THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
facto restored; that, therefore, the rebellion having actually ceased, those States were at once entitled to their former rights and privileges—that is, to the recognition of their self-elected State governments, and to their representation in Congress. Admitting the premises, this was logically correct in the abstract.
But this was one of the cases to which a saying many years later set afloat by President Cleveland, might properly have been applied; we were confronting a condition, not a theory. The condition was this: Certain States had through their regular political organs declared themselves independent of the Union. They had for all practical purposes actually separated themselves from the Union. They had made war upon the Union. That war put those States in a position not foreseen by the Constitution. It imposed upon the Government of the Union duties not foreseen by the Constitution; by “military necessity,” war-necessity, the Union was compelled to emancipate the negroes from slavery and to accept their military services. The war had compelled the Government of the Union also to levy large loans of money and thus to contract a huge public debt. The Government had, also, in the course of the war the aid of the Union men of the South. It had thus assumed solemn obligations for value received, or services rendered—that is, it had assumed the duty to protect the emancipated negroes in their freedom, the Southern Union men in their security, and the public creditor as to the money due him. This duty was a duty of honor as well as of policy. The Union could, therefore, not consent, either in point of honor, or of sound policy, to the restoration of the late rebel States to the functions of self-government and to full participation in the National Government so long as that restoration was reasonably certain to put the freedom of the emancipated slaves, or
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