10 to separate a single acre for a single day from the territory of the Union ; but they separated its members from the Congress of the Union. Congress is not a mill from which men go and come at pleasure. “ The rebel states,” said Mr. Lincoln, “ have ceased to be in practical relations with the Union.” Very well, the reestablishment of these practical relations cannot depend on their caprice alone. It is certainly permissible for those who have suffered so much by the crime of the South, to take precautions against the repetition of this crime, and these sufferings. This is not only permissible, it is prescribed to them by the indefeasible laws of common sense. The members of Congress would be lacking in their first duty if, before opening their doors to the Southern senators and representatives, they did not assure themselves that the contest was really ended, that it would not spring up anew in another form, that the freedmen were truly free, and that the struggle would not recommence on the morrow or the day after. Before recognizing the constitutional rights of those who, so far as it depended on them, have overthrown the Constitution, the least that can be done, as all will grant, is to demand some guarantees. Face to face with those rights abjured and trodden under foot by the Southerners, arises a higher right, the right of living, the right of maintaining the public peace, the right of preventing new attempts at crime, the right of keeping one’s eyes open, and not introducing the enemy one’s self into the stronghold which he has assailed. Who (unless it may be Mr. Buchanan) has disputed to the Union, the President and Congress, the right of repelling force by force, of suppressing the rebellion, of taking military occupation of the rebellious states, and of governing them ? State rights would not have prevented a manoeuvre of Grant, a march of Sherman, or an energetic act of that governor of Tennessee, named Andrew Johnson. War is war, and the peace which is the end of war forms a part of it by this title. So long as the definitive conditions of this
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