their dealings with their master's consistency.
Their relation to him, if they would bluntly express it, might be
indicated in this brief formula: "We will adore you in order that you
may obey us."

The trouble with these politicians is, that they cannot tie the
President's tongue as they tied the tongues of the eminent personages
they invited from all portions of the country to keep silent at their
great Convention at Philadelphia. That Convention was a masterpiece of
cunning political management; but its Address and Resolutions were
hardly laid at Mr. Johnson's feet, when, in his exultation, he blurted
out that unfortunate remark about "a body called, or which assumed to
be, the Congress of the United States," which, it appears, "we have seen
hanging on the verge of the government." Now all this was in the
Address of the Convention, but it was not so brutally worded, nor so
calculated to appall those timid supporters of the Johnson party who
thought, in their innocence, that the object of the Philadelphia meeting
was to heal the wounds of civil war, and not to lay down a programme by
which it might be reopened. Turning, then, from Mr. Johnson to the
manifesto of his political supporters, let us see what additions it
makes to political wisdom, and what guaranties it affords for future
peace. We shall not discriminate between insurgent States and individual
insurgents, because, when individual insurgents are so overwhelmingly
strong that they carry their States with them, or when States are so
overwhelmingly strong that they force individuals to be insurgents, it
appears to be needless. The terms are often used interchangeably in the
Address, for the Convention was so largely composed of individual
insurgents that it was important to vary a little the charge that they
usurped State powers with the qualification that they obeyed the powers
they usurped. At the South, individual insurgents constitute the State
when they determine to rebel, and obey it when they desire to be
pardoned. An identical thing cannot be altered by giving it two names.

The principle which runs through the Philadelphia Address is, that
insurgent States recover their former rights under the Constitution by
the mere fact of submission. This is equivalent to saying that insurgent
States incurred no guilt in rebellion. But States cannot become
insurgent, unless the authorities of such States commit perjury and
treason, and their people become rebels