relations, and became entitled
to the exercise of all the rights guaranteed to them by its provisions.

The joint resolution under consideration, however, seems to assume that
by the insurrectionary acts of their respective inhabitants those States
forfeited their rights as such, and can never again exercise them except
upon readmission into the Union on the terms prescribed by Congress.
If this position be correct, it follows that they were taken out of the
Union by virtue of their acts of secession, and hence that the war waged
upon them was illegal and unconstitutional. We would thus be placed in
this inconsistent attitude, that while the war was commenced and carried
on upon the distinct ground that the Southern States, being component
parts of the Union, were in rebellion against the lawful authority of
the United States, upon its termination we resort to a policy of
reconstruction which assumes that it was not in fact a rebellion, but
that the war was waged for the conquest of territories assumed to be
outside of the constitutional Union.

The mode and manner of receiving and counting the electoral votes
for President and Vice-President of the United States are in plain
and simple terms prescribed by the Constitution. That instrument
imperatively requires that "the President of the Senate shall, in the
presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the
certificates, and the votes shall then be counted." Congress has,
therefore, no power, under the Constitution, to receive the electoral
votes or reject them. The whole power is exhausted when, in the presence
of the two Houses, the votes are counted and the result declared.
In this respect the power and duty of the President of the Senate are,
under the Constitution, purely ministerial. When, therefore, the joint
resolution declares that no electoral votes shall be received or counted
from States that since the 4th of March, 1867, have not "adopted a
constitution of State government under which a State government shall
have organized," a power is assumed which is nowhere delegated to
Congress, unless upon the assumption that the State governments
organized prior to the 4th of March, 1867, were illegal and void.

The joint resolution, by implication at least, concedes that these
States were States by virtue of their organization prior to the 4th of
March, 1867, but denies to them the right to vote in the election of
President and Vice-President of t