ands,
but an hour before, they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic
instinct of the plain people. They understand, without an argument, that
the destroying of the government which was made by Washington means no
good to them.
Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in
it our people have already settled--the successful establishing and
the successful administering of it. One still remains--its successful
maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is
now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry
an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful
and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly
and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back
to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots
themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace:
teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they
take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is
to be the course of the government toward the Southern States after the
rebellion shall have been suppressed, the executive deems it proper to say
it will be his purpose then, as ever, to be guided by the Constitution and
the laws; and that he probably will have no different understanding of the
powers and duties of the Federal Government relatively to the rights of
the States and the people, under the Constitution, than that expressed in
the inaugural address.
He desires to preserve the government, that it may be administered for all
as it was administered by the men who made it. Loyal citizens everywhere
have the right to claim this of their government, and the government has
no right to withhold or neglect it. It is not perceived that in giving it
there is any coercion, any conquest, or any subjugation, in any just sense
of those terms.
The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the provision,
that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a
republican form of government." But if a State may lawfully go out of
the Union, having done so it may also discard the republican form of
government, so that to prevent its going out is an indispensable means to
the end of maintaining the guarantee mentioned; and when an end is
lawful an
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