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‘State suicide.’1 Two consequences followed,—first, that their statutes had become lifeless parchments; secondly, that Congress became invested with the same plenitude of power over them as over Territories never yet organized into States.
His conclusion was that the slaves had become free by the extinction of all State laws, including those which supported slavery; and that Congress ought to assume for the present complete jurisdiction over the vacated territory, like any territory belonging to the United States, as an inseparable part thereof, and to hold it as such till it saw fit in its discretion to restore such territory to statehood.
The phrase ‘State suicide’ found little favor; it startled conservative minds; and it went counter to the idea of historical continuity, which is always a national aspiration,—the idea, as Chief-Justice Chase at a later day called it, of ‘an indestructible Union of indestructible States.’
But while Sumner's formula was not accepted, Congress in fact afterwards worked upon his idea in the extra-constitutional proceedings for reconstruction which followed.2 The theory which found most favor was that the States controlled by the rebellion were out of practical relations to the government, to be restored only when Congress admitted them to representation.
The subject of reconstruction first appeared in the Senate in Sumner's resolutions of Feb. 11, 1862,3 which declared that the seceded States had abdicated all rights under the Constitution, and become felo de se, or lapsed; and therefore slavery, as a peculiar local institution, without any origin in the Constitution or in natural right, but dependent solely on local laws, had ceased to exist; and Congress should assume jurisdiction over the vacated territory, and proceed to establish therein republican forms of government.4 These propositions occasioned much
1 ‘Call it suicide, if you will, or suspended animation, or abeyance,—they have practically ceased to exist.’ Speech, May 19, 1862. Works, vol. VII. p. 14.
2 Democratic senators were accustomed to rally Republicans on their later conversion to Sumner's doctrines as to the power of Congress over the rebel States which they had at first repudiated. Hendricks did this in a passage with Sherman and Fessenden, Jan. 30, 1868. (Congressional Globe, p. 860.) Doolittle upbraided (Feb. 24, 1868) Republican senators for deserting him in resisting Sumner's ideas, which he said ‘had not only educated but had Summarized the Senate.’ Works, vol. VI. p. 311.
3 See his speech, July 11, 1867. Works, vol. XI. p. 397.
4 Works, vol. VI pp. 301-318. Harlan of Iowa and Harris of New York introduced at this session radical bills for reconstruction. The latter's bill met Sumner's views; but he took exceptions to some amendments of the judiciary committee which recognized ‘the laws and institutions’ of the seceded States. Congressional Globe, Feb. 17, 1862, p. 843; July 7, Globe, p. 3139; Works, vol. VII. p. 