that this fact is not in the least affected by the other
fact that the Constitution forbids secession. He says that the law
forbids murder, but that murders are nevertheless committed. But there
is no analogy between the two cases. If secession had been accomplished,
if these States had gone out, and overcome the armies that tried to
prevent their going out, then the prohibition of the Constitution could
not have altered the fact. In the case of murder the man is killed, and
murder is thus committed in spite of the law. The fact of killing is
essential to the committal of the crime; and the fact of going out is
essential to secession. But in this case there was no such fact. I think
I need not argue any further the position that the rebel States
have never for one moment, by any ordinances of secession, or by any
successful war, carried themselves beyond the rightful jurisdiction of
the Constitution of the United States. They have interrupted for a
time the practical enforcement and exercise of that jurisdiction;
they rendered it impossible for a time for this Government to enforce
obedience to its laws; but there has never been an hour when this
Government, or this Congress, or this House, or the gentleman from
Pennsylvania himself, ever conceded that those States were beyond the
jurisdiction of the Constitution and laws of the United States.

During all these four years of war Congress has been making laws for the
government of those very States, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania has
voted for them, and voted to raise armies to enforce them. Why was this
done if they were a separate nation? Why, if they were not part of the
United States? Those laws were made for them as States. Members have
voted for laws imposing upon them direct taxes, which are apportioned,
according to the Constitution, only "among the several States" according
to their population. In a variety of ways--to some of which the
gentleman' who preceded me has referred--this Congress has, by its
action, assumed and asserted that they were still States in the Union,
though in rebellion, and that it was with the rebellion that we were
making war, and not with the States themselves as States, and still less
as a separate, as a foreign Power.

* * * * *

Why, sir, if there be no constitution of any sort in a State, no
law, nothing but chaos, then that State would no longer exist as an
organization. But that has not been the case, i