Every inhabitant of the fallen
States, and every citizen of the United States must desire them
to be revived and continued with their old names and boundaries,
and all true Americans wish to continue the constitution as it
is, and the Union as it was. Who would see old Virginia, the
Virginia of revolutionary fame, of Washington, Jefferson,
Madison, of Monroe, the "Old Dominion," once the leading State of
the Union, dead without hope of resurrection? or South Carolina,
the land of Rutledge, Moultrie, Laurens, Hayne, Sumter, and
Marion? There is something grating to him who values State
associations, and would encourage State emulation and State
pride, in the mutilation of the Old Dominion and the erection
within her borders of the new State called West Virginia. States
in the Union are not mere prefectures, or mere dependencies on
the General government, created for the convenience of
administration. They have an individual, a real existence of
their own, as much so as have the individual members of society.
They are free members, not of a confederation indeed, but of a
higher political community, and reconstruction should restore the
identity of their individual life, suspended for a moment by
secession, but capable of resuscitation.
These States had become, indeed, for a moment, territory under
the Union; but in no instance had they or could they become
territory that had never existed as States.
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