tates can not restore their own existence 'as it
was.' Whose especial duty is it to do it? In whom does the
Constitution place the power? Not in the judicial branch of
Government, for it only adjudicates and does not prescribe laws. Not
in the Executive, for he only executes and can not make laws. Not in
the commander-in-chief of the armies, for he can only hold them under
military rule until the sovereign legislative power of the conqueror
shall give them law.

"There is fortunately no difficulty in solving the question. There are
two provisions in the Constitution, under one of which the case must
fall. The fourth article says: 'New States may be admitted by the
Congress into this Union.' In my judgment, this is the controlling
provision in this case. Unless the law of nations is a dead letter,
the late war between two acknowledged belligerents severed their
original compacts, and broke all the ties that bound them together.
The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the
conqueror. They must come in as new States or remain as conquered
provinces. Congress--the Senate and House of Representatives, with the
concurrence of the President--is the only power that can act in the
matter. But suppose, as some dreaming theorists imagine, that these
States have never been out of the Union, but have only destroyed their
State governments so as to be incapable of political action, then the
fourth section of the fourth article applies, which says, 'The United
States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form
of government.' Who is the United States? Not the judiciary; not the
President; but the sovereign power of the people, exercised through
their Representatives in Congress, with the concurrence of the
Executive. It means the political Government--the concurrent action of
both branches of Congress and the Executive. The separate action of
each amounts to nothing either in admitting new States or guaranteeing
republican governments to lapsed or outlawed States. Whence springs
the preposterous idea that either the President, or the Senate, or the
House of Representatives, acting separately, can determine the right
of States to send members or Senators to the Congress of the Union?"

Mr. Stevens then cited authorities to prove that "if the so-called
Confederate States of America were an independent belligerent, and
were so acknowledged by the United States and by Europe, or had
assumed a