are entitled to all political rights, except
so far as they may be deprived of them by the criminal law which they
have infracted.

This seems incomprehensible to the gentleman from Maryland. In his view,
the whole State government centres in the men who administer it, so
that, when they administer it unwisely, or put it in antagonism to
the Federal Government, the State government is dissolved, the State
constitution is abrogated, and the State is left, in fact and in form,
_de jure_ and _de facto_, in anarchy, except so far as the Federal
Government may rightfully intervene. * * * I submit that these gentlemen
do not see with their usual clearness of vision. If, by a plague or
other visitation of God, every officer of a State government should at
the same moment die, so that not a single person clothed with official
power should remain, would the State government be destroyed? Not
at all. For the moment it would not be administered; but as soon as
officers were elected, and assumed their respective duties, it would be
instantly in full force and vigor.

If these States are out of the Union, their State governments are still
in force, unless otherwise changed; their citizens are to the Federal
Government as foreigners, and it has in relation to them the same
rights, and none other, as it had in relation to British subjects in
the war of 1812, or to the Mexicans in 1846. Whatever may be the true
relation of the seceding States, the Federal Government derives no
power in relation to them or their citizens from the provision of the
Constitution now under consideration, but, in the one case, derives all
its power from the duty of enforcing the "supreme law of the land," and
in the other, from the power "to declare war."

The second proposition of the gentleman from Maryland is this--I use
his language: "That clause vests in the Congress of the United States
a plenary, supreme, unlimited political jurisdiction, paramount over
courts, subject only to the judgment of the people of the United States,
embracing within its scope every legislative measure necessary and
proper to make it effectual; and what is necessary and proper the
Constitution refers in the first place to our judgment, subject to no
revision but that of the people."

The gentleman states his case too strongly. The duty imposed on Congress
is doubtless important, but Congress has no right to use a means of
performing it forbidden by the Constitution, no ma