The
people are sovereign only as the State, and the State is
inseparable from the domain. The Unionists without the State
government, without any State organization, could not hold the
domain, which, when the State organization is gone, escheats to
the United States, that is to say, ceases to exist. The American
democracy is territorial, not personal.
The General government, in time of war or rebellion, is indeed
invested, for war purposes, with all the power of the Union.
This is the war power. But, though apparently unlimited, the war
power is yet restricted to war purposes, and expires by natural
limitation when peace returns;, and peace returns, in a civil
war, when the rebels have thrown down their arms and submitted to
the national authority, and without any formal declaration.
During the war, or while the rebellion lasts, it can suspend the
civil courts, the civil laws, the State constitutions, any thing
necessary to the success of the war--and of the necessity the
military authorities are the judges; but it cannot abolish,
abrogate, or reconstitute them. On the return of peace they
revive of themselves in all their vigor. The emancipation
proclamation of the President, if it emancipated the slaves in
certain States and parts of States, and if those whom it
emancipated could not be re-enslaved, did not anywhere abolish
slavery, or change the laws authorizing it; and if the Government
should be sustained by Congress or by the Supreme Court in
counting the disorganized States as States in the Union, the
legal status of slavery throughout the Union, with the exception
of Maryland, and perhaps Missouri, is what it was before the
war.
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