The government started with the theory that no State had seceded
or could secede, and held that, throughout, the States in
rebellion continued to be States in the Union. That is, it held
secession to be a purely personal and not a territorial
insurrection. Yet it proclaimed eleven States to be in
insurrection against the United States, blockaded their ports,
and interdicted all trade and intercourse of any kind with them.
The Supreme Court, in order to sustain the blockade and interdict
as legal, decided the war to be not a war against simply
individual or personal insurgents but "a territorial civil war."
This negatived the assumption that the States that took up arms
against the United States remained all the while peaceable and
loyal States, with all their political rights and powers in the
Union. The States in the Union are integral elements of the
political sovereignty, for the sovereignty of the American nation
vests in the States finite; and it is absurd to pretend that the
eleven States that made the rebellion and were carrying on a
formidable war against the United States, were in the Union, an
integral element of that sovereign authority which was carrying
on a yet more formidable war against them. Nevertheless, the
government still held to its first assumption, that the States in
rebellion continued to be States in the Union--loyal States, with
all their rights and franchises unimpaired!
That the government should at first have favored or acquiesced in
the doctrine that no State had ceased to be a State in the Union,
is not to be wondered at.
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