That no such conclusion is warranted by the decision above referred to, will still further appear from the following considerations:--Our dealings with foreign nations are regulated by the principles of international law, and, according to that law, war abrogates all treaties between belligerents, as of course. But international law supposes the belligerents to be of equal and independent sovereignty. This is the very point in dispute in our contest with the rebellion. We deny to the rebellion the attribute of independent sovereignty, as we deny it to every one of the States included in the rebellion. Our Constitution is, in no sense, a treaty between sovereign States. It is an organic law, establishing a nation, ordained by the people of the whole country. Therefore, only such persons under it as voluntarily wage war upon it, can be strictly called enemies: only such persons, on the defeat of the rebellion, will be liable to be treated as enemies. As to all men who have not participated in the rebellion, it is not easy to see how war, rebellion, usurpation, or any power on earth can destroy their rights under the Constitution. III. THEORY OF THE CONSTITUTION AND COMMON SENSE. Reconstruction, then, must come, as the Union came, by the action of the people within the territorial limits of each recreant State. That it will so come is, in a manner, assured and made certain by the action of Kentucky, Missouri, Virginia, and Tennessee. Surely, we cannot expect the political action of an oppressed minority, in any one of the rebel States, to anticipate the National forces sent for their deliverance. The armed combinations in those States have overborne all opposition, and, during the past two years, have wielded the complete powers of a military despotism. The Southern confederacy is a monstrous usurpation in each and every rebel State. The United States is intent on dethroning that usurpation, for the purpose of restoring, to every man who asks it, the rights guaranteed to him by the Constitution of his fathers; and for the equal purpose of asserting its rightful powers as the National Government under the Constitution. The present Administration, then, has taken the only course possible to be taken without open and flagrant violation of the Constitution, which is the sole and sufficient warrant for the war. For this course Abraham Lincoln is entitled to the gratitude of the people. His conscientious policy has been the salvation of the Republic, maintaining its integrity against armed rebellion, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, saving it from destructives whose zeal in a noble cause has often blinded their minds to the higher claims of the Nation: in whose existence, nevertheless, that cause alone has promise of success.