object is accomplished, turn
round and say they are out of it, and must be governed as Territories.

But it is a fixed fact, and history will so record it, that the voice of
the _people_ in the rebel States never concurred in the ordinances of
secession. In the few cases where they were submitted to the popular
vote, force was used to awe that vote into acquiescence; while in most
cases they never were submitted to the _form_ of such a vote; and why?
Because the leaders in treason dared not trust the voice of the people:
they knew too well that it would thunder a rebuke in their ears. They
were merely the act of the _individuals_ who were chosen as members of
the several Legislatures, and who, in betrayal of their trust, sought to
commit the States which they misrepresented to treason. In any one of
the States which we have solecistically termed rebel States, we venture
to assert that, if fairly and fully taken, the vote of the people at any
time during the last five years, and now, would be, by a large majority,
in favor of the Union. Wherever our armies have obtained a permanent
footing, the people have, almost unanimously, given their expression of
attachment to the old flag. Shall, then, the treason of those
individuals who, for the time being, held the places of power in the
rebel States, be construed to the prejudice of a whole people, who had
no part nor lot in the crime, in face of the often declared law that a
State cannot commit treason? If we turn to the fact that many, if not
most of the citizens of the rebel States, have done treasonable acts
under compulsion of those who were the leaders in the rebellion, we are
met, at the very threshold, by no less an authority than Sir William
Blackstone, who says (Bl. Commentaries, book iv. p. 21): 'Another
species of compulsion or necessity is what our law calls _duress per
minias_, or threats and menaces which induce fear of death or other
bodily harm, and which take away, for that reason, the guilt of many
crimes and misdemeanors, at least before the human tribunal. _Therefore,
in time of war or rebellion, a man may be justified in doing many
treasonable acts by compulsion of the enemy or REBELS, which would admit
of no excuse in the time of peace._' The fact that such violent
compulsion was and still is used to overawe the Union sentiment of the
South is patent. It has been and still is the cry, coming up on every
breeze from that bloodstained land, that the leaders