ic unity and continuity of the government would be broken by the
return of disloyal citizens and Rebel States without their going through
the process of being restored by the action of the government they had
attempted to subvert; and the power to restore carries with it the power
to decide on the terms of restoration. And when we speak of the
government, we are not courtly enough to mean by the expression simply
its executive branch. The question of admitting and implicitly of
restoring States, and of deciding whether or not States have a
republican form of government, are matters left by the Constitution to
the discretion of Congress. As to the Rebel States now claiming
representation, they have succumbed, thoroughly exhausted, in one of the
costliest and bloodiest wars in the history of the world,--a war which
tasked the resources of the United States more than they would have been
tasked by a war with all the great powers of Europe combined,--a war
which, in 1862, had assumed such proportions, that the Supreme Court
decided that it gave the United States the same rights and privileges
which the government might exercise in the case of a national and
foreign war. The inhabitants of the insurgent States being thus
judicially declared public enemies as well as Rebels, there would seem
to be no doubt at all that the victorious close of actual hostilities
could not deprive the government of the power of deciding on the terms
of peace with public enemies. The government of the United States found
the insurgent States thoroughly revolutionized and disorganized, with no
State governments which could be recognized without recognizing the
validity of treason, and without the power or right to take even the
initial steps for State reorganization. They were practically out of the
Union as States; their State governments had lapsed; their population
was composed of Rebels and public enemies, by the decision of the
Supreme Court. Under such circumstances, how the Commander-in-Chief,
under Congress, of the forces of the United States could re-create these
defunct States, and make it mandatory on Congress to receive their
delegates, has always appeared to us one of those mysteries of unreason
which require faculties either above or below humanity to accept. In
addition to this fundamental objection, there was the further one, that
almost all of the delegates were Rebels presidentially pardoned into
"loyal men," were elected with the