Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/588

 578 J. A. Woodbiiru law, and rather than see the nation perish, rather than see it dishon- ored by compromise, concession, and submission, rather than see the Union dissevered, he was ready to apply the dictator's power. It will be seen that Stevens's constitutional position, or extra- constitutional position, was consistent, straightforward, and out- spoken. He blinked nothing, but always looked the constitutional issue squarely in the face. He made no pretenses and would re- sort to no forced construction to justify a course already prede- termined. This is seen still more clearly in his attitude toward the admission of West Virginia. The Constitution clearly provides that no state shall be divided except by its own consent. When Virginia seceded, the people in the western counties of the state, wishing to remain loyal to the Union, assumed to form a state government and choose state officers and a state legislature. They elected Senators and Repre- sentatives to .Congress, who were admitted to their seats. They claimed to be the people of Virginia, constitutionally competent to give its consent to the formation of a new state within the bor- ders of the Old Dominion. This people, having given its consent to the division of the old state of Virginia, immediately erected itself into the new state of West Virginia. Nobody consented except those within the limits of the new state. That is, the new state consented to the division of the old. And when the new state had been admitted according to prearrangement, Mr. Pierpont, pre- tending to be the governor of the state that pretended to be Vir- ginia, was to move over to Alexandria and keep up the pretense of being the gubernatorial head of Old Virginia, with an official body that Sumner afterward called the " common council of Alex- andria." As Stevens said after the war, " all the archives, prop- erty, and eflfects of the Pierpont Government were taken to Rich- mond in an ambulance." This was the government recognized during the war as the legitimate constitutional government of Virginia. There were distinguished members of Congress who sought to find ground in the Constitution, or in the fictitious construction of that instrument, for this process by which Virginia was divided and West Virginia admitted. It was not the way of Thaddeus Stevens. To Stevens the proceedings, or the arguments based upon them, were all ridiculous and absurd. He was opposed to giving seats in the House to members from Virginia after the secession of that state, for " We know," as he said, " that members have been elected to this House bv onl- twentx- votes and those