Such measures were adopted, and the legitimate
result was that those States, having conformed to all the requirements
of the Constitution, resumed their former relations, and became entitled
to the exercise of all the rights guaranteed to them by its provisions.
The joint resolution under consideration, however, seems to assume that
by the insurrectionary acts of their respective inhabitants those States
forfeited their rights as such, and can never again exercise them except
upon readmission into the Union on the terms prescribed by Congress.
If this position be correct, it follows that they were taken out of the
Union by virtue of their acts of secession, and hence that the war waged
upon them was illegal and unconstitutional. We would thus be placed in
this inconsistent attitude, that while the war was commenced and carried
on upon the distinct ground that the Southern States, being component
parts of the Union, were in rebellion against the lawful authority of
the United States, upon its termination we resort to a policy of
reconstruction which assumes that it was not in fact a rebellion, but
that the war was waged for the conquest of territories assumed to be
outside of the constitutional Union.
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