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States, which had seceded from the Union, was nothing now but a conquered district, whose future condition depended upon the will of the conqueror. If
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States should ever be erected there again, it must be accomplished, he contended, by virtue of that provision in the Constitution which declares that
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This theory involved the admission that secession had been temporarily successful. This Mr. Stevens frankly acknowledged. He said:
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Unless the law of nations is a dead letter, the late war between the two acknowledged belligerents severed their original contracts, and broke all the ties that bound them together.
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States where it was attempted were still in the Union _as
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States, _ and had never been anywhere else or anything else, in fact could not be; that the rebellion was the work of private individuals combined as truly against the real
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States in which it existed as against the {59} United States; and that, therefore, the overthrow of these combinations and the cessation of the military rule of the President must be followed by the resumption on the part of the
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States