... Congress will assume complete jurisdiction of such vacated territory where such unconstitutional and illegal things have been attempted, and will proceed to establish therein republican forms of government under the Constitution.
It is not shown how a usurpation or illegal act by conspirators in any State or States could justify or make legal a usurpation by the general Government, as this scheme evidently was, nor by what authority Congress could declare that the illegal, inoperative, and void acts of usurpers who might have temporary possession of or be a majority in a State, could constitute a practical abdication by the State itself of all rights under the Constitution, regardless of the rights of a legal, loyal minority, guilty of no usurpation or attempted secession—the innocent victims of a conspiracy; nor where Congress or the Federal Government obtained authority to pronounce "an instant forfeiture of all those functions and powers essential to the continued existence of a State as a body politic, so that from that time forward the territory falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress as other territory, and the State, being, according to the language of the law, felo de se, ceases to exist."
The administration of Mr. Buchanan had laid down as a rule of government that a State could not be coerced. The whole country not in rebellion had declared there should be no secession, division, or destruction of the Federal Union, but here was the most conspicuous leader of the Republican party in the Senate proposing a scheme to punish a State, to annihilate and destroy its government, to territorialize it, to exclude or expel it from the Union, to make no discrimination in its exclusions and denunciations between the loyal and disloyal inhabitants, but to punish alike, without trial or conviction, the just and the unjust. There were, though he was unwilling to admit it, and was perhaps unaware of it, vindictive feelings, venom, and revenge in his resolutions and in his whole treatment of the States and the white people of the South. From the time that he had been stricken down by the bludgeon of Brooks in the Senate, Mr. Sumner waged unrelenting war on the whites in the Southern States, and seemed to suppose it was his special mission—he certainly made it the great object of his life—to elevate the negro race—to give them at least equal rights and privileges with the educated and refined class—and did not conceal his intention and expectation to bring them in as auxiliaries to the Republican party, and thereby give it permanent ascendancy. All this was done in the name of humanity, and with apparent self-convinced sincerity. He was unwilling to acknowledge that he was governed or influenced by personal resentments in his revolutionary plans to degrade the intelligent white and exalt the ignorant black population by tearing down the constitutional edifice. In frequent interviews which I held with him then and at later periods, when he found it impossible to hold his positions under the Constitution, he claimed that he occupied higher ground, and that his authority for these violent measures was the Declaration of Independence, which declared all men were born equal, etc. Mr. Sumner was an idealist—neither a constitutionalist nor a practical statesman. He could pull down, but he could not construct—could declare what he considered humane, right, and proper, and act upon it regardless of constitutional compromises or conventional regulations which were the framework of the Government. No man connected with the Administration, or in either branch of Congress, was more thoroughly acquainted with our treaties, so familiar with the traditions of the Government, or better informed on international law than Charles Sumner; but on almost all other Governmental questions he was impulsive and unreliable, and when his feelings were enlisted, imperious, dogmatical, and often unjust.
Why innocent persons who were loyal to the Government and the Union should be disfranchised and proscribed because their neighbors and fellow citizens had engaged in a conspiracy, he could not explain or defend. By what authority whole communities and States should be deprived of the local governments which their fathers had framed, under which they were born, and with the provisions and traditions of which they were familiar, was never told.
His propositions found no favor with the Administration, nor were they supported at the beginning by any considerable number even of the extremists in Congress. It required much training by the centralizing leaders for years and all the tyranny of caucus machinery after the death of Mr. Lincoln to carry them into effect by a series of reconstruction measures that were revolutionary in their character, and which to a certain extent unsettled the principles on which the Government was founded.
But the counsel and example of the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts were not without their influence. Resolutions by radical Republicans and counter resolutions, chiefly by Democrats, relative to the powers and limitations of the Federal Government and the status of States, followed in quick succession. On the 11th of June, the subject having been agitated and discussed for four months, Mr. Dixon, a Republican Senator from Connecticut, whose views coincided in the main with those of Mr. Lincoln and the Administration, submitted, after consultation and advisement, the following:
Resolved, That all acts or ordinances of secession, alleged to have been adopted by any legislature or convention of the people of any State, are as to the Federal Union absolutely null and void; and that while such acts may and do subject the individual actors therein to forfeitures and penalties, they do not, in any degree, affect the relations of the State wherein they purport to have been adopted to the Government of the United States, but are as to such Government acts of rebellion, insurrection, and hostility on the part of the individuals engaged therein, or giving assent thereto; and that such States are, notwithstanding such acts or ordinances, members of the Federal Union, and as such are subject to all the obligations and duties imposed upon them by the Constitution of the United States; and the loyal citizens of such States are entitled to all the rights and privileges thereby guaranteed or conferred.
The resolution of Dixon traversed the policy of Sumner and was the Executive view of the questions that were agitated in Congress as to the effect of the rebellion and the condition of the States in insurrection. The Administration did not admit that rebellion dissolved the Union or destroyed its federative character; nor did it adopt or assent to the novel theory that the States and the whole people residing in them had forfeited all sovereignty and all reserved State and individual rights, because a portion of the inhabitants had rebelled; nor did it admit that the usurpation of a portion of any community could bring condemnation and punishment on all. The usurpations and acts of the rebels were considered not legal acts, but nullities.
Gideon Welles.