Again, it is said that the States by their treason and rebellion, levying war upon the National Government, have abdicated their places in the Union; and here the argument is upheld by the historic example of England at the Revolution of 1688, when, on the flight of James and the abandonment of his kingly duties, the two Houses of Parliament voted, that the monarch, “having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of this kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant.”[200] But it is not necessary for us to rely on any allegation of abdication, applicable as it may be.
It only remains that we should see things as they are, and not seek to substitute theory for fact. On this important question I discard all theory, whether of State suicide, or State forfeiture, or State abdication, on the one side, or of State Rights, immortal and unimpeachable, on the other side. Such discussions are only endless mazes, in which a whole Senate may be lost. And discarding all theory, I discard also the jural question, whether, for instance, the Rebel States, while the Rebellion is flagrant, are de jure States of the Union, with all the rights of States. It is enough, that, for the time being, and in the absence of a loyal government, they can take no part and perform no function in the Union, so that they cannot be recognized by the National Government. The reason is plain. Since there are in these States no local functionaries bound by constitutional oaths, there are, in fact, no constitutional functionaries; and as the State Government is necessarily composed of such functionaries, there can be no State Government. Thus, for instance, in South Carolina, Pickens and his associates may call themselves Governor and Legislature, and in Virginia Letcher and his associates may call themselves Governor and Legislature; but we cannot recognize them as such. Therefore to all pretensions in behalf of State governments in the Rebel States I oppose the simple FACT, that, for the time being, no such governments exist. The broad spaces once occupied by those governments are now abandoned and vacated.
That loyal Senator, Andrew Johnson,—faithful among the faithless, the Abdiel of the South,—began his attempt to reorganize Tennessee by an address, as early as the 18th of March, 1862, in which he made use of these words:—
“I find most, if not all, of the offices, both State and Federal, vacated, either by actual abandonment or by the action of the incumbents, in attempting to subordinate their functions to a power in hostility to the fundamental law of the State and subversive of her national allegiance.”[201]
In employing the word “vacated” Mr. Johnson hit upon the very term which, in the famous Resolution of 1688, was held most effective in dethroning King James. After declaring that he had abdicated the government, it was added, “that the throne is thereby vacant”; on which Macaulay happily remarks:—
“The word abdication conciliated politicians of a more timid school.… To the real statesman the simple important clause was that which declared the throne vacant; and if that clause could be carried, he cared little by what preamble it might be introduced.”[202]
The same simple principle is now in issue. It is enough that the Rebel States be declared vacated, as in fact they are, by all local government which we are bound to recognize: so that the way is open to the exercise of a rightful jurisdiction.