It will not do then to maintain that
State suicide is impossible, and that the States that adopted
secession ordinances have never for a moment ceased to be States
in the Union, and are free, whenever they choose, to send their
representatives and senators to occupy their vacant seats in
Congress. They must be reorganized first.
There would also be some embarrassment to the government in
holding that the States that passed the secession ordinance
remain, notwithstanding, States in the Union. The citizens of a
State in the Union cannot be rebels to the United States, unless
they are rebels to their State; and rebels to their State they
are not, unless they resist its authority and make war on it.
The authority of the State in the Union is a legal authority, and
the citizen in obeying it is disloyal neither to the State nor to
the Union. The citizens in the States that made war on the
United States did not resist their State, for they acted by its
authority. The only men, on this supposition, in them, who have
been traitors or rebels, are precisely the Union men who have
refused to go with their respective States, and have resisted,
even with armed force, the secession ordinances. The several
State governments, under which the so-called rebels carried on
the war for the destruction of the Union, if the States are in
the Union, were legal and loyal governments of their respective
States, for they were legally elected and installed, and
conformed to their respective State constitutions.
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