“Now, let us inquire how the surrender of the military power of the rebellion affected the legal condition of those States. When the rebellion collapsed, and the last armed man of the Confederacy surrendered to our forces, I affirm that there was not in one of those States a single government that we did or could recognize. There was not in one of those States, from governor down to constable, a single man whom we could recognize as authorized to exercise any official function whatever. They had formed governments alien and hostile to the Union. Not only had their officers taken no oaths to support the Constitution of the United States, but they had heaped oath upon oath to destroy it.
“I go further. I hold that there were in those States no constitutions of any binding force and effect; none that we could recognize. A constitution, in this case, can mean nothing less than a constitution of government. A constitution must constitute something, or it is no constitution. When we speak of the constitution of Alabama, we mean the constitution of the government of Alabama. When the rebels surrendered, there remained no constitution in Alabama, because there remained no government. Those States reverted into our hands by victorious war, with every municipal right and every municipal authority utterly and completely swept away.”
After citing from the highest authorities on the laws of war, he sums up the legal status of the rebellious states as follows:
“1. That, by conquest, the United States obtained complete control of the rebel territory.
“2. That every vestige of municipal authority in those States was, by secession, rebellion, and the conquest of the rebellion, utterly destroyed.
“3. That the state of war did not terminate with the actual cessation of hostilities, but that, under the laws of war, it was the duty of the President, as commander-in-chief, to establish governments over the conquered people of the insurgent States, which governments, no matter what may be their form, are really military governments, deriving their sole power from the President.
“4. That the governments thus established, are valid while the state of war continues and until Congress acts in the case.
“5. That it belongs exclusively to the legislative authority of the Government to determine the political status of the insurgent States, either by adopting the governments the President has established, or by permitting the people to form others, subject to the approval of Congress.
“It was time for Congress to act. That action should recognize, first, the stupendous facts of the war. By the Emancipation Proclamation we not only declared the slaves free, but pledged the faith of the nation to ‘maintain their freedom.’ What is freedom? It is no mere negative; no mere privilege of not being chained, bought and sold, branded or scourged. It is a tangible realization of the truths that ‘all men are created free and equal,’ and that the sanction of just government is the ‘consent of the governed.’