en, is free. She has bent the tyrant's rod, she has broken the yoke
of slavery, she stands to-day redeemed. She waited not for the
exercise of power by Congress; it was her own act; and she is now as
loyal, Mr. Attorney-General, as the State from which you come. It is
the doctrine of the Federal Constitution that no State can go out of
this Union. Thank God, Tennessee has never been out of the Union!
It is true the operations of her government were for a time
interrupted; there was an interregnum; but she is in the Union, and I
am her representative. This day (March 4, 1865) she elects her
Governor and her Legislature, which will be convened on the first
Monday of April, and her senators and representatives will soon mingle
with those of her sister States; and who shall gainsay it, for the
Constitution provides that to every State shall be guaranteed a
Republican form of government."

The very positive declaration by Mr. Johnson that "Tennessee has never
been out of the Union" indicated the side he would take in a pending
controversy which was waxing warm between the disputants. Whether the
act of Secession was void _ab initio_ and really left the State still
a member of the Union, or whether it did, however wrongfully, carry the
State out of the Union as claimed by those engaged in the Rebellion,
was one of the purely abstract political questions concerning which men
will argue without ceasing,--reaching no conclusion because there is
no conclusion to be reached. Both propositions were at the time
affirmed and denied with all the earnestness, indeed with all the
temper, which distinguished the mediaeval theologians upon points of
doctrine once regarded as essential to salvation, but the very meaning
of which is scarcely comprehended by modern ecclesiastics. With his
mental acumen and with his never-failing common sense, Mr. Lincoln
declined to take part in the discussion. In his last public speech he
treated this question with admirable perspicuity, and with his wonted
felicity of homely illustration: "I have been shown what is supposed
to be an able letter," said he, "in which the writer expresses regret
that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed upon the question
whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it.
. . . It would perhaps add astonishment to his regret to learn that as
it appears to me, that question has not been and is not a practically
material one, and that any dis