It is part of that great instinctive right of self-defence, common to nations and to men, which has no limits, except in the benign constraints of a Christian civilization.

It is a right not only from the Constitution of the United States, but also from the constitution of civil society itself.

Never before was the occasion for its exercise plainer.

And who shall say that the nation may defend itself on the murderous battle-field, and may not, when the battle has been won, require that “Security for the Future” which is the declared object of war?

It is idle to say that the war is over, and therefore the power is suspended.

Battles have ceased; but Security for the Future is not yet obtained, and this security is found only in irreversible guaranties.

This national power is still in full operation, and as completely constitutional as the power to raise armies.

As it is idle to say that the war is over, so it is equally idle to say that this power, in either of its forms, is limited by the Constitution.

God forbid that now, at another moment not less critical, the same pretension should triumph again.

May no such golden opportunity be lost again!

Nobody doubts now that a State in rebellion may be “coerced.” Nobody doubts now that the victories of Grant, the march of Sherman, and the charge of Sheridan were strictly constitutional.

Whatever is needed for the suppression of the Rebellion and the establishment of safeguards against its recurrence is constitutional.

It is failure to exercise this power that is unconstitutional.

The first is that vast untried power springing from the injunction that “the United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government.” This power, long dormant, sprang into activity with the Acts of…

Since all loyal government has ceased to exist, the whole region, in all its divisions and subdivisions, has, from the necessity of the case, lapsed under the national jurisdiction, which is as complete for all practical purposes as that…

Elsewhere I have vindicated them; and I have never been answered, except by the phrase that a State cannot go out of the Union: as if, in presence of the fact of rebellion, this was anything more than a phrase.

It is indisputable, that, in fact, the Rebel States have ceased to be, as President Lincoln expressed it, in “proper practical relation with the Union,” and, still further, that they have long been without any government we can recognize.

When loyal government ceased, the jurisdiction of the National Government began, whether military or civil; and this jurisdiction still continues, complete in all respects, without hindrance or limitation from the Constitution.

Precipitation back will be hardly less fatal than that original precipitation which plunged the country into the abyss of war.

No President can truly say, “The State--it is I.” He is only part of the State; and on this account there is a new motive to reserve.

What he does is subject to the correction of Congress, and therefore cannot be final.

A voice from the West--God save the West!--revives the exploded theory of Colonization, perhaps to divert attention from the great question of Equal Rights.

To that voice I reply, first, You ought not to do it, and, secondly, You cannot do it.

You ought not to do it, because, besides its intrinsic and fatal injustice, you will deprive the country of what it most needs, which is labor.

Those freedmen on the spot are better even than mineral wealth.