There has always been a difference between the theory of the State Convention at the North and at the South. At the North, barring a few very exceptional cases, the rule has been that no action of a State Convention is valid until confirmed by popular vote. At the South, in obedience to the strictest application of State sovereignty, the action of the State Convention was held to be the voice of the people of the State, which needed no popular ratification. There was, therefore, no remedy when the State Conventions, after passing the ordinances of secession, went on to appoint delegates to a Confederate Congress, which met at Montgomery, Feb. 4, 1861, adopted a provisional constitution Feb. 8th, and elected a President and Vice-President Feb. 9th. The conventions ratified the provisional constitution and adjourned, their real object having been completely accomplished; and the people of the several seceding States, by the action of their omnipotent State Conventions, and without their having a word to say about it, found themselves under a new government, totally irreconcilable with the jurisdiction of the United States, and necessarily hostile to it. The only exception was Texas, whose State Convention had been called in a method so utterly revolutionary that it was felt to be necessary to condone its defects by a popular vote. No declaration had ever been made by any authority that the erection of such hostile power within the national boundaries of the United States would be followed by war; such a declaration would hardly seem necessary. The recognition of the original national boundaries of the United States had been extorted from Great Britain by successful warfare. They had been extended by purchase from France and Spain in 1803 and 1819, and again by war from Mexico in 1848. The United States stood ready to guarantee their integrity by war against all the rest of the world; was an ordinance of South Carolina, or the election of a _de facto_ government within Southern borders, likely to receive different treatment than was given British troops at Bunker Hill, or Santa Anna's lancers at Buena Vista? Men forgot that the national boundaries had been so drawn as to include Vermont before Vermont's admission and without Vermont's consent; that unofficial propositions to divide Rhode Island between Connecticut and Massachusetts, to embargo commerce with North Carolina, and demand her share of the Confederation debt, had in 1789-90 been a sufficient indication that it was easier for a State to get into the American Union than to get out of it. It was a fact, nevertheless, that the national power to enforce the integrity of the Union had never been formally declared; and the mass of men in the South, even though they denied the expediency, did not deny the right of secession, or acknowledge the right of coercion by the Federal Government. To reach the original area of secession with land-forces, it was necessary for