ry, and
asserting that no emergency could arise whereby a member of the Union
might reclaim its sovereignty from the national compact, presented an
issue altogether susceptible of settlement. And, indeed, proceeding upon
the obvious plan that where questions of great practical moment cannot be
adjudicated otherwise, they must submit to the _a fortiori_ of determined
majorities, the Southern people had already been driven to the amplest
concessions regarding this measure; and whatever doubts they may have
retained affecting the metaphysics of the discussion, were quite convinced
that no other plan of adjustment would prove feasible.

But this inference (and it could be presented in no more tangible shape at
the time) was far from satisfying that singular body of peace
commissioners who, in the capacity of a national legislature, had
assembled at Washington, not only to reaffirm the Southern doctrine, but
to reconsider all the mighty results of Grant's and Sherman's campaigns,
by disallowing the claims of the States lately in rebellion, and forcing
them into that mourning period of so-called reconstruction and social and
political anarchy, lately terminated. And thus, during the few years
succeeding this new legislative departure, was presented the singular
spectacle of States belonging to the National Union, who, by certain
inherent properties of their being, could not forfeit, nor submit to
forfeiture of the bond which established their identity therewith, acting
independently of the national government in all things, save those
non-essentials represented by taxation, the performance of military duty,
etc.; and, at a later period, through the mysterious processes of pardons,
congressional amnesties, and reconstruction, becoming (re)-invested with
the only sovereignty which it was claimed they had ever possessed, that
derived from the national compact.

It is needless to say that there was no logical plan supporting that
system of political manoeuvres set in motion by the "Rump Congress,"
whose earliest and latest results--the social and political emasculation
of the white freeman, and the exaltation, in like respect, of the
negro--provoked that state of anarchy in the South which alone could have
rendered possible the great secret movement whose history we are to
discuss in these pages.

It may be doubted whether the mere disfranchisement of the citizens of
these States--though that condition were supposed to include