prevail,
when it is ascertained; but there must be _some legal and authentic mode
of ascertaining that will_; and then the people may make what government
they please....

"All that is necessary here is, that the will of the people should be
ascertained by some regular rule of proceeding, _prescribed by previous
law_....

"But the law and the Constitution, the whole system of American
institutions, do not contemplate a case in which a resort will be
necessary to proceedings _aliunde_, or _outside of the law and the
Constitution_, for the purpose of amending the frame of government."[25]

CONGRESS THE TRUE AGENT.

But, happily, we are not constrained to any such revolutionary
proceeding. The new governments can all be organized by Congress, which
is the natural guardian of people without any immediate government, and
within the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States.
Indeed, with the State governments already _vacated_ by rebellion, the
Constitution becomes, for the time, the supreme and only law, binding
alike on President and Congress, so that neither can establish any law
or institution incompatible with it. And the whole Rebel region,
deprived of all local government, lapses under the exclusive
jurisdiction of Congress, precisely as any other territory; or, in other
words, the lifting of the local governments leaves the whole vast region