Such being the nature of a "State" of the Union and such the method of its creation, what reason is there for speaking of the "States" in a system of federal government as indestructible? As they emerge from the status of Territories under the exclusive power of Congress, upon having attained certain conditions, why may they not revert to the status of Territories upon having lost these conditions of "State" existence; nay, why may {4} they not revert to the status of martial law by having lost all of the conditions of civil government? The dictum "once a State always a State" in a system of federal government has no sound reason in it. Under the Constitution of the United States, every "State" of the Union may through the process of amendment be made a province subject to the exclusive government of the central authorities; and when those who wield the powers of a "State" renounce the "State's" allegiance to the United States, renounce the supremacy of the Constitution of the United States and of the laws of the central Government made in accordance therewith, then from the point of view of political science it will become a state pure and simple, a sovereignty, if and when it permanently maintains, by its own power or by the assent of the United States, this attitude against the United States, but from the point of view of the constitutional law of the United States it simply destroys one of the fundamental conditions of local self-government, and gives, thus, warrant to the central Government to resume exclusive government in the district, and over the population which has become disorganized by refusing obedience to the supreme law of the land, as fixed by the Constitution of the United States. Whether the central Government has the physical power, at a given moment, to do this or not, is another question. It certainly has, at the outset, the legal right. The "State" is no longer a "State" of the Union, nor has it become a state out of the Union. It is simply nowhere. The land is there and the people are there, but the form of local government over it and them has been changed from local _self_-government to a Congressional or a Presidential agency, as the case may be. [Sidenote: The idea of "State" perdurance.] [Sidenote: The acceptance of this idea by the Government of the United States.]