Can the wounded pride of the Ancient Dominion
be so far soothed that she can allow us again to bask in the sunshine
of her favor? Will she ever consent to resume her old superiority, and
furnish our audacious army and navy with officers, our committees with
chairmen, and our departments with clerks? Or must we, for a generation,
hold the States we have subdued by military occupation? Must we make
Territories of them, and blot out those malignant stars from our
glorious and triumphant banner?

In all seriousness, there seems but one solution to the problem; and
it must be found, if at all, in the proposition already stated, that
treason is an individual act. A State cannot rebel, as it cannot secede.
A governor of a State may rebel, and a majority of a legislature may
join an insurrection, as a governor or legislators may commit larceny
or join a piratical expedition. But whoever arrays himself in armed
opposition to the Government of the United States, or gives aid and
comfort to its enemies, becomes thereby merely a private rebel and
traitor. Whatever office he may fill, with whatever functions of local
government he may be intrusted, by whatever name he may be called,
governor or judge, senator or representative, it is the treason of the
citizen, and not of the officer. And as a State has no legal existence
except as a member of the Union, and has no constitutional powers or
functions or capacities but those which it exercises in harmony with and
subordination to the rightful authority of the Federal Government, so
the loyal and faithful inhabitants of a State, and they only, constitute
the State. Mr. Mason tells the people of Virginia, that those of them
who, in their consciences, cannot vote to separate Virginia from the
United States, if they retain such opinions, must leave the State. We
thank him for teaching us that word. When the tables are turned, it will
form a valuable theme for his private meditation. The unconditional
Union men, who are of and for their country against all comers, who
neither commit treason openly nor disguise their cowardly treachery
under the shallow cover of neutrality, are to wield the power of their
respective States, and to be the only recognized inhabitants. All others
must submit or fly. If the Governor and Legislature of Virginia have
renounced their allegiance to the United States, and undertaken to
establish a foreign jurisdiction in a portion of our territory, their
relation to