Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/589

 Attitude of Stevens toward Conduct of Civil War 579 cast under the guns of a fort. Now, to say that those gentlemen represent any district is a mere mockery." ' Stevens was wilHng to accompHsh the end in view, the dismem- berment of Virginia and the admission of the new state, the sufficient ground for the act being that it would weaken the enemy and help the national cause. But he recognized that the legal ground for the proceeding was, not the Constitution, but the laws of war. " We may admit West Virginia," he said, " not by any provisions of the Constitution but under our absolute power which the laws of war give us. I shall vote for this bill upon that theory and that alone; for I will not stultify myself by supposing that we have any warrant in the Constitution for this proceeding." He regarded it as mockery to claim that the legislature of Vir- ginia had ever consented to the division of that state. The ma- jority of the people of Virginia, organized as a political community, was the state of Virginia. That state had changed its constitution and its relation to the federal government from that of one of its members to that of secession. The act was treason, but so far as the state corporation was concerned it was a valid act and governed the state. " A small number of the citizens of Virginia — the people in West Virginia — assembled together, disapproved of the acts of Virginia and with the utmost self-complacency called themselves Virginia. Is it not ridiculous ? " That seems more straightforward than to stretch the Constitution by a forced and fictitious construction while claiming to respect its provisions. To a layman it seems like better law, sounder sense, and more correct political science, if the United States was to be regarded as a nation and not a mere congeries of states. This view of the character of the state and the effect of seces- sion he maintained consistently on all occasions. He looked upon the Southern states as public enemies. We were at war with an acknowledged belligerent, with a foreign nation, and since such a war had annulled all former compacts existing between them neither could claim as against the other the aid of the Constitution. Stevens held that the Southern states, having committed treason, renounced their allegiance to the Union, discarded its Constitution and laws, organized a distinct and hostile government, and by force of arms having risen from the condition of insurgents to the position of an independent power de facto, and having been acknowledged as a belligerent both by foreign nations and by our own government, the Constitution and laws of the Union were set aside as far as they were concerned, and that as between the two belligerents they were under '^Congressional Globe, December 2, 1861.