It is enough that the loyal authorities were overthrown, and there were no functionaries holding office under the State government bound by oath to support the Constitution of the United States; and since a State government is necessarily composed of such functionaries thus bound by oath, there was no State government we could recognize. Sir, does any Senator recognize the Rebel governor of Arkansas? Does any Senator recognize the Rebel functionaries who held the offices of the State? Of course not. It follows, then, that the offices were empty. And this was the practical conclusion of Andrew Johnson, when he began to reorganize Tennessee, in an address as early as 18th March, 1862. Here are his words:-- “I find most, if not all, of the offices, both State and Federal, _vacated_, either by actual abandonment or by the action of the incumbents, in attempting to subordinate their functions to a power in hostility to the fundamental law of the State and subversive of her national allegiance.”[359] If the offices were vacated, the machine of government could not work. And now the practical question is, how this machine shall be again put in motion. Obviously, not by any power within, but by some power without. It may be said that the new State organization is authorized by the President’s proclamation of amnesty, and that the claimant’s case stands good according to the promises of this exceptional paper. A glance is enough to dispel this pretension. True it is that the President put forward a plan for reorganizing loyal State governments in the Rebel territory, and he proffered a guaranty to these communities against domestic violence and Rebel invasion; but he neither proposed nor promised any representation in Congress or in the Electoral College. Nor would such a proposition or promise by him have possessed the slightest validity; because, by the Constitution, “each House is to be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members.” This provision is inconsistent with any prerogative of the President over this question, even if such prerogative were not controlled by that other provision which reserves to Congress the power to admit new States into the Union.