“Is it not obvious enough, that men cannot get together and count themselves, and say they are so many hundreds and so many thousands, and judge of their own qualifications, and call themselves the people, and set up a government? _Why, another set of men, forty miles off, on the same day, with the same propriety, with as good qualifications, and in as large numbers, may meet and set up another government._” “When, in the course of events, it becomes necessary to ascertain the will of the people on a new exigency or a new state of things or of opinion, _the legislative power provides for that ascertainment by an ordinary act of legislation_.” “What do I contend for? I say that the will of the people must prevail, when it is ascertained; but there must be _some legal and authentic mode of ascertaining that will_, and then the people may make what government they please.” “All that is necessary here is, that the will of the people should be ascertained by some regular rule of proceeding, _prescribed by previous law_.” “But the law and the Constitution, the whole system of American institutions, do not contemplate a case in which a resort will be necessary to proceedings _aliunde_, or _outside of the law and the Constitution_, for the purpose of amending the frame of government.”[205] Happily, we are not constrained to any such revolutionary proceeding. The new governments can all be organized by Congress, which is the natural guardian of the people, without any immediate government, and within the jurisdiction of the National Constitution. Indeed, with the State governments already _vacated_ by Rebellion, the Constitution becomes, for the time, the supreme and only law, binding alike on President and Congress, so that neither can establish any law or institution incompatible with it; and the whole Rebel region, deprived of all local government, lapses under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, precisely as any other territory,--or, in other words, the negation of the local government leaves the whole vast region without any other government than Congress, unless the President should undertake to govern it by military power. Startling as this proposition may seem, especially to all who believe that there is a “divinity doth hedge” a State hardly less than a king, it will appear, on careful consideration, to be as well founded in the Constitution as it is simple and natural, while it affords easy and constitutional solution to all present embarrassments. I have no theory to maintain, but only the truth; and in presenting this argument for Congressional government I simply follow teachings which I cannot control. The wisdom of Socrates, in the words of Plato, has aptly described these teachings, when he says,--