Executive to grant or withhold the pardon at his own absolute
discretion, and this includes the power to grant on terms, as is
fully established by judicial and other authorities.

It is also proffered that, if in any of the States named a State
Government shall be, in the mode prescribed, set up, such
Government shall be recognized and guaranteed by the United
States, and that under it the State shall, on the constitutional
conditions, be protected against invasion and domestic violence.
The constitutional obligation of the United States to guarantee
to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and
to protect the State, in the cases stated, is explicit and full.
But why tender the benefits of this provision only to a State
Government set up in this particular way? This section
contemplates a case wherein the element within a State favorable
to a republican government, in the Union, may be too feeble for
an opposite and hostile external to or even within the State; and
such are precisely the cases with which we are dealing.

Any attempt to guaranty and protect a revived State Government,
constituted in whole, or in preponderating part, from the very
element against whose hostility it is to be protected, is simply
absurd. There must be a test by which to separate the opposing
elements, so as to build only from the sound; and that test is a
sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make
a sworn recantation of his former unsoundness.

But if it be proper to require, as a test of admission to the
political body, an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the
United States, and to the Union under it, why also to the laws