as republican
in form as they were before the war broke out. The only thing,
therefore, they were required to do was to send their Senators and
Representatives to Washington. Congress could not have rightfully
refused to receive them, because all questions as to their being loyal
or disloyal, and as to the changes which the war had wrought in the
relations of the States they represented to the Union, were inquiries
with which Congress had no concern! And here again we have the
ever-recurring difficulty respecting the "individuals" who were alone
guilty of the acts of rebellion. "The right of the people," we are
assured, "to form a government for themselves, has never been
questioned." But it happens that "the people" here indicated are the
very individuals who were before pointed out as alone responsible for
the Rebellion. In the exercise of their right "to form a government for
themselves," they rebelled; and now, it seems, by the exercise of the
same right, they can unconditionally return. There is no wrong anywhere:
it is all "right." The people are first made criminals, in order to
exculpate the States, and then the innocence of the States is used to
exculpate the people. When we see such outrages on common sense gravely
perpetrated by so eminent a lawyer as the one who drew up the
committee's Report, one is almost inclined to define minds as of two
kinds, the legal mind and the human mind, and to doubt if there is any
possible connection in reason between the two. To the human mind it
appears that the Federal government has spent thirty-five hundred
millions of dollars, and sacrificed three hundred thousand lives, in a
contest which the legal mind dissolves into a mere mist of unsubstantial
phrases; and by skill in the trick of substituting words for things, and
definitions for events, the legal mind proceeds to show that these words
and definitions, though scrupulously shielded from any contact with
realities, are sufficient to prevent the nation from taking ordinary
precautions against the recurrence of calamities fresh in its bitter
experience. The phrase "State Rights," translated from legal into human
language, is found to mean, the power to commit wrongs on individuals
whom States may desire to oppress, or the power to protect the
inhabitants of States from the consequences of their own crimes. The
minority of the committee, indeed, seem to have forgotten that there has
been any real war, and bring to mind th