State government, but in the United States, and allegiance is due to
the United States, and to them alone. Treason can be committed only
against the United States, and against a State only because against the
United States, and is properly cognizable only by the Federal courts.
Hence the Union men committed no treason in refusing to submit to the
secession ordinances of their respective States, and in sustaining the
national arms against secession.

There are two very common mistakes: the one that the States
individually possess all the powers not delegated to the General
government; and the other that the Union, or United States, have only
delegated powers. But the United States possess all the powers of a
sovereign state, and the States individually and the General government
possess only such powers as the United States in convention delegate to
them respectively. The sovereign is neither the General government nor
the States severally, but the United States in convention. The United
States are the one indivisible sovereign, and this sovereign governs
alike general matters in the General government, and particular matters
in the several State governments. All legal authority in either
emanates from this one indivisible and plenary sovereign, and hence the
law enacted by a State are really enacted by the United States, and
derive from them their force and vitality as laws. Hence, as the United
States survive the particular State, the lapse of the State does not
abrogate the State laws, or dissolve civil society within its
jurisdiction.

This is evidently so, because civil society in the particular State
does not rest on the State alone, nor on Congress, but on the United
States. Hence all civil rights of every sort created by the individual
State are really held from the United States, and therefore it was that
the people of non-slaveholding States were, as citizens of the United
States, responsible for the existence of slavery in the States that
seceded. There is a solidarity of States in the Union as there is of
individuals in each of the States. The political error of the
Abolitionists was not in calling upon the people of the United States
to abolish slavery, but in calling upon them to abolish it through the
General government, which had no jurisdiction in the case; or in their
sole capacity as men, on purely humanitarian grounds, which were the
abrogation of all government and civil society itself, ins