They are to be honored
for their loyalty and patriotism, and not branded as rebels and
punished as traitors.
This is the secession argument, which rests on no assumption of
revolutionary principles or abstract rights of man, and on no
allegation of real or imaginary wrongs received from the Union,
but simply on the original and inherent rights of the several
States as independent sovereign States. The argument is
conclusive, and the defence complete, if the Union is only a firm
or copartnership, and the sovereignty vests in the States
severally. The refutation of the secessionists is in the facts
adduced that disprove the theory of State sovereignty, and prove
that the sovereignty vests not in the States severally, but in
the States united, or that the Union is sovereign, and not the
States individually. The Union is not a firm, a copartnership,
nor an artificial or conventional union, but a real, living,
constitutional union, founded in the original and indissoluble
unity of the American people, as one sovereign people. There is,
indeed, no such people, if we abstract the States, but there are
no States if we abstract this sovereign people or the Union.
There is no Union without the States, and there are no States
without the Union. The people are born States, and the States
are born United States. The Union and the States are
simultaneous, born together, and enter alike into the original
and essential constitution of the American state.
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