I maintain, after Mr. Senator Sumner, one of the most
philosophic and accomplished living American statesmen, that
"State secession is State suicide," but modify the opinion I too
hastily expressed that the political death of a State dissolves
civil society within its territory and abrogates all rights held
under it, and accept the doctrine that the laws in force at the
time of secession remain in force till superseded or abrogated by
competent authority, and also that, till the State is revived and
restored as a State in the Union, the only authority, under the
American system, competent to supersede or abrogate them is the
United States, not Congress, far less the Executive. The error
of the Government is not in recognizing the territorial laws as
surviving secession but in counting a State that has seceded as
still a State in the Union, with the right to be counted as one
of the United States in amending the Constitution. Such State
goes out of the Union, but comes under it.
I have endeavored throughout to refer my particular political
views; to their general principles, and to show that the general
principles asserted have their origin and ground in the great,
universal, and unchanging principles of the universe itself.
Hence, I have labored to show the scientific relations of
political to theological principles, the real principles of all
science, as of all reality.
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