ington, the bill by a vote of 23 to 17 passed the Senate, July 14, 1862.1

By Mr. Brown, of Virginia, a similar measure had already been introduced into the House on June 25. It was read twice and referred to the Committee on Territories.2 When called up on July 16 succeeding it was agreed to postpone consideration of the bill until the regular session in December, and on the 9th of that month, when Representative Bingham asked that it be put on its passage, discussion of the subject was resumed.

Representative Conway said that if the application of West Virginia came in the proper manner he would be happy to vote for its admission; he regretted, however, that at the beginning of the rebellion a territorial government had not been organized there; Congress could then have passed an enabling act, and the State could be received in a manner to admit of no dispute. The question turned, he declared, on whether the State of Virginia, of which a Mr. Pierpont was Governor, was the lawful State. This he denied. A number of persons without authority met at Wheeling and organized a government. This establishment the President had recognized; one branch of Congress by admitting its Senators had also conceded its legality. These precedents, however, should not be binding on the House. Neither mobs nor mass-meetings, he asserted, make laws under our system, and such bodies had no authority to appoint Mr. Pierpont.

The President intended, Mr. Conway believed, to form similar organizations in all the seceded States. A policy seems about to be inaugurated," he added, "looking to an assumption of State powers by a few individuals, wherever

1 Globe, Part III., 2 Sess. 37th Cong., p. 864; Part IV., pp. 2941-2942, 3034-3039, 3134-3135, 3307-3320.

3 Ibid., p. 3397.

a military or other encampment can be effected in any of the rebellious districts. The utter and flagrant unconstitutionality of this scheme I may say, its radically revolutionary character ought to expose it to the reprobation of every loyal citizen and every member of this House. It aims at an utter subversion of our constitutional system. Its effect would be to consolidate all the powers of the Government in the hands of the Executive. With the admission of this new State, the President will have substantially created four Senators two for Virginia and two for West Virginia." In referring to an extension of this system he declared that the President and a few friends could exercise Federal authority in all those States. "The true policy of this Government, therefore, with regard to the seceded States, is to hold them as common territory wherever and whenever our arms are extended over them. This obviates the terrible dangers which I have alluded to, and is in harmony with the highest considerations of public utility, as well as with sound legal principles." 1

Mr. Conway directed his criticisms against the President because he believed the Executive was first to recognize the new government. The action of the Senate was based upon this precedent, it being assumed that recognition was an Executive function.

Mr. Brown, who introduced the bill at the preceding session, related concisely the essential facts already placed before the reader. He reminded Representative Conway that, though a State could not commit treason, or any other crime, the officials of government could do so; that the legislative powers, being incapable of annihilation, returned to the people; that the spontaneous assembly at Wheeling merely organized and proposed a plan by which regular elections were to be held to fill vacancies caused by the withdrawal of 1 1 Globe, Part I., 3 Sess. 37th Cong., pp. 37-38.

disloyal representatives. A day was fixed, and wherever throughout the State loyal citizens chose to hold an election they could do so. The body thus elected assumed the legislative functions of the people.

In answer to an inquiry he replied that about five counties outside of West Virginia were represented in the Legislature which consented to the erection of the new State, and all the counties in the State were expressly invited to send representatives to the General Assembly. If they were loyal they should have cooperated; if not, they should have no voice in either the State Legislature or Congress. He referred in his remarks to a telegram which he had that morning received from Wheeling. It contained a resolution passed by the Assembly asking the House of Representatives to approve the bill for the admission of West Virginia, which had been favorably acted upon by the Senate at the preceding session.

"It has been asserted," he said in conclusion, "and understood in some quarters, that the organization of the government at Wheeling was for the purpose of forming a new State. I am prepared to say that when the convention originally met in Wheeling, although there were a few radicals there who wanted to form a new State without reinstating the old State of Virginia, we voted them down, and commenced the exercise of our original rights as freemen to build up the loyal government of Virginia; and although we designed eventually to ask for this separation, and it was what we anxiously desired, yet we determined to be a lawabiding people, and ask for what we desired through the forms of law." 1

Representative Colfax in giving the reasons which should govern his vote stated that the restored government had been recognized by the Senate, by the President as well as 1 Globe, Part I., 3 Sess. 37th Cong., pp. 38-39, 41-42.

other executive officers, and that the House, by admitting Mr. Segar, elected pursuant to a proclamation of Governor Pierpont, had also recognized the reorganized State. Even the political party in opposition voted for that member's admission. He also remarked that the new State came knocking at the door for admission with the tiara of freedom on her brow.1

Mr. Olin, who opposed the bill at the preceding session, said: "I shall vote for it now with reluctance. I shall vote for it mainly upon the ground that the General Government, whether wisely or unwisely I will not undertake to say, has encouraged this movement to create a division of the State of Virginia." 2 The people of West Virginia, with their experience of the evils which slavery brought on them, should not have permitted that institution to exist for an hour in their new government. For this deficiency, however, the bill provided a partial remedy.

3

Crittenden observed that it was the party applying for admission that gave its consent to a division of the State. To this objection Representative Blair replied that there were counties outside of West Virginia which had assented to dismemberment. Other members, who had hitherto been hostile, now consented to support the measure from a conviction that it would weaken rebellion.

Representative Dawes said that the primary elections which sent delegates to the Wheeling convention discussed not a reorganization of the Virginia government, but the formation of an independent State in western Virginia. To accomplish that, he said, the only way was to restore the government of the entire Commonwealth. That government then had two things to do: to set up a new State within itself and secondly

1 Globe, Part I., 3 Sess. 37th Cong., pp. 43-45.

* Ibid., p. 46.

'Ibid., pp. 46-47.

to give its consent thereto. This suggestion, he understood, emanated from Washington.1

In reference to the admission, Thaddeus Stevens said:

I do not desire to be understood as being deluded by the idea that we are admitting this State in pursuance of any provisions of the Constitution. I find no such provision that justifies it, and the argument in favor of the constitutionality of it is one got up by those who either honestly entertain, I think, an erroneous opinion, or who desire to justify, by a forced construction, an act which they have predetermined to do.

Now, to say that the Legislature which called this seceding convention was not the Legislature, of Virginia, is asserting that the Legislature chosen by a vast majority of the people of a State is not the Legislature of that State. That is a doctrine which I can never assent to. I admit that the Legislature were disloyal, but they were still the disloyal and traitorous Legislature of the State of Virginia; and the State, as a mere State, was bound by their acts. Not so individuals. They are responsible to the General Government, and are responsible whether the State decrees treason or not. That being the Legislature of Virginia, Governor Letcher, elected by a majority of the votes of the people, is the Governor of Virginia — a traitor in rebellion, but a traitorous governor of a traitorous State. Now, then, how has that State ever given its consent to this division? A highly respectable but very small number of the citizens of Virginia — the people of West Virginia-assembled together, disapproved of the acts of the State of Virginia, and with the utmost selfcomplacency called themselves Virginia.

I hold that none of the States now in rebellion are entitled to the protection of the Constitution, and I am grieved when I hear those high in authority sometimes talking of the constitutional difficulties about enforcing measures against this belligerent power, and the next moment disregarding every vestige and semblance of the Constitution by acts which alone are arbitrary. I hope I do not differ with the Executive in the views which I advocate. But I see the Executive one day saying "you shall not take the property of rebels to pay the debts which the rebels have brought upon the Northern States." Why? Because the Constitution is in the way. And the next day I see him appointing a military governor of Virginia, a military governor of Tennessee, and some other places. Where does he find anything in the Constitution to warrant that?

1 Globe, Part I., 3 Sess. 37th Cong., p. 48,