obedience to its laws; but there has never been an hour when this
Government, or this Congress, or this House, or the gentleman from
Pennsylvania himself, ever conceded that those States were beyond the
jurisdiction of the Constitution and laws of the United States.

During all these four years of war Congress has been making laws for the
government of those very States, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania has
voted for them, and voted to raise armies to enforce them. Why was this
done if they were a separate nation? Why, if they were not part of the
United States? Those laws were made for them as States. Members have
voted for laws imposing upon them direct taxes, which are apportioned,
according to the Constitution, only "among the several States" according
to their population. In a variety of ways--to some of which the
gentleman' who preceded me has referred--this Congress has, by its
action, assumed and asserted that they were still States in the Union,
though in rebellion, and that it was with the rebellion that we were
making war, and not with the States themselves as States, and still less
as a separate, as a foreign Power.

* * * * *

Why, sir, if there be no constitution of any sort in a State, no
law, nothing but chaos, then that State would no longer exist as an
organization. But that has not been the case, it never is the case
in great communities, for they always have constitutions and forms of
government. It may not be a constitution or form of government adapted
to its relation to the Government of the United States; and that would
be an evil to be remedied by the Government of the United States. That
is what we have been trying to do for the last four years. The practical
relations of the governments of those States with the Government of