xpelled from the Union
by the war? The direct contrary was averred by this Government to be its
purpose, and was so understood by all those who gave their blood and
treasure to aid in its prosecution. It can not be that a successful
war, waged for the preservation of the Union, had the legal effect of
dissolving it. The victory of the nation's arms was not the disgrace
of her policy; the defeat of secession on the battlefield was not the
triumph of its lawless principle. Nor could Congress, with or without
the consent of the Executive, do anything which would have the effect,
directly or indirectly, of separating the States from each other.
To dissolve the Union is to repeal the Constitution which holds it
together, and that is a power which does not belong to any department
of this Government, or to all of them united.

This is so plain that it has been acknowledged by all branches of the
Federal Government. The Executive (my predecessor as well as myself) and
the heads of all the Departments have uniformly acted upon the principle
that the Union is not only undissolved, but indissoluble. Congress
submitted an amendment of the Constitution to be ratified by the
Southern States, and accepted their acts of ratification as a necessary
and lawful exercise of their highest function. If they were not States,
or were States out of the Union, their consent to a change in the
fundamental law of the Union would have been nugatory, and Congress in
asking it committed a political absurdity. The judiciary has also given
the solemn sanction of its authority to the same view of the case. The
judges of the Supreme Court have included the Southern States in their
circuits, and they are constantly, _in banc_ and elsewhere, exercising
jurisdiction which does not belong to them unless those States are
States of the Union.

If the Southern States are component parts of the Union, the
Constitution is the supreme law for them, as it is for all the other
States. They are bound to obey it, and so are we. The right of the
Federal Government, which is clear and unquestionable, to enforce the
Constitution upon them implies the correlative obligation on our part
to observe its limitations and execute its guaranties. Without the
Constitution we are nothing; by, through, and under the Constitution we
are what it makes us. We may doubt the wisdom of the law, we may not
approve of its provisions, but we can not violate it merely because it
seems to