Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/296

262 never carried the State out of the Union, and also with the fundamental principle that all constitutive action must proceed from the people. In theory as well as fact, this procedure will be far more democratic than the policy you have adopted with regard to North Carolina. It may be argued without doing violence to the rules of logic that, although secession never carried any of the States out of the Union, it did break up the existing State governments and completely suspended the Constitutional relations of the seceded States with the Government of the United States. This was a revolutionary proceeding, which placed the Government of the United States in a condition, and imposed upon it a task, not foreseen in the Constitution. Nor does the Constitution point out any remedies except those lying within the sphere of the military power. Strictly speaking, the appointment of a civil governor for a State by the Executive of the United States is an extra-Constitutional act; nor has, according to the accepted Constitutional theory, the President the power to order a governor of a State to call a convention of the people. You rely upon the implied powers and obey the necessity arising from the extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances. Now I ask, is not in this extra-Constitutional condition of things the most natural, and also the most democratic remedy to be found in a direct appeal to the original source of sovereignty, the whole body of the people of a State? And in what way can that be done more effectually than by calling State conventions to be elected by all the inhabitants of the respective States without distinction of rank, property or color, excluding only those who have disqualified themselves by acts of rebellion?

I think of elaborating these ideas and laying them before the public in a series of letters. By the time Congress meets, the necessity of taking a broad ground will prob-