All the rest is the
work of the territorial electoral people themselves, for the
State within its own sphere must, as one of the United States, be
a self-governing community. The General government may concede
or withhold permission to the disorganized State to reorganize,
as it judges advisable, but it cannot itself reorganize it. If it
concedes the permission, it must leave the whole electoral people
under the preexisting electoral law free to take part in the work
of reorganization, and to vote according to their own judgment.
It has no authority to purge the electoral people, and say who
may or may not vote, for the whole question of suffrage and the
qualifications of electors is left to the State, and can be
settled neither by an act of Congress nor by an Executive
proclamation.
If the government theory were admissible, that the disorganized
States remain States in the Union, the General government could
have nothing to say on the subject, and could no more interfere
with elections in any one of them than it could with elections in
Massachusetts or New York. But even on the doctrine here
defended it can interfere with them only by way of general
superintendence. The citizens have, indeed, lost their political
rights, but not their private rights. Secession has not
dissolved civil society, or abrogated any of the laws of the
disorganized State that were in force at the time of secession.
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