members of the Confederation were to be admitted by the consent of
nine--about two-thirds of the States. By the Constitution, the
applicants are regarded rather as an organized body of men, seeking to
identify themselves with the American people. To such the national
Congress extends the privilege of citizenship, and from such demands
conformity to our method of national life.

But while these are instances of the radical difference existing between
the methods of treating the same subjects in the Articles of
Confederation and in the Constitution, there are elements in the
Constitution, peculiar to itself, which make the relations and duties of
the States under them utterly irreconcilable. These are embodied in the
organization of the national Government. In assuming the functions, it
took upon itself the forms and instrumentalities of a sovereign and
universal authority. Having founded the Government on the supremacy of
the people, and deposited all original power with the representative and
legislative body, the Constitution provided for the prompt and thorough
exercise of that power by vesting the executive authority in the
President of the United States, and such officers as Congress should
appoint for him. In the Federation there was no executive, for there was
very little to execute. What few things it lay in the power of the
assembled States to determine should be done, were given to the
respective States to do. When they were refractory or negligent, there
was no power in Congress, either to appoint other agents, or to compel
them to the performance of their duties. A promise voluntarily given,
and deemed subject to voluntary violation, was the only pledge given for
the execution of mutual agreements.

Were our national Government now as it was then--as the rebels maintain,
and as their Northern friends would have us act as if we believed--the
rebellion would indeed be a justifiable attempt to secure self-evident
rights. But it is not so. Under the Constitution, an executive is
appointed directly by the people, who is bound, by an oath too sacred
for any but a traitor to violate, to protect, defend, and preserve the
organic law which binds us as a nation forever, and to apply and execute
the laws of Congress made in accordance therewith.

And to these laws, which, made by the representatives of the people,
embody their sovereign authority, there is given the further sanction of
judicial supervision. In the Con