will be no form of State authority in existence which Congress can
recognize. Our success will be the overthrow of all sent balance of
government in the rebel States. The Government of the United States is
then in fact the only government existing in those States, and it is
there charged to guarantee them republican governments.

What jurisdiction does the duty of guaranteeing a republican government
confer under such circumstances upon Congress? What right does it give?
What laws may it pass? What objects may it accomplish? What conditions
may it insist upon, and what judgment may it exercise in determining
what it will do? The duty of guaranteeing carries with it the right
to pass all laws necessary and proper to guarantee. The duty of
guaranteeing means the duty to accomplish the result. It means that the
republican government shall exist. It means that every opposition to
republican government shall be put down. It means that every thing
inconsistent with the permanent continuance of republican government
shall be weeded out. It places in the hands of Congress to say what is
and what is not, with all the light of experience and all the lessons of
the past, inconsistent, in its judgment, with the permanent continuance
of republican government; and if, in its judgment, any form of policy
is radically and inherently inconsistent with the permanent and enduring
peace of the country, with the permanent supremacy of republican
government, and it have the manliness to say so, there is no power,
judicial or executive, in the United States that can even question
this judgment but the people; and they can do it only by sending
other Representatives here to undo our work. The very language of
the Constitution, and the necessary logic of the case, involve that
consequence. The denial of the right of secession means that all the
territory of the United States shall remain under the jurisdiction of
the Constitution. If there can be no State government which does not