If, for fifty years to come, the United States shall not re-establish her sovereignty and restore her laws and power over the seceded States, and the latter shall continue to maintain an open and exclusive Government; and if the United States shall still refuse to recognize the new Government by formal documentary record, would the refusal then warrant the United States in capturing Confederate armies of a new generation, and punishing them for treason and piracy? And, if so fifty years hence, would it continue twice or thrice fifty years? Or what is the limit? The difficulties in the answer can be avoided in only one way, and that is, to conclude that the acknowledgment of the independence of the revolutionizing section is of no consequence at all, for all the purposes of this case, provided the fact of independence and separate Government really exists, and is proven. A _de facto_ Government, merely, must be allowed by every sound jurist to possess in itself, for the time being, all the attributes and functions of a Government _de jure_. It may properly claim for itself, and the citizen may rightfully render to it, allegiance and obedience, as if the Government rested on an undisputed basis. This is a rule never denied in the law of nations. History has scarcely a page without its record of revolution and dynastic struggle to illustrate this rule. The official acts of a _de facto_ Government affecting personal rights, title to property, the administration of justice, the organization of its society, and imposing duties on the citizens, receive that consideration which belongs to acts of long-established Governments. The successor does not pronounce the laws of the predecessor null. He simply repeals them, with a clause protecting all vested rights. This principle is correct, even in case of an usurping monarch; but how much more, if it shall appear that the people who are to be governed, have, for themselves, with mutual concurrence and choice, cast off the former Government, and organized a new one, avowing to the world their purpose to maintain it, and at the same time yielding to it the obedience which it requires?