UNANSWERABLE REASONS FOR CONGRESSIONAL GOVERNMENTS

Against this power I have heard no argument which can be called an argument.  There are objections founded chiefly in the baneful pretension of State Rights; but these objections are animated by prejudice rather than reason.  Assuming the impeccability of the States, and openly declaring that states, like kings, can do no wrong, while, like kings, they wear the “round and top of sovereignty,” politicians treat them with most mistaken forbearance and tenderness, as if these Rebel corporations could be dandled into loyalty.  At every suggestion of rigor State Rights are invoked, and we are vehemently told not to destroy the States, when all that Congress proposes is simply to recognize the actual condition of the States and to undertake their temporary government, by providing for the condition of political syncope into which they have fallen, and, during this interval, to substitute its own constitutional powers for the unconstitutional powers of the Rebellion.  Of course, therefore, Congress will blot no star from the flag, nor will it obliterate any State liabilities.  But it will seek, according to its duty, in the best way, to maintain the great and real sovereignty of the Union, by upholding the flag unsullied, and by enforcing everywhere within its jurisdiction the supreme law of the Constitution.

At the close of an argument already too long drawn out, I shall not stop to array the considerations of reason and expediency in behalf of this jurisdiction; nor shall I dwell on the inevitable influence that it must exercise over Slavery, which is the motive of the Rebellion.  To my mind nothing can be clearer, as a proposition of constitutional law, than that everywhere within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government Slavery is impossible.  The argument is as brief as it is unanswerable.  Slavery is so odious that it can exist only by virtue of positive law, plain and unequivocal; but no such words can be found in the Constitution.  Therefore Slavery is impossible within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government.  For many years I have had this conviction, and have constantly maintained it.  I am glad to believe that it is implied, if not expressed, in the Chicago Platform.  Mr. Chase, among our public men, is known to accept it sincerely.  Thus Slavery in the Territories is unconstitutional; but if the Rebel territory falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Government, then Slavery will be impossible there.  In a legal and constitutional sense, it will die at once.  The air will be too pure for a slave.  I cannot doubt that this great triumph has been already won.  The moment that the States fell, Slavery fell also; so that, even without any Proclamation of the President, Slavery had ceased to have a legal and constitutional existence in every Rebel State.