hich had never been lost,
but only temporarily interfered with by lawless violence, could
reasonably be delayed by the national government only until the loyal
voters should be sufficient in number to relieve the elections from the
objection of being colorable and unreal. This philosophy of
"reconstruction" seemed to Mr. Lincoln to conform with law and good
sense, and he was forward in meeting, promoting, almost even in creating
opportunities to apply it. From the beginning of the war he had been of
opinion that the framework of a state government, though it might be
scarcely more than a skeleton, was worth preservation. It held at least
the seed of life. So after West Virginia was admitted into statehood,
the organization which had been previously established by the loyal
citizens of the original State was maintained in the rest of the State,
and Governor Pierpoint was recognized as the genuine governor of
Virginia, although few Virginians acknowledged allegiance to him, and
often there were not many square miles of the Old Dominion upon which
the dispossessed ruler could safely set his foot. For the present he
certainly was no despot, but in the future he might have usefulness. He
preserved continuity; by virtue of him, so to speak, there still was a
State of Virginia.

Somewhat early in the war large portions of Tennessee, Louisiana, and
Arkansas were recovered and kept by Union forces, and beneath such
protection a considerable Union sentiment found expression. The
President, loath to hold for a long time the rescued parts of these
States under the sole domination of army officers, appointed "military
governors."[55] The anomalous office found an obscure basis among those
"war powers" which, as a legal resting-place, resembled a quicksand, and
as a practical foundation were undeniably a rock; the functions and
authority of the officials were as uncertain as anything, even in law,
possibly could be. Legal fiction never reached a droller point than when
these military governorships were defended as being the fulfillment by
the national government "of its high constitutional obligation to
guarantee to every State in this Union _a republican form of
government_!"[56] Yet the same distinguished gentleman, who dared
gravely to announce this ingenious argument, drew a picture of facts
which was in itself a full justification of almost any scheme of
rehabilitation; he said: "The state government has disappeared. The
Execut