It is true, beyond question, that the Acts of Secession are all inoperative and void against the Constitution of the United States. Though matured in successive conventions, sanctioned in various forms, and maintained ever since by bloody war, these acts—no matter by what name they may be called—are all equally impotent to withdraw an acre of territory or a single inhabitant from the rightful jurisdiction of the United States. But while thus impotent against the United States, it does not follow that they were equally impotent in the work of self-destruction. Clearly, the Rebels, by utmost efforts, could not impair the National jurisdiction; but it remains to be seen if their enmity did not act back with fatal rebound upon those very State Rights in behalf of which they commenced their treason.
STATE SUICIDE.
It is sometimes said that the States themselves committed suicide, so that as States they ceased to exist, leaving their whole jurisdiction open to the occupation of the United States under the Constitution. This assumption is founded on the fact, that, whatever may be the existing governments in these States, they are in no respect constitutional, and since the State itself is known by the government, with which its life is intertwined, it must cease to exist constitutionally when its government no longer exists constitutionally. Perhaps, however, it would be better to avoid the whole question of the life or death of the State, and to content ourselves with an inquiry into the condition of its government. It is not easy to say what constitutes that entity which we call a State; nor is the discussion much advanced by any theory with regard to it. To my mind it seems a topic fit for the old schoolmen or a modern debating society; and yet, considering the part it has already played in this discussion, I shall be pardoned for a brief allusion to it.
There are well-known words which ask and answer the question, "What constitutes a State?" But the scholarly poet was not thinking of a "State" of the American Union. Indeed, this term is various in its use. Sometimes it stands for civil society itself. Sometimes it is the general name for a political community, not unlike "nation" or "country,"—as where our fathers, in the Resolution of Independence, which preceded the Declaration, spoke of "the State of Great Britain." Sometimes it stands for the government,—as when Louis XIV., at the height of his power, exclaimed, "The State, it is I"; or when Sir Christopher Hatton, in the famous farce of "The Critic," ejaculates,—
"Oh, pardon me, if my conjecture's rash,
But I surmise—the State—
Some danger apprehends."
Among us the term is most known as the technical name for one of the political societies which compose our Union. Of course, when used in the latter restricted sense, it must not be confounded with the same term when used in a different and broader sense. But it is obvious that some persons attribute to the one something of the qualities which can belong only to the other. Nobody has suggested, I presume, that any "State" of our Union has, through rebellion, ceased to exist as a civil society, or even as a political community. It is only as a State of the Union, armed with State rights, or at least as a local government, which annually renews itself, as the snake its skin, that it can be called in question. But it is vain to challenge for the technical "State," or for the annual government, that immortality which belongs to civil society. The one is an artificial body, the other is a natural body; and while the first, overwhelmed by insurrection or war, may change or die, the latter can change or die only with the extinction of the community itself, whatever may be its name or its form.
It is because of confusion in the use of this term that there has been so much confusion in the political controversies where it has been employed. But nowhere has this confusion led to greater absurdity than in the pretension which has been recently made in the name of State Rights,—as if it were reasonable to attribute to a technical "State" of the Union that immortality which belongs to civil society.
From approved authorities it appears that a "State," even in a broader signification, may lose its life. Mr. Phillimore, in his recent work on International Law, says:—"A State, like an individual, may die," and among the various ways, he says, "by its submission and the donation of itself to another country."[19] But in the case of our Rebel States there has been a plain submission and donation of themselves,—effective, at least, to break the continuity of government, if not to destroy that immortality which has been claimed. Nor can it make any difference, in breaking this continuity, that the submission and donation, constituting a species of attornment, were to enemies at home rather than to enemies abroad,—to Jefferson Davis rather than to Louis Napoleon. The thread is snapped in one case as much as in the other.
But a change of form in the actual government may be equally effective. Cicero speaks of a change so complete as "to leave no image of a State behind." But this is precisely what has been done throughout the whole Rebel region: there is no image of a constitutional State left behind. Another authority, Aristotle, whose words are always weighty, says, that, the form of the State being changed, the State is no longer the same, as the harmony is not the same when we modulate out of the Dorian mood into the Phrygian. But if ever an unlucky people modulated out of one mood into another, it was our Rebels, when they undertook to modulate out of the harmonies of the Constitution into their bloody discords.
Without stopping further for these diversions, I content myself with the testimony of Edmund Burke, who, in a striking passage, which seems to have been written for us, portrays the extinction of a political community; but I quote his eloquent words rather for suggestion than for authority:—