n have all along been States in
the Union cannot be sustained.

It is easy to understand the resistance the Government offers to the
doctrine that a State may commit suicide, or by its own act abdicate
its rights and cease to be a State in the Union. It is admissible on
no theory of the constitution that has been widely entertained. It is
not admissible on Mr. Calhoun's theory of State sovereignty, for on
that theory a State in going out of the Union does not cease to be a
State but simply resumes the powers it had delegated to the General
government. It cannot be maintained on Mr. Madison's or Mr. Webster's
theory, that the States prior to the Union were severally sovereign,
but by the Union were constituted one people; for, if this one people
are understood to be a federal people, State secession would not be
State suicide, but State independence; and if understood to be one
consolidated or centralized people, it would be simply insurrection or
rebellion against the national authority, laboring to make itself a
revolution. The government seems to have understood Mr. Madison's
theory in both senses--in the consolidated sense, in declaring the
secessionists insurgents and rebels, and in the federal sense, in
maintaining that they have never seceded, and are still States in the
Union, in full possession of all their political or State rights.
Perhaps, if the government, instead of borrowing from contradictory
theories of the constitution which have gained currency, had examined
in the light of historical facts the constitution itself, it would have
been as constitutional in its doctrine as it has been loyal and
patriotic, energetic and successful in its military administration.

Another reason why the doctrine that State secession is State suicide
has appeared so offensive to many, is the supposition entertained at
one time by some of its friends, that the dissolution of the State
vacates all rights and franchises held under it. But this is a
mistake. The principle is well known and recognized by the
jurisprudence of all civilized nations, that in the transfer of a
territory from one territorial sovereign to another, the laws in force
under the old sovereign remain in force after the change, till
abrogated, or others are enacted in their place by the new sovereign,
except such as are necessarily abrogated by the change itself of the
sovereign; not, indeed, because the old sovereign retains any
authority, but, bec