In the American system, the process by which constitutions are made and governments instituted is by conventions of the people. The State constitutions were ordained by conventions of the people of the several States; the constitution of the United States was made the supreme law of the land by conventions of the people of all the States; and the only method by which a State could be released, with any show of legality, from its obligations to the United States, would be the assent of the same power which created the Federal constitution,--namely, conventions of the people of _all_ the States. The course adopted by the so-called "seceding" States was separate State action by popular conventions in the States seceding. This was an appeal to the original authority from which State governments and constitutions derived their powers, but a violation of solemn faith towards the government and constitution decreed by the people of all the States, and which, by the assent of each State, formed a vital part of each State constitution. No State convention could be called for the purpose of separating from the Union,--of destroying what the officers calling it had sworn to support,--without making official perjury the preliminary condition of State sovereignty. Looked at from the point of view of the State seceding, the act was an assertion of State independence; looked at from the point of view of the constitution of the United States, it was an act of State suicide. The State so acting through a convention of its people was no longer a State, in the meaning that word bears in the Federal constitution; for, whatever it may have been before it was one of the United States, it was transformed into a different political society by making the Federal constitution a part of its own organic law. In cutting that bond, it bled to death as a State, as far as the Federal constitution knows a State, to rise again as a Rebel community, holding a portion of the Federal territory by force of arms. A State, in the meaning of the Federal constitution, is a political community forbidden to exercise sovereign powers, and at once a part of the Federal government and owing allegiance to it. Is South Carolina, which has exercised sovereign powers, which has broken its allegiance to the Federal government, and which at present is certainly not a part of it, such a political society?