heir individual life,
suspended for a moment by secession, but capable of resuscitation.

These States had become, indeed, for a moment, territory under the
Union; but in no instance had they or could they become territory that
had never existed as States. The fact that the territory and people
had existed as a State, could with regard to none of them be
obliterated, and, therefore, they could not be erected into absolutely
new States. The process of reconstructing them could not be the same
as that of creating new States. In creating a new State, Congress, ex
necessitate, because there is no other power except the national
convention competent to do it, defines the boundaries of the new State,
and prescribes the electoral people, or who may take part in the
preliminary organization but in reconstructing States it does neither,
for both are done by a law Congress is not competent to abrogate or
modify, and which can be done only by the United States in convention
assembled, or by the State itself after its restoration. The
government has conceded this, and, in part, has acted on it. It
preserves, except in Virginia, the old boundaries, and recognizes, or
rather professes to recognize the old electoral law, only it claims the
right to exclude from the electoral people those who have voluntarily
taken part in the rebellion.

The work to be done in States that have seceded is that of
reconstruction, not creation; and this work is not and cannot be done,
exclusively nor chiefly by the General government, either by the
Executive or by Congress. That government can appoint military, or
even provisional governors, who may designate the time and place of
holding the convention of the electoral people of the disorganized
State, as also the time and place of holding the elections of delegates
to it, and superintend the elections so far as to see the polls are
opened, and that none but qualified electors vote, but nothing more.
All the rest is the work of the territorial electoral people
themselves, for the State within its own sphere must, as one of the
United States, be a self-governing community. The General government
may concede or withhold permission to the disorganized State to
reorganize, as it judges advisable, but it cannot itself reorganize it.
If it concedes the permission, it must leave the whole electoral people
under the preexisting electoral law free to take part in the work of
reorganization, and to vote