But
as the defunct State could not, and the convention had not
repealed or altered them, save in the one case mentioned, the
General government had no alternative but to treat them and all
rights created by them as the territorial law, and to respect
them as such.
What then do the people of the several States that seceded lose
by secession? They lose, besides incurring, so far as disloyal,
the pains and penalties of treason, their political rights, or
right, as has just been said, to be in their own department
self-governing communities, with the right of representation in
Congress and the electoral colleges, and to sit in the national
convention, or of being counted in the ratification of amendments
to the constitution--precisely what it was shown a Territorial
people gain by being admitted as a State into the Union. This is
the difference between the constitutional doctrine and that
adopted by Mr. Lincoln's and Mr. Johnson's Administrations. But
what authority, on this constitutional doctrine, does the General
government gain over the people of States that secede, that it
has not over others! As to their internal constitution, their
private rights of person or property, it gains none. It has over
them, till they are reconstructed and restored to the Union, the
right to institute for them provisional governments, civil or
military, precisely as it has for the people of a territory that
is not and has never been one of the United States; but in their
reconstruction it has less, for the geographical boundaries and
electoral people of each are already defined by a law which does
not depend on its will, and which it can neither abrogate nor
modify.
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