The powers of Congress over this subject are ample as they are beneficent. From four specific fountains they flow, each sufficient, all four swelling into an irresistible current, and tending to one conclusion: first, the necessity of the case, by which, according to analogy of the Territories, disloyal States, having no local government, lapse under the authority of Congress; secondly, the Rights of War, which do not expire or lose their grasp, except with the establishment of all needful guaranties; thirdly, the constitutional injunction to guaranty a republican form of government; and, fourthly, the Constitutional Amendment, by which Congress, in words of peculiar energy, is empowered to “enforce” the abolition of Slavery by “appropriate legislation.” According to the proverb of Catholic Europe, all roads lead to Rome; and so do all these powers lead to the jurisdiction of Congress over this whole subject. No matter which road you take, you arrive at the same point. The first two have already been discussed exhaustively.[44] The two latter have been considered less, and it is on these that I shall speak especially to-day. I propose, with the permission of the Senate, to show the necessity and duty of exercising the jurisdiction of Congress so as to secure that essential condition of a republican government, the Equal Rights of All. And I put aside, at the outset, the metaphysical question, worthy of schoolmen in the Dark Ages, whether certain States are _in_ the Union or _out of_ the Union. That is a question of form, and not of substance,--of words only, and not of facts; for the substance is clear, and the facts are unanswerable. All are agreed, according to the authority of President Lincoln, in his latest utterance before his lamented death, that these States have ceased to be in “practical relation with the Union”;[45] and this is enough to sustain the jurisdiction of Congress, even without the plain words of the Constitution in two separate texts. The time has passed for phrases, which have been the chief resource in opposition to a just reconstruction. It is not enough to say “a State cannot secede,” “a State cannot get out of the Union,” “Louisiana is a State in the Union.” These are mere words, having no positive meaning, and improper for this debate. So far as they have meaning, they confound law and fact. It is very obvious that a State may, in point of _law_, be still in the list of States, and yet, in point of _fact_, its relations to the Union may have ceased through violence, foreign or domestic. In point of law, no man can commit suicide; but in point of fact, men do. The absurdity of denying that a man has committed suicide, because it is unlawful, is equalled by the kindred absurdity of saying that a State cannot do a certain thing, because it is unlawful. Unhappily, in this world, the fact is not always in conformity with the law.