Am I to be told that I misrepresent the Republican party? The gentleman who has just taken his seat [Mr. Boutwell], an able and honored member of that party, has said in your hearing, “If I could direct the force of public sentiment and the policy of this Government, South Carolina as a State and with a name should never reappear in this Union. Georgia deserves a like fate. Florida does not deserve a name in this Union.”
The gentleman from Maryland felt that this charge could be truthfully made. He sought to answer it in advance. He denied that the provisions of the bill contravened any clause of the Constitution. Where is the authority for it? Where is the authority to declare State governments overthrown? Where is the authority to reconstruct them? Where is the authority to appoint a governor; to call a convention to remodel their constitutions; to fix the qualifications of its members; to prescribe the conditions of their organic law; and until a new constitution shall be made, to administer by Federal officers such parts of the old constitution and laws as the governor, or the President, or Congress may select?...
At this point he quoted Madison on the guaranty clause, a subject elaborated in the Senate by Carlile, of Virginia. Mr. Pendleton observed that if slavery, which, with one possible exception, existed in all the States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, was not inconsistent with a republican form of government then it was not inconsistent with it in 1864.
And yet the advocates of this bill [continued Mr. Pendleton] propose to deprive the States of power over the question of slavery, power over their own indebtedness, power to regulate the elective franchise, and the right to hold office, under the pretense that they thereby execute the provision that the United States must guaranty a republican form of government to the States.
The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Boutwell] has shown how he would execute it. South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida should never again appear as State or in name in this Confederation. Is their exclusion a guarantee to them of a republican government?
... If Congress may insist upon the three fundamental conditions prescribed in this bill, ... by a parity of reasoning it ought to insist upon their incorporation into the constitution of the States remaining steadfast by the Union. If they are essential to republicanism in the one class of States they are equally so in all.
... Gentlemen must not palter in a double sense. These acts of secession are either valid or they are invalid. If they are valid, they separated the State from the Union. If they are invalid, they are void; they have no effect; the State officers who act upon them are rebels to the Federal Government; the States are not destroyed; their constitutions are not abrogated; their officers are committing illegal acts, for which they are liable to punishment; the States have never left the Union, but so soon as their officers shall perform their duties or other officers shall assume their places, will again perform the duties imposed and enjoy the privileges conferred by the Federal compact, and this not by virtue of a new ratification of the Constitution, nor a new admission by the Federal Government, but by virtue of the original ratification, and the constant, uninterrupted maintenance of position in the Federal Union since that date.
Acts of secession are not invalid to destroy the Union, and valid to destroy the State governments and the political privileges of their citizens. We have heard much of the two-fold relation which citizens of the seceded States may hold to the Federal Government—that they may be at once belligerents and rebellious citizens. I believe there are some judicial decisions to that effect. Sir, it is impossible. The Federal Government may possibly have the right to elect in which relation it will deal with them; it cannot deal with them at one and the same time in inconsistent relations. Belligerents being captured are entitled to be treated as prisoners of war; rebellious citizens are liable to be hanged. The private property of belligerents, according to the rules of modern war, shall not be taken without compensation; the property of rebellious citizens is liable to confiscation. Belligerents are not amenable to the local criminal law, nor to the jurisdiction of courts which administer it; rebellious citizens are, and the officers are bound to enforce the law, and to exact the penalty of its infraction. The seceded States are either in the Union or out of it. If in the Union, their constitutions are untouched, their State governments are maintained; their citizens are entitled to all political rights, except so far as they may be deprived of them by the criminal law which they may have infracted. This seems incomprehensible to the gentleman from Maryland. In his view the whole State government centers in the men who administer it; so that when they administer it unwisely, or put it in antagonism to the Federal Government, the State government is dissolved, the State constitution is abrogated, and the State is left, in fact and in form, de jure and de facto, in anarchy, except so far as the Federal Government may rightfully intervene. This seems to be substantially the view of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Boutwell]. He enforces the same position, but he does not use the same language.
... If by a plague or other visitation of God every officer of a State government should at the same moment die, so that not a single person clothed with official power should remain, would the State government be destroyed? Not at all. For the moment it would not be administered, but as soon as officers were elected and assumed their respective duties it would be instantly in full force and vigor.