Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/81

Rh resuming their places in the Senate and House as though nothing had occurred of which the existing government could take notice.

If, however, there were to be terms of adjustment, then those terms must have a “continental basis founded upon the principles of mutual convenience and reciprocal advantage, and the recognition of the separate sovereignty of the States.” He was ready for a conference or convention of all the States, but he did not admit the right of the successful party to dictate terms to the States that had been in rebellion. He expressed the personal, individual opinion, that tax laws passed in the absence of representatives from the seceded States would be unconstitutional. It was the opinion of Mr. Stephens that the people of Georgia by a large majority, thought that the State was entitled to representation in the national Congress and without any conditions.

When he was invited to consider the alternative of universal suffrage or a loss of representation as a condition precedent to the restoration of the State, he said, with confidence that neither branch of the alternative would be accepted. “If Georgia is a State in the Union her people feel that she is entitled to representation without conditions imposed by Congress; and if she is not a State in the Union then she could not be admitted as an equal with the others if her admission were trammeled with conditions that did not apply to all the rest alike.”

It had been his expectation, and in his opinion such had been the expectation of the people generally that the State would assume its place in the Union whenever the cause of the Confederacy should be abandoned.

Such were the results of the State-Rights doctrines as announced by the most intellectual of the Southern leaders in the war of the Rebellion. In the opinion of Mr. Stephens