_Fourthly._ The present organization in Arkansas, seeking representation on this floor, is without that _legality of origin_ required by the American system of government. It is revolutionary in character. Nay, more, it may all be traced to _a military order_. Clearly, this incongruity will not be tolerated. _A new civil government_, to be recognized as a State of this Union, _cannot be born of military power_. Congress has jurisdiction over all those States in which loyal governments have been overturned; and this jurisdiction furnishes a natural, obvious, and constitutional origin for the new government. Without it, I am at a loss to see how _the connecting link of legality_ can be preserved between the old and the new. This is not the first time in our national history that Congress has stood between the old and the new. Such is its natural place and function. At the separation of the Colonies from the mother country, it interfered by formal resolution to indicate the process by which the new governments should be constituted, although the Tories of that day doubted the power. According to this example, sustained by congenial principles, Congress must now set the new government in motion, and infuse into it the vital force found in liberty regulated by law. _Fifthly._ Arkansas is at this moment shut out from _commercial intercourse_ with the loyal States, under the Proclamation of the President of 16th August, 1861, in pursuance of the Act of Congress of 13th July, 1861. By this Proclamation it is placed on the list of States declared in “insurrection against the United States; and all commercial intercourse between the same and the inhabitants thereof and the citizens of other States and other parts of the United States is unlawful, and will remain unlawful until such insurrection shall cease or has been suppressed”; and all goods, chattels, wares, and merchandise, coming from any of the enumerated States and proceeding to any other State by land or water, are made liable to forfeiture.[358] And yet Arkansas, while still under the ban of a Presidential proclamation and a Congressional statute establishing non-intercourse with other States, asks representation in the National Government. Disqualified for trade with other States, it asks to govern them. The old practice is to be reversed. Thus far in history trade has preceded political power; now political power is to precede trade. Arkansas cannot send her merchants into the loyal States to buy and sell. Can she send representatives into this Chamber to vote? Can she send electors into the Electoral College to choose a President?