the insurrectionary State organization of any legal character whatever.  In all cases of such usurped authority, the people of the States would have the unquestionable right to be restored to the Union upon the terms of their recent connection, without any conditions whatever.  It would be the solemn duty of the United States to defend each one of its members from the violence which might thus have overthrown its legitimate government.  But, on the other hand, when the people of the States themselves have inaugurated the insurrectionary movement and have voluntarily sustained it in its war upon the Government, then no such favor can reasonably be claimed for them.  If excitement and delusion have suddenly hurried them into rebellion against their better judgments and their real inclinations, they are to be pitied for their misfortune, and ought to be treated with great leniency and favor; but they cannot claim exemption from those conditions which may be imperatively demanded for the future security and tranquillity of the country.

If by possibility there might be some technical legal difficulty in this view, there would be none whatever of a practical nature; for any mind gifted with the most ordinary endowment of reason would not fail to be impressed with the gross inconsistency and inequality of holding that rebels may not only set aside the Constitution at their will and make war for its destruction, but may set it up again and claim its protection; while its defenders and faithful asserters must be held to such strict and impracticable regard for its provisions that they may not take the precautions necessary to preserve it, even in the emergency of putting down a rebellion against it.  Such an irrational predicament of constitutional difficulties and political contradictions would soon necessitate its own solution.  The revolution on the one side would induce a similar revolutionary movement on the other; attempted destruction by violence would justify the measures necessary to the restoration of the Government and to its permanent security in the future.  There would be little hesitation in adopting these measures in spite of any doubt as to their regularity.  The public safety would be acknowledged as the supreme law, and they who had placed themselves in the attitude of public enemies could not complain of the rigid application of its requirements to them.

The most inveterate of the rebels certainly do not anticipate the relaxation of this principle.  They are careful to make known to the Southern people the impossibility of returning to the Union, except upon such conditions as may be prescribed by the conquering power.  It is true they do this to deter their followers from indulging the thought of any restoration of their former Federal relations; but this fact of itself shows their consciousness of the justice of the position.  They have betrayed their people into a situation from which they cannot reasonably hope to escape without making important concessions to the Federal Government.  Their effort now is to convince the misguided population of the South that the required concessions will be more intolerable than the indefinite continuance of a hopeless and destructive civil war.