of modern war, shall not be taken without compensation; the property
of rebellious citizens is liable to confiscation. Belligerents are
not amenable to the local criminal law, nor to the jurisdiction of the
courts which administer it; rebellious citizens are, and the officers
are bound to enforce the law and exact the penalty of its infraction.
The seceded States are either in the Union or out of it. If in the
Union, their constitutions are untouched, their State governments are
maintained, their citizens are entitled to all political rights, except
so far as they may be deprived of them by the criminal law which they
have infracted.

This seems incomprehensible to the gentleman from Maryland. In his view,
the whole State government centres in the men who administer it, so
that, when they administer it unwisely, or put it in antagonism to
the Federal Government, the State government is dissolved, the State
constitution is abrogated, and the State is left, in fact and in form,
_de jure_ and _de facto_, in anarchy, except so far as the Federal
Government may rightfully intervene. * * * I submit that these gentlemen
do not see with their usual clearness of vision. If, by a plague or
other visitation of God, every officer of a State government should at
the same moment die, so that not a single person clothed with official
power should remain, would the State government be destroyed? Not
at all. For the moment it would not be administered; but as soon as
officers were elected, and assumed their respective duties, it would be
instantly in full force and vigor.

If these States are out of the Union, their State governments are still
in force, unless otherwise changed; their citizens are to the Federal
Government as foreigners, and it has in relation to them the same
rights, and none other, as it had in relation to British subjects in