insurgents, resisting the Federal authority; but so it might be by a foreign army.  The peaceful citizens, who remain faithful to their constitutional obligations, are entitled to the aid of the national power to suppress domestic insurrection, whatever proportions that insurrection may assume.  The soldiers of the United States, lawfully mustered to resist invasion or put down rebellion, have nothing to do with State lines, and act in perfect harmony with all legitimate State action.  They can no more invade a State than if they were in it to resist a foreign enemy, or than a United States marshal invades it when he goes to arrest a counterfeiter.  The “Times” would have little difficulty in understanding a denial of the right of the Isle of Man, or of Lancashire, or of Ireland, “to determine the conditions of its own national existence.”

There is another fallacy in speaking of the resolution of the North to crush Secession by force.  It is the resolution of the nation,—­of all that is faithful and loyal in it, wherever found.  The people of the Southern States have not had any fair opportunity to express their opinions.  The military usurpers have allowed nothing to be submitted to the test of a popular vote, except where they were able to take such measures of precaution, in the way of hanging, confiscation, banishment, disarming opponents, and the presence of an armed force which should overawe dissenters, as might secure the unanimity they desired.  There is undoubtedly much more loyalty in the Northern than in the Southern States of the Union, as there is less of passion, and more of intelligence and principle,—­although treason has, till very lately, found more than enough apologists or abettors even in the Free States.  But the spirit which now actuates our people has little that is sectional in it, and the principles at issue have the same application to Maine that they have to Florida.

When we ask, then, where this rebellion will leave us, and what will be the condition of the United States when the authority of the Government has been vindicated and reestablished, the answer must be sought in the considerations already suggested.  The rebellion cannot be ended, until we have settled as a principle of constitutional law for our own citizens, and as a fact of which all other nations must take notice, that this whole country belongs to the people of the United States.  No foreign power shall possess a foot of it.  If the majority of the people of a State can throw off their allegiance to the Union, they can transfer their allegiance to England or Spain at their pleasure, as well as to a new confederacy of their own devising.  The battles of the Revolution which secured our independence were fought by the whole country, and for the whole country, without reference to local majorities.  The accessions to our territory were made by the nation as a unit, and belong to it as such.  We did not acquire Texas, and pay the millions of its debt, with the reservation that it