Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/43

Rh the rebellious States is an efficient means of weakening the power of the rebels; that the President’s proclamation whereby all persons heretofore held as slaves in such States and parts of States have been declared free, has had the effect to increase the power of the Union, and to diminish the power of its enemies; that the freedom of such persons was desirable and just in itself, and an efficient means by which the Government was to be maintained, and its authority re-established in all the territory and over all the people within the legal jurisdiction of the United States; that it is the duty of the Government and of loyal men everywhere to do what may be practicable for the enforcement of the proclamation, in order to secure in fact, as well as by the forms of law, the extinction of slavery in such States and parts of States; and, finally, that it is the paramount duty of the Government and of all loyal men to labor for the restoration of the American Union upon the basis of freedom.

“And this House does further declare, That a State can exist or cease to exist only by the will of the people within its limits, and that it cannot be created or destroyed by the external force or opinion of other States, or even by the judgment or action of the nation itself; that a State, when created by the will of its people, can become a member of the American Union only by its own organized action and the concurrent action of the existing National Government, that, when a State has been admitted to the Union, no vote, resolution, ordinance, or proceeding on its part, however formal in character or vigorously sustained, can deprive the National Government of the legal jurisdiction and sovereignty over the territory and people of such State which existed previous to the act of admission, or which were acquired thereby; that the effect of the so-called acts, resolutions and ordinances of secession adopted by the eleven States engaged in the present rebellion is, and can only be, to destroy those political organ-