... The duty of guaranteeing carries with it the right to pass all laws necessary and proper to guaranty.... It places in the hands of Congress the right to say what is and what is not, with all the light of experience and all the lessons of the past, inconsistent, in its judgment, with the permanent continuance of republican government; and if, in its judgment, any form of policy is radically and inherently inconsistent with the permanent and enduring peace of the country, with the permanent supremacy of republican government, and it have the manliness to say so, there is no power, judicial or executive, in the United States, that can even question this judgment but the People; and they can do it only by sending other representatives here to undo our work. The very language of the Constitution and the necessary logic of the case involve that consequence. The denial of the right of secession means that all the territory of the United States shall remain under the jurisdiction of the Constitution. If there can be no State government which does not recognize the Constitution, and which the authorities of the United States do not recognize, then there are these alternatives, and these only: the rebel States must be governed by Congress till they submit and form a State government under the Constitution; or Congress must recognize State governments which do not recognize either Congress or the Constitution of the United States; or there must be an entire absence of all government in the rebel States; and that is anarchy. To recognize a government which does not recognize the Constitution is absurd, for a government is not a constitution; and the recognition of a State government means the acknowledgment of men as governors, and legislators, and judges, actually invested with power to make laws, to judge of crimes, to convict the citizens of other States, to demand the surrender of fugitives from justice, to arm and command the militia, to require the United States to repress all opposition to its authority, and to protect it from invasion—against our own armies; whose Senators and Representatives are entitled to seats in Congress, and whose electoral votes must be counted in the election of the President of a Government which they disown and defy!! To accept the alternative of anarchy as the constitutional condition of a State is to assert the failure of the Constitution and the end of republican government. Until, therefore, Congress recognize a State government, organized under its auspices, there is no government in the rebel States except the authority of Congress. In the absence of all State government, the duty is imposed on Congress ... to administer civil government until the people shall, under its guidance, submit to the Constitution of the United States, and, under the laws which it shall impose, and on the conditions Congress may require, reorganize a republican government for themselves, and Congress shall recognize that government.
... Is it yet time to reorganize the State governments? or is there not an intermediate period in which sound legislative wisdom requires that the authority of Congress shall take possession of and temporarily control the States now in rebellion until peace shall be restored and republican government can be established deliberately, undisturbed by the sound or fear of arms, and under the guidance of law?
After referring to the condition of the rebellion, Mr. Davis declared: “We have occupied a vast area wrested from its power, but to this day we have not expelled the rebels from any State they ever held.” In no portion of those States could military power “be withdrawn for a moment without instant insurrection”; and he added, “There is no rebel State held now by the United States enough of whose population adheres to the Union to be intrusted with the government of the State. One tenth cannot control nine tenths. Five tenths are nowhere willing to undertake the control of the other five tenths.” In West Virginia, he said, such a condition existed and had been recognized. “In no other State—the only one in respect to which a doubt can exist is Tennessee—in no other State is there such a portion of territory held, or any such portion of population under our control, or any such portion of it which is in our control inspired by such sentiments toward the Government of the United States, so free from fear of the returning wave of rebel invasion, so assured of the continued supremacy of the United States, that we ought to be willing to trust them with this power. You can get a handful of men in the several States who would be glad to take the offices if protected by the troops of the United States, but you have nowhere a body of independent, loyal partisans of the United States, ready to meet the rebels in arms, ready to die for the Republic, who claim the Constitution as their birthright, count all other privileges light in comparison, and resolve at every hazard to maintain it.”
Concerning the loyal masses of the South, of whom so much was heard at the beginning of the war, he remarked:
It is the most astounding spectacle in history that in the Southern States, with more than half of the population opposed to it, a great revolution was effected against their wishes and against their votes, without a battle, a riot, or a protest in behalf of the beneficent Government of their fathers—a revolution whose opponents hastened to lead it, without a martyr to the cause they deserted except the nameless heroes of the mountains of Tennessee, or a confessor of the faith they had avowed save the illustrious Petigru of South Carolina!
... There is no fact that any one has stated on authority at all reliable that any respectable proportion of the people of the Southern States now in rebellion are willing to accept any terms that even our opponents on the other side of the House are willing to offer them.
What, then, are we to do with the population in these States? To make “confusion worse confounded” by erecting by the side of the hostile State government a new State government on the shifting sands of that whirlpool, to be supported by us while we are there and to turn its power against us when we are driven out? That would be to erect a new throne where
“Chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray