GENTLEMEN OF THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY, -How unlike the circumstances in which we have assembled to-day to those of your other recent anniversaries! Four years ago, but what an age that seems to look back through! - what a vista of hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, levies and disbandings, successes and defeats, massacres and deliverances, crimes and penalties, sacrifices and rewards, while Freedom points to each saddest, bloodiest scene, as essential to her ultimate triumph!four years ago, after your morning meeting, you listened, with other alumni of the college, to words of glowing patriotism from one whose college course was in part synchronous with my own; words uttered and heard with the deeper earnestness from the change which had just come of the hopes and first reports of a great victory the Sunday previous at Bull Run, to the certainty of a terrible defeat, an ignominious rout. It was an hour of gloom; but, none the less, of unbroken resolution to battle for the right. A thicker gloom hung over your next anniversary, for more confident/ expectations had now been blasted. There

was no lack of brave and inspiriting words, for any theme not relating to our country would still have seemed out of place; but, as we listened, we could not forget that the grand army of the Potomac, having forced its way up the Peninsula to the very suburbs of Richmond, had been hurled back in a seven-days' battle, and was at Harrison's Landing awaiting transports for its safe removal. The next anniversary was cheered by happier auspices. The national conscience, and trust in God, had been upheld by the proclamation of universal emancipation; the colored man had been invited to nake common cause with his white brother; and the very month in which you met had given us the great victory of Gettysburg, with the entire repulse or capture of the rebel invaders of the free States, and the reduction of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, with the opening of the entire Mississippi to our commerce, and the division of the rebel territory into two disconnected portions. I do not wonder that the scholar who then addressed you deemed that the strain of attention to national affairs might properly be relieved by a purely literary subject.

"The bow unbent recruits its force."

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In the address to which you listened last year with other alumni, the demands of both literature and patriotism were met. But while you were quietly holding your annual meeting, Sherman was commencing those battles before Atlanta, which admitted him within the "hollow shell of the Confederacy; and Grant, having fought his way from the " Wilderness by those Titanic encounters which some even in New England persisted in calling defeats, his whole course forsooth a retreat forward, was patiently laying siege to Petersburg, and, through this, to the capital of the Confederacy.

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But to-day, how changed is all! The war is over! Richmond is ours! The whole country is ours! The four rebel armies surrendered themselves in about as many weeks; and now, to Cape Sable and the Rio Grande, there is no resistance to the United-States authority. Our own armies are fast disbanding, as now useless.

"Thou art beautiful, O Peace!
Thou com'st like summer-beams,
Like the glad golden horn
Of Plenty in our dreams.

Lift up thy holy voice,

It may not be in vain:

The earth's bright page, the golden age, May glad the world again.

Let us love, love on!"

THE GREAT PROBLEM.

But peace has its duties and its dangers no less than war. And, in a crisis like the pres ent, when the great and peculiar problem of national reconstruction is set before us, and questions entirely new in human history are presented for solution, there is an especial demand upon educated men, men trained to the discussion of principles and methods, to address themselves to the most earnest consideration of this problem and its attendant questions. There is a Sphinx in the land, like that which. in monstrous form, and of demoniac ingenuity, desolated old Boeotia. She propounds enig mas, and on the same conditions as her prototype. If we can solve her riddles aright, she perishes; if we cannot, our country is lost. And these questions are no such insignificant puzzles as that proposed of old to Edipus, but some of the deepest problems of national right, duty, and destiny. Here is one of them: "Where has the war left the seceded States Are they in the Union, or out of the Union?

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THE FIRST ALTERNATIVE.

This is a very direct, and apparently a very simple question. But how shall we answer it? Shall we reply as many have done?- "Certainly they are in the Union. The acts of socalled secession, and all proceedings of pretended State authorities thereunder, were mere nullities, and of no force or effect whatever save as they might afford evidence of the treason of their authors. Withdrawal from the Union is an impossibility. Once a State, always a State. There can be no State-suicide."

