Hence its
aid to the loyal Virginians to organize as the State of Virginia,
and its subsequent efforts to organize the Union men in
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, and its disposition to
recognize their organization in each of those States as the State
itself, though including only a small minority of the territorial
people. Had the facts been as assumed, the government might have
treated the loyal people of each State as the State itself,
without any gross usurpation of power; but, unhappily, the facts
assumed were not facts, and it was soon found that the Union
party in all the States that seceded, except the western part of
Virginia and the eastern section of Tennessee, after secession
had been carried by the popular vote, went almost unanimously
with the secessionists; for they as well as the secessionists
held the doctrine of State sovereignty; and to treat the handful
of citizens that remained loyal in each State as the State
itself, became ridiculous, and the government should have seen
and acknowledged it.
The rebellion being really territorial, and not personal, the
State that seceded was no more continued in the loyal than in the
disloyal population. While the war lasted, both were public
enemies of the United States, and neither had or could have any
rights as a State in the Union. The law recognizes a solidarity
of all the citizens of a State, and assumes that, when a State is
at war, all its citizens are at war, whether approving the war or
not.
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