“Several gentlemen, during this debate, have quoted the well known doctrine of international law, ‘that war annuls all existing compacts and treaties between belligerents;’ and they have concluded, therefore, that our war has broken the Federal bond and dissolved the Union. This would be true, if the rebel States were _states_ in the sense of international law—if our Government were not a sovereign nation, but only a league between sovereign states. I oppose to this conclusion the unanswerable proposition that this _is_ a nation; that the rebel States are _not_ sovereign states, and therefore their failure to achieve independence was a failure to break the Federal bond—to dissolve the Union.... “In view of the peculiar character of our Government, in what condition did the war leave the rebel States?” He argued that by the admission of a State to the Union, the laws of the United States were extended to it. _A State might violate one of these laws, but could not annul it._ Each rebel State exerted every power to break away from these laws, but was unable to destroy or invalidate one of them. Each rebel State let go of the Union, but the Union did not let go of it: “Let the stars of heaven illustrate our constellation of States. When God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, He bound them all by the resistless power of attraction to the central sun, around which they revolved in their appointed orbits. Each may be swept by storms, may be riven by lightnings, may be rocked by earthquakes, may be devastated by all the terrestrial forces and overwhelmed in ruin, but far away in the everlasting depths the sovereign sun holds the turbulent planet in its place. This earth may be overwhelmed until the high hills are covered by the sea; it may tremble with earthquakes miles below the soil, but it must still revolve in its appointed orbit. So Alabama may overwhelm all her municipal institutions in ruin, but she can not annul the omnipotent decrees of the sovereign people of the Union. She must be held forever in her orbit of obedience and duty. * * * * * “Now, let us inquire how the surrender of the military power of the rebellion affected the legal condition of those States. When the rebellion collapsed, and the last armed man of the Confederacy surrendered to our forces, I affirm that there was not in one of those States a single government that we did or could recognize. There was not in one of those States, from governor down to constable, a single man whom we could recognize as authorized to exercise any official function whatever. They had formed governments alien and hostile to the Union. Not only had their officers taken no oaths to support the Constitution of the United States, but they had heaped oath upon oath to destroy it.