t, or for a word to denounce
it to Northern indignation. But for our Government to decline carrying
his treasonable sheet--that is monstrous! Behold him, a confessor in the
sacred cause of freedom of speech and of the press! _He_ will not
succumb to unconstitutional tyranny! He will continue to print in spite
of Government, and to send his treason through the land by the express
companies, until the millennial day of the restoration of 'the
Constitution _as it is_, the Union _as it was_!'

The men who utter this phrase talk, too, about the constitutional rights
of the rebels--just as if those who are waging war for the overthrow of
the Constitution had any rights under it! Such talk is an outrage on
common-sense and decency. What constitutional rights have rebels in arms
to any thing, but to be fairly tried for treason, to the forfeiture of
their lives, if they escape merited death on the battle-field?

These out-criers for the Constitution and the Union strive also to
confuse the public mind with constitutional questions as to the end or
purpose of the war. What has the Constitution to do with that? What
constitutional object is there for the nation or the Government to have
now in view? This, and this only: the extinction of the rebellion by
force of arms. Conventions, negotiations, concessions to rebels in
arms--even if they were in arms for rights under the Constitution--would
be utterly unconstitutional; much more are they so when the rebels are
in arms not to vindicate constitutional rights, but for the overthrow of
the Constitution, the destruction of the Government, and the
dismemberment of the nation. They must lay down their arms in
unconditional submission before they can be constitutionally treated
with. Any other doctrine would be subversive of the Constitution, of the
principles that lie at its basis, of the principles of all government,
all national existence, and all social order.

The Government may be driven, by the victorious pressure of rebel arms,
to the overwhelming necessity of treating with them. Necessity has no
laws. But until then, to talk of treating with armed rebels is as
treasonable as it is absurd. Until then, there is no other object
allowed by the Constitution, no other obligation imposed by it on the
Government, but the military subjugation of the rebellion. The
Constitution gives the Government this power, and no other--puts upon it
this duty, and no other.

And as to constitution