Previous to the passage of the ordinance of secession by the convention of South Carolina in 1860, the nation never had been called upon to determine the status of a State which declared its relation to the federal government severed. Certainly if a State could establish its independence by war, the question, so far as such State was concerned, would have no significance; but as such a conclusion of the difficulty could not be considered for an instant, the status of the seceded State, both before and after the cessation of hostilities, immediately became an important subject of discussion. The gradual evolution of popular sentiment, from the belief that the dignity of a State should not be tampered with, to the belief that by an act of secession a State divested itself of all its rights and privileges as a State, and reverted to the condition of a Territory, forms an interesting chapter in the history of the unwritten constitution of the United States. 2. When the 37th Congress met on July 4, 1861, in pursuance of Lincoln's proclamation, the war had not been in progress long enough to show to the country the extreme gravity of the situation and the wideness of the gap which had arisen between the Southern States and the rest of the Union. The common belief was that unprincipled agitators, who represented only a small minority of the legal voters in the insurrectionary States, had obtained temporary control over the governments of these States, and were waging a war against the Union, in which they were unsupported by the majority; and that the latter would joyfully resume control of their governments as soon as the opportunity should be given them, which it was confidently believed would soon happen. That is, the war was to be carried on, not against the States which claimed to have seceded, but against a certain element of the Southern population. The extreme solicitude felt by Congress for the proper preservation of the sovereign privileges of these States is shown by the practical unanimity with which a resolution submitted by Mr. Crittenden, on July 22, was carried, there being only two dissenting voices.[1] It declared the sense of the House to be that[2] "this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease." Three days later, Andrew Johnson, then a Senator from Tennessee, submitted the same resolution in the Senate,[3] where it was also carried with practical unanimity, although the discussion indicated a confused idea as to its exact significance.