But even if we hesitate to accept this important conclusion, which treats Slavery within Rebel States as already dead in law and Constitution, it cannot be doubted, that, by the extension of the Congressional jurisdiction over the Rebel States, many difficulties will be removed.  Holding every acre of soil and every inhabitant of these states within its jurisdiction, Congress can easily do, by proper legislation, whatever may be needful within Rebel limits in order to assure freedom and to save society.  The soil may be divided among patriot soldiers, poor-whites, and freedmen.  But above all things, the inhabitants may be saved from harm.  Those citizens in the Rebel States, who, throughout the darkness of the Rebellion, have kept there faith, will be protected, and the freedmen will be rescued from the hands that threaten to cast them back into Slavery.

But this jurisdiction, which is so completely practical, is grandly conservative also.  Had it been early recognized that Slavery depends exclusively upon the local government, and that it falls with that government, who can doubt that every Rebel movement would have been checked?  Tennessee and Virginia would never have stirred; Maryland and Kentucky would never have thought of stirring.  There would have been no talk of neutrality between the Constitution and the Rebellion, and every Border State would have been fixed in its loyalty.  Let it be established in advance, as an inseparable incident to every Act of Secession, that it is not only impotent against the Constitution of the United States, but that, on its occurrence, both soil and inhabitants will lapse beneath the jurisdiction of Congress, and no State will ever again pretend to secede.  The word “territory,” according to an old and quaint etymology, is said to come from terreo, to terrify, because it was a bulwark against the enemy.  A scholiast tells us, “Territorium est quicquid hostis terrendi causa constitutum,” “A territory is something constituted in order to terrify the enemy.”  But I know of no way in which our Rebel enemy would have been more terrified than by being told that his course would inevitably precipitate him into a territorial condition.  Let this principle be adopted now, and it will contribute essentially to that consolidation of the Union which was so near the heart of Washington.

The necessity of this principle is apparent as a restraint upon the lawless vindictiveness and inhumanity of the Rebel States, whether against Union men or against freedmen.  Union men in Virginia already tremble at the thought of being delivered over to a State government wielded by original Rebels pretending to be patriots.  But the freedmen, who have only recently gained their birthright, are justified in a keener anxiety, lest it should be lost as soon as won.  Mr. Saulsbury, a Senator from Delaware, with most instructive frankness, has announced, in public debate, what the restored State governments will do.  Assuming that the local governments will be preserved, he predicts that in 1870 there will be more slaves in the United States than there were in 1860, and then unfolds the reason as follows,—­all of which will be found in the “Congressional Globe"[29]:—­