Speech of Hon Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, in Support of the Resolutign to Amend the Constitution So as to Abolish Slavery Delivered in the Senate States, April 5, 1864 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Speech of Hon. Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, in Support of the Resolutign to Amend the Constitution So as to Abolish Slavery: Delivered in the Senate of the United States, April 5, 1864

I believe I speak advisedly when I say that, whatever may be their lan guage, the court designed and affirmed no such general proposition. They held what, indeed, cannot be denied, because your legislation recognizes its existence, and because, independent of that recognition, the fact is apparent that a state of war exists. That the insurrection, however at the first it might have been arrested by the mere civil power, had culminated to a point which places it beyond that power, or any other, but the power of war. In saying this, however, the court referred only to the particular cases which were be fore them, and cases of like character, and to the particular questions pre sented by such cases. They relied upon belligerent rights growing out of the actual war, merely with the view to show that goods captured upon the high seas, coming from the territorial limits of the rebellious States, were to be con sidered under the prize law as prize of war; and that the question, whether legal prize or not was to be determined by the principles of the prize law as a part Of the law of nations. But in so ruling, in answer to the objection that, although in one sense a war, it was a rebellion in which each citizen in the re hellions States was guilty of treason against the United States, they said that that was true, but that such parties were not the less to be esteemed enemies because they were traitors.

The court never intimated, as I read their Opinion, that the existence of a belligerent relation between the two forces terminated the civil obligations which the citizens of the rebellious States are under to the Government of the United States; but, on the contrary, announced, as before stated, that their being traitors did not, in the view of the prize law, show that they were not also enemies. The court, I understand, as deciding that each of the citizens or inhabitants of the rebellious States still owes as before unqualified allegiance to the Government Of the United States, and to be under an obligation to ful fil it; and consequently. That when the authority of the United States shall be restored, such of them may be proceeded against as traitors who may have voluntarily aided the rebellion.

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