exercise of their highest function.  If they were not States, or were States out of the Union, their consent to a change in the fundamental law of the Union would have been nugatory, and Congress in asking it committed a political absurdity.  The judiciary has also given the solemn sanction of its authority to the same view of the case.  The judges of the Supreme Court have included the Southern States in their circuits, and they are constantly, in banc and elsewhere, exercising jurisdiction which does not belong to them unless those States are States of the Union.

If the Southern States are component parts of the Union, the Constitution is the supreme law for them, as it is for all the other States.  They are bound to obey it, and so are we.  The right of the Federal Government, which is clear and unquestionable, to enforce the Constitution upon them implies the correlative obligation on our part to observe its limitations and execute its guaranties.  Without the Constitution we are nothing; by, through, and under the Constitution we are what it makes us.  We may doubt the wisdom of the law, we may not approve of its provisions, but we can not violate it merely because it seems to confine our powers within limits narrower than we could wish.  It is not a question of individual or class or sectional interest, much less of party predominance, but of duty—­of high and sacred duty—­which we are all sworn to perform.  If we can not support the Constitution with the cheerful alacrity of those who love and believe in it, we must give to it at least the fidelity of public servants who act under solemn obligations and commands which they dare not disregard.

The constitutional duty is not the only one which requires the States to be restored.  There is another consideration which, though of minor importance, is yet of great weight.  On the 22d day of July, 1861, Congress declared by an almost unanimous vote of both Houses that the war should be conducted solely for the purpose of preserving the Union and maintaining the supremacy of the Federal Constitution and laws, without impairing the dignity, equality, and rights of the States or of individuals, and that when this was done the war should cease.  I do not say that this declaration is personally binding on those who joined in making it; any more than individual members of Congress are personally bound to pay a public debt created under a law for which they voted.  But it was a solemn, public, official pledge of the national honor, and I can not imagine upon what grounds the repudiation of it is to be justified.  If it be said that we are not bound to keep faith with rebels, let it be remembered that this promise was not made to rebels only.  Thousands of true men in the South were drawn to our standard by it, and hundreds of thousands in the North gave their lives in the belief that it would be carried out.  It was made on the day after the first great battle of the war had been fought and lost.  All patriotic and intelligent