States to the General Government. All their ordinances and all their
resolutions were simply declarations of a purpose to secede. Their
secession, if it ever took place, certainly could not date from the time
when their intention to secede was first announced. After declaring
that intention, they proceeded to carry it into effect. How? By war.
By sustaining their purpose by arms against the force which the United
States brought to bear against it. Did they sustain it? Were their arms
victorious? If they were, then their secession was an accomplished
fact. If not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt--a purpose
unfulfilled. This, then, is simply a question of fact, and we all know
what the fact is. They did not succeed. They failed to maintain their
ground by force of arms--in other words, they failed to secede.

But the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Stevens) insists that they did
secede, and that this fact is not in the least affected by the other
fact that the Constitution forbids secession. He says that the law
forbids murder, but that murders are nevertheless committed. But there
is no analogy between the two cases. If secession had been accomplished,
if these States had gone out, and overcome the armies that tried to
prevent their going out, then the prohibition of the Constitution could
not have altered the fact. In the case of murder the man is killed, and
murder is thus committed in spite of the law. The fact of killing is
essential to the committal of the crime; and the fact of going out is
essential to secession. But in this case there was no such fact. I think
I need not argue any further the position that the rebel States
have never for one moment, by any ordinances of secession, or by any
successful war, carried themselves beyond the rightful jurisdiction of
the Constitution of the United States. They have interrupted for a
time the practical enforcement and exercise of that jurisdiction;
they rendered it impossible for a time for this Government to enforce