the act of
admission to the Union would operate rather to take the Territory from
under the jurisdiction of Congress, and give the right of government
into the hands of the PEOPLE of the new State, even if their State
officers did seek to betray them into treason. Our author asserts that
'there is no argument for military governors that is not equally strong
for Congressional governments; but we suspect his mistake here, as, in
fact, his whole theory comes from his neglect to note that this
appointing power attaches to the President, not as the civil head of the
nation, but as military commander-in-chief under the necessity of war.

To sum up the argument on this point, it stands thus: Neither Congress
nor the President has power under the civil head to institute
governments of their own in the rebel States: that power must arise, if
at all, under the head of military necessity, and must attach to the
commander-in-chief, viz., the President, and ceases the moment that
necessity ceases. In the authority quoted from Chancellor Kent by the
author of the _Atlantic_, we find nothing to shake our argument; for,
though the power be, as the learned Chancellor says, 'to be exercised
subordinate to the legislative powers of Congress,' still it is an
executive power, and must be exercised by--must emanate from--the
President. The same learned authority, from whose lucid and fascinating
pages we enjoyed the first glimmerings of the 'gladsome light of
jurisprudence,' says (vol. i. p. 264): 'The command and application of
the public force, to execute the law, maintain peace, and resist foreign
invasion, are powers so exclusively of an executive nature, and require
the exercise of powers so characteristical of this department, that they
have always been _exclusively_ appropriated to it in every
well-organized government upon earth.' Taking this provision of the
Constitution, so interpreted by Chancellor Kent, as vesting the power
_exclusively_ in the executive, it only remains to be considered how far
it is a necessity of war.

In all the rebel States there is a population, more or less dense, to be
protected and governed; but what can a civil authority accomplish when
the States are overrun by a military force which has so long defied the
power of the army? Advancing as our armies conquer, and fleeing as they
are overcome by the rebel hordes, it could accomplish nothing but its
own ludicrous history and the fettering of the military