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The answer seems plausible; but how will it be received by the Sphinx Treason, or, to drop the figure, by those who have the spirit of treason, or sympathy with traitors? It will now be welcomed by them as precisely the answer which they wish to receive. At the commencement of the Rebellion, and so long as there was any hope of its success, they rejected this answer with scorn. "State Sovereignty" and "State Rights" were then their favorite cries. "The Federal Union," they averred, was a mere voluntary association, from which each State had perfect liberty to withdraw whenever it pleased. The General Government had no right to coerce a sovereign State. To attempt this was the height of oppression, of tyranny." But this theory having utterly failed in the war, they now prefer that we should. hold the opposite doctrine; and they are glad to press us to the logical results that follow from the doctrine. "If," say they, "the States which attempted to secede are still in the Union, they are in the Union under the Constitution, and in accordance with its provisions. For our Federal Union exists solely by virtue of the Constitution; and, if we set aside the provisions of the Constitution, we set aside the Constitution itself; and, if we set this aside, we destroy the Union at once. The sole bond of the partnership dissolved, the partners are no longer held together. The socalled seceded States, then, are still in the Union in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution: they are equal co-partners in the great federation, and are entitled to all the rights conferred by the Constitution such upon partners."

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Is not this reasoning of theirs logical? If we admit that no States have actually seceded, and that those which made the attempt are still States in the Union, can we resist this conclusion? Let us then consider what rights these States, if still in the Union, have by the Constitution.

tenth amendment. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In the exercise of these powers, the several States may make and execute laws without any control from the General Government or other States. These laws may be wise or unwise, just or unjust, beneficial or ruinous, philanthropic or oppressive; but still, whether for good or evil, right or wrong, they are exempt from interference. They may provide for the education of all, or may make it a crime to teach a part of the people to read and write; they may confer the privilege of suffrage upon the people generally, or may deny it to large classes, even to a majority; they may allow all to testify in courts of justice, or they may prohibit those of one color from bearing witness against those of another color, thus practically placing the first at the mercy of the others, and for the most part denying them justice in case of fraud, or violence, or even murder; they may guard the freedom of all, or may make one part of the population the serfs of the other, slaves in all but name; nay, they may go farther, and reduce some who are now free to express slavery, and decree that children born hereafter shall be born into bondage; and this legislation must stand alike, whether the general sense and conscience of the country sanction or condemn.

"But," it is said, "the proposed amendment to the Constitution will secure the whole country from slavery hereafter." Yes, if the amendment be adopted, and from slavery in express form. But there may be a serfdom in some respects even worse than slavery itself; an oppression, degradation, and imbrutement of the laborer, in comparison with which slavery, alleviated by household relations and the kindness which an owner feels for his property, may seem a tolerable condition. History presents cases in which the down-trodden poor have asked the privilege of becoming the slaves of their rich neighbors. There is abundant evidence (as witness recent legislation in Tennessee) that a great effort will be made at the South to establish this serfdom, if slavery cannot be retained. But is it yet at all made certain that slavery cannot be retained or restored?

II. RIGHT IN RESPECT TO AMENDMENTS OF THE CONSTITUTION.

This brings us to the consideration of a second right, which the disloyal States have, if they are still States in the Union. They have the same power with an equal number of loyal States in respect to an amendment of the Constitution. For such an amendment, the ratification of three-fourths of the States, through their legislatures or conventions, is required. If the disloyal States are counted, the number of States in the Union is thirty-six; twenty

five loyal, and eleven disloyal. No amendment, then, can be made without the approval of twenty-seven States, or all the States but nine; so that the eleven disloyal States, who have combined in waging so desperate a war for the destruction of the country, and who perhaps hate the Union now worse than ever before, have more than the power requisite to prevent any amendment of the Constitution, even if all the loyal States should be unanimous in its favor. An amendment is now before the people for the removal from the land of our great stain, sin, and curse, the chief blemish upon our institutious, disturber of our Union, author of the war, cause of degradation, ignorance, poverty, ill-will, crime, and suffering. Can the votes of twenty-seven States be secured for this amendment? The loyal States have not all voted upon it; but, even in the intenseness of our war upon slavery, three States counted as loyal voted against it. Is it impossible that the seductions of peace or party management may lead other loyal States to vote the same way? But if, as we hope, they may not, yet three votes of loyal States against the amendment will make five votes in its favor from disloyal States essential for its passage. Can we, then, be assured that those who have fought with such frenzy, sacrificing every thing, for the maintenance of slavery, will now, when amnestied they can express their feelings freely and securely, vote for its destruction? Will they wish so to gratify their conquerors, now hated with more intense bitterness because they are their conquerors? Will they, a proud people, wish so to pass sentence upon their own past conduct as unreasonable?

I know that, in some of these States, small bodies of men, representing mere handfuls of people, have claimed to be legislatures of the States, and, as such, have ratified the proposed amendment. But were they constitutional legislatures of the States; and, if not, had their action any constitutional validity?

If, then, the disloyal States are to be still counted as in the Union, what is the prospect in respect to this amendment, so essential to our full success in the great struggle of the last four years? We may ardently hope for its adoption; but what assurance have we that this hope will become reality?

III. RIGHT IN RESPECT TO DISMEMBERSHIP.

In the third place, no State in the Union can be dismembered without its own consent through its Legislature. Maine and Massachusetts were thus separated in 1820. If, then, Virginia, during these years in which it has been the seat of the rebel government, has been still a State in the Federal Union, was the creation of the State of West Virginiathe setting of this new star in our bannervalid act? It is true that a certain legislature, consisting of West Virginians, approved

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the act; but was this, in any proper sense, a legislature of Virginia according to the Constitution of the State? If not, what becomes of the act of Congress, Dec., 31, 1862, authorizing the new State of West Virginia? Shall we not be compelled to strike out one of the stars of our flag?

IV. RIGHT TO BE REPRESENTED IN CONGRESS.

All the States in the Union have a fourth right that of being represented in Congress by two senators each, and by representatives according to their population, each State being entitled to at least one representative. The Constitution makes no exception whatever to this right; and it leaves to the States the absolute prerogative of determining who of its citizens shall have the elective franchise for choosing, either directly or indirectly, these representatives and senators. Its provisions are these:

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most nu merous branch of the State Legislature." Art. I., sect. 2.

"The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six years." Art. I., sect. 3.

If, then, the disloyal States are still States of the Union, they have the right to choose, through their Legislatures, senators, and, by a popular vote, representatives, who will be entitled, at the next session of Congress, to take their seats at once in the Capitol, just the same as senators and representatives from New Hampshire and Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and Illinois. And neither President nor Congress can prescribe, in the one case any more than in the other, who shall exercise the elective franchise for the choice of these officers. Nor can either the President or Congress require any re-organization of these States preliminary to this election; and any imposition upon voters, by President or Congress, of an oath of amnesty, so called, must be a pure exercise of arbitrary power. Nay, more; if these States did not, by their secession and rebellion, lose their position as States of the Union, then they had a right, during the whole war, if they had pleased, to keep their full quota of senators and representatives in the Congress at Washington, to war upon the North by speeches and votes, as they were doing elsewhere by arms; to oppose and vote down all appropriation of money, and levying of troops, to withstand their assaults; to fetter the hands, and malign the character, of the President, and of all loyal officers; to intrigue with disloyalists at the North (I will not insult a guiltless though poisonous reptile by applying its name

to a Northern traitor), and scatter suspicion and sedition far and wide; to learn and expose all the plans of the Government; to concert more conveniently schemes of conflagration, infection, and rapine for Northern cities, and of explosion for Northern magazines; and to prepare more securely, and with deadlier certainty, plots of assassination for the patriots who stood most in the way of their demoniac designs.

"Monstrous! absurd!" you cry: 66 as if a man whose house had been robbed were bound to give up all his keys to the burglar; as if a poisoned man should take his medicine from the poisoner; as if an army on the battle-field should hire the enemy to furnish them with ammunition and load their guns; as if a beleaguered city must receive and keep within its walls a corps of the besiegers, free, armed, and possessed of all the powers and privileges of citizens." I admit the absurdity; yet these conclusions seem to me to follow inevitably from the premise that the rebel communities of the South have not lost their position as States of the Union.

"But," it is said, "there is ample protection against the admission of senators and representatives from the disloyal States in the prerogative of the Houses of Congress, if they choose to exercise it. The Constitution says that each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members. It may, therefore, refuse to receive members from any State at its pleasure." This is a great exaggeration of the common prerogative of legislative bodies. If a question arises whether a person claiming to be a member of one of the Houses of Congress has been duly elected, or whether the return of his election has been made in proper form, or whether he has the prescribed age, residence, or other qualifications for membership, that house is authorized to decide the question; but it has not the slightest right to say that persons duly elected, returned, and qualified, shall not be received because they come from particular States which are not in sympathy with the majority of the House. If it had, what a convenient method of securing unity would be presented! Do you not remember some majorities in the past that would have rejoiced at the discovery of this mode of keeping out of Congress such troublesome opponents as John Quincy Adams, John P. Hale, and Charles Sumner, and some, perhaps, that would not have been greatly unwilling to keep all New England "out in the cold"? If this prerogative of exclusion were established, what a terrible engine of party warfare it would become!

Such are the conclusions, so fraught with absurdity and peril, to which we are forced, if we adopt the principle that the so-called seceded States are still States of the Union. We start back from them in horror, as from a gulf of ruin.

THE SECOND ALTERNATIVE.

Shall we, then, if we are allowed to amend our answer, try the other horn of the dilemma, and say that the seceded States are out of the Union? We shall be met with the reply: "If these States are out of the Union, they must be so by virtue of their own acts of secession, and the measures which they adopted in confirmation of these acts; for no others have done any thing to put them out of the Union. These acts of theirs, then, even if unjustifiable, must have been valid, creating a separate nationality. Consequently, the war which we have been waging so long, has been, as the confederate government has always contended, an international war, and not, as we have insisted, a civil war, the struggle of a nation to preserve its integrity against rebellion. The Southerners were, therefore, entitled in this war to receive the rights and privileges of belligerents, not only from the nations of Europe, but also from ourselves. Our treatment of the Southern territory as rightfully subject to our government, of Southern properity as forfeited by rebellion, and of Southern men as traitors, has, upon this theory, all been wrong. Jefferson Davis should be esteemed another John Hancock, and Robert E. Lee a second George Washington. And what a long list of patriots in Edmund Ruffin, John B. Floyd, Jacob || Thompson, Howell Cobb, Leonidas Polk, the t Johnstons, the Hills, Beauregard, Longstreet, Ewell, Semmes, Mason and Slidell, Winder: and Turner, and the host of their compeers The great principle upon which the united North carried on the war was one of error and injustice; and the London " Times" was more correct in its view of our national affairs than Abraham Lincoln. We have been stronger than the South, but that makes no difference in respect to the right. It is now our duty humbly. to confess our errors, and to make amends for the injustice in our treatment of that muchabused country."

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We start back again, if not with as much alarm, at least with as keen a sense of absurdity. What, then, shall we do? If either answer opens the way to such a reductio ad absurdum, how is it possible for us, as a nation, to escape the necessity of either self-ruin on the l one side, or self-condemnation on the other? 3

SOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTY.

Let us consider. Is not there here an instance of what logicians call the Fallacy of Equivocation? Is not the word Union employed in two different senses, which need to be carefully distinguished, and the confounding of which has led to our difficulties? When used in a political sense, the expression "The Union" is commonly employed by us as a general or collective term for the United States of America. But the term "The United States "