282 



OONGEESS, UNITED STATES. 



the present Constitution went into operation. 

 The court says : 



Every particle of authority which originally resided 

 in Congress, or in any branch of the State govern- 

 ments, was derived from the people who were per- 

 manent inhabitants of each province in the first in- 

 stance, and afterwards became citizens of each State ; 

 that this authority was conveyed by each body- 

 politic separately, and not by all the people in the 

 several provinces or States jointly ; and, of course, 

 that no authority could be conveyed to the whole 

 but that which was previously possessed by the sev- 

 eral parts ; that the distinction between a State and 

 the people of a State has in this respect no founda- 

 tion, each expression in substance meaning the same 

 thing. 



" I refer to Penhallow's case, 3 Dallas's Ee- 

 ports, p. 94. If my friend from Missouri will 

 look at that decision he will find a clear expo- 

 sition of what was understood by the Supreme 

 Court at that early day to be a State of the 

 Union. 



" A State of the Union or a State in the 

 Union is, therefore, a people yielding obedience 

 to the laws of the Union, that is, the acts of 

 Congress and the national treaties. It is a peo- 

 ple who willingly perform the duties of a State 

 required to be performed by the Constitution ; 

 a people who have a State government which 

 is republican in form ; a people who were one 

 of the original thirteen States which formed 

 the United States, or a people who have, since 

 the adoption of the Constitution, been, in the 

 language of that Constitution, 'admitted by 

 the Congress into this Union ' as States upon 

 an equal footing with the original States ; for 

 this equality of rights and powers as States is 

 plainly implied by the language and the mani- 

 fest intention of the instrument ; and no other 

 people except such original State or admitted 

 State ; none but a State which permits the 

 laws of the Union to have full scope and force 

 within its limits, ; none but a State which 

 sends Senators and Eepresentatives to Con- 

 gress friendly to the Government itself, willing 

 to vote men and money to support and uphold 

 it, who believe that a person forcibly resisting 

 its authority is a traitor and deserving of death ; 

 none but a State which is willing to bring to 

 trial, to convict such a traitor, and to punish 

 him for his treason ; ndrie but a State whose 

 population is capable of furnishing both the 

 grand jury to indict and the traverse jury to 

 convict such a traitor ; none but a State whose 

 population and whose authorities are in favor 

 not only of permitting the laws of the United 

 States relating to civil rights to be executed, 

 but who are willing that the punitive code of 

 the nation, the code of vengeance against its 

 enemies, shall be carried out ; none but such 

 are States of the Union. A State, being a 

 moral person, must have a will ; it must, in ac- 

 cordance with the reasoning of the same high 

 tribunal in the same case, ' be a complete body 

 of persons, united together for their common 

 benefit to enjoy peacefully what is their own, 

 and to do justice to others.' 



t; To be in fact a State of the Union and in 



the Union, this will or consent of the people 

 must be in harmony with the Constitution, and 

 its movements subsidiary to it. It must regard 

 the Constitution as its highest political good ; 

 its injunctions as the highest human law, its 

 commands as the infallible and final measure 

 of civil duty. In short, to be in the Union is 

 to be actively and willingly cooperating with 

 other States in the performance of all those 

 acts and things without which the Federal 

 Government cannot act or move, cannot per- 

 form the functions required of it by the Con- 

 stitution ; it is to elect Senators and Repre- 

 sentatives to the Congress of the United States ; 

 to permit the courts of the United States to be 

 held within their limits, and its citizens to act 

 as jurors and officers of the court ; to permit 

 the judgments and sentences of the court to 

 be executed against its citizens ; to permit the 

 United States mail to be carried through the 

 State and its contents distributed according to 

 law ; to permit the officers of the United States 

 to collect the Federal revenue whether derived 

 from foreign or domestic products ; to permit 

 the United States to manage and control their 

 own property, whether consisting efforts, dock- 

 yards, arsenals, mints, or public lands ; to make 

 such elections of Senators and Eepresentatives 

 freely and as the means of maintaining itself as 

 a State in the Union ; and to permit all these 

 things willingly and freely as rights belonging 

 to the Federal Government, with which neither 

 the State government nor the people of the 

 State have any right whatever to interfere. 

 In short, to be a State in the Union is to use 

 all those powers of the State which have a re- 

 lation to the Federal Government in a manner 

 friendly to that Government, and friendly to its 

 existence and continuance, in a manner pro- 

 motive of the objects of that Government ; and 

 to permit without hindrance the exercise with- 

 in the State of all the 'powers of the Federal 

 Government. 



" Whether a State which should merely omit 

 to send Senators and Eepresentatives to Con- 

 gress, would for that reason cease to be a State 

 of the Union, it is not, perhaps, worth while 

 now to inquire, though my opinion would be 

 that such a State delinquency would not be fol- 

 lowed by that consequence. But surely, if the 

 State has gone further; if it has gone the 

 length, as a political community, of not only 

 refusing to participate in our legislation, but of 

 making war upon us, concerted, open war, war 

 evidenced by the employment of armies and 

 navies against us, it would be folly, madness, 

 to say that the State was not our enemy in 

 every sense in which that term can be em- 

 ployed to describe hostile relations between 

 independent communities. The State, in that 

 case, becomes our enemy, and becomes such 

 for the same reason that any other community 

 becomes such, whose actual government for 

 the time being wields the military forces of 

 that community against us. By the law of 

 civilized war, an organized community, and ac 



