The government may not have had much faith in this policy, and Mr.Lincoln's personal authority might be cited to the effect that it had not, but it was urged strongly by the Union men of the Border States.The administration was hardly seated in office, and its members were new men, without administrative experience; the President, who had been legally elected indeed, but without a majority of the popular votes, was far from having the full confidence even of the party that elected him; opinions were divided; party spirit ran high; the excitement was great, the crisis was imminent, the government found itself left by its predecessor without an army or a navy, and almost without arms or ordnance; it knew not how far it could count on popular support, and was hardly aware whom it could trust or should distrust; all was hurry and confusion; and what could the government do but to gain time, keep off active war as long as possible, conciliate all it could, and take ground which at the time seemed likely to rally the largest number of the people to its support? There were men then, warm friends of the administration, and still warmer friends of their country, who believed that a bolder, a less timid, a less cautious policy would have been wiser, that in revolutionary times boldness, what in other times would be rashness, is the highest prudence, on the side of the government as well as on the side of the revolution; that when once it has shown itself, the rebellion that hesitates, deliberates, consults, is defeated and so is the government.The seceders owed from the first their successes not to their superior organization, to their better preparation, or to the better discipline and appointment of their armies, but to their very rashness, to their audacity even, and the hesitancy, cautious and deliberation of the government.Napoleon owed his successes as general and civilian far more to the air of power he assumed, and the conviction he produced of his invincibility in the minds of his opponents, than to his civil or military strategy and tactics, admirable as they both were.But the government believed it wisest to adopt a conciliatory and, in many respects, a temporizing policy, and to rely more on weakening the secessionists in their respective States than on strengthening the hands and hearts of its own staunch and uncompromising supporters.It must strengthen the Union party in the insurrectionary States, and as this party hoped to succeed by political manipulation rather than by military force, the government must rely rather on a show of military power than on gaining any decisive battle.As it hoped, or affected to hope, to suppress the rebellion in the States that seceded through their loyal citizens, it was obliged to assume that secession was the work of a faction, of a few ambitious and disappointed politicians, and that the States were all in the Union, and continued in the loyal portion of their inhabitants.Hence its aid to the loyal Virginians to organize as the State of Virginia, and its subsequent efforts to organize the Union men in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, and its disposition to recognize their organization in each of those States as the State itself, though including only a small minority of the territorial people.Had the facts been as assumed, the government might have treated the loyal people of each State as the State itself, without any gross usurpation of power; but, unhappily, the facts assumed were not facts, and it was soon found that the Union party in all the States that seceded, except the western part of Virginia and the eastern section of Tennessee, after secession had been carried by the popular vote, went almost unanimously with the secessionists; for they as well as the secessionists held the doctrine of State sovereignty; and to treat the handful of citizens that remained loyal in each State as the State itself, became ridiculous, and the government should have seen and acknowledged it.
The rebellion being really territorial, and not personal, the State that seceded was no more continued in the loyal than in the disloyal population.While the war lasted, both were public enemies of the United States, and neither had or could have any rights as a State in the Union.The law recognizes a solidarity of all the citizens of a State, and assumes that, when a State is at war, all its citizens are at war, whether approving the war or not.The loyal people in the States that seceded incurred none of the pains and penalties of treason, but they retained none of the political rights of the State in the Union, and, in reorganizing the State after the suppression of the rebellion, they have no more right to take part than the secessionists themselves.They, as well as the secessionists, have followed the territory.It was on this point that the government committed its gravest mistake.As to the reorganization or reconstruction of the State, the whole territorial people stood on the same footing.
Taking the decision of the Supreme Court as conclusive on the subject, the rebellion was territorial, and, therefore, placed all the States as States out of the Union, and retained them only as population and territory, under or subject to the Union.The States ceased to exist, that is, as integral elements of the national sovereignty.The question then occurred, are they to be erected into new States, or are they to be reconstructed and restored to the Union as the identical old States that seceded?
