the evil be Slavery, our action will be bolder when it is known that the danger was foreseen. In reviewing these three sources of power, I know not which is most complete. Either is ample alone; but the three together are three times ample. Thus out of this triple fountain, or, if you please, by this triple cord, do I educe the power of Congress over the vacated States. * * * * * There are yet other words of the Constitution which cannot be forgotten. “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union.” Assuming that the Rebel States are no longer _de facto_ States of this Union, but that the territory occupied by them is within the jurisdiction of Congress, then these words become completely applicable. It is for Congress, in such way as it shall think best, to regulate their return to the Union, whether in time or manner. No special form is prescribed. But the vital act must proceed from Congress. Here again is another testimony to that Congressional power, which, under the Constitution, will restore the Republic. * * * * * Against this power I have heard nothing which can be called argument. There are objections, originating chiefly in the baneful pretension of State Rights; but these objections are animated by prejudice rather than reason. Assuming the impeccability of a State, and openly declaring that States, like kings, can do no wrong, while, like kings, they wear “the round and top of sovereignty,” politicians treat them with most mistaken forbearance and tenderness, as if these Rebel corporations could be dandled into loyalty. At every suggestion of rigor, State Rights are invoked; and we are vehemently told not to destroy the States, when all that Congress proposes is simply to recognize the actual condition of the States, and undertake their temporary government by providing for the condition of political syncope into which they have fallen, and during this interval substitute its own constitutional powers for the unconstitutional powers of the Rebellion. Congress will blot no star from the flag, nor will it obliterate any State liabilities; but it will seek, according to its duty, in the best way, to maintain the great and real sovereignty of the Union, by upholding the flag unsullied, and by enforcing everywhere within its jurisdiction the supreme law of the Constitution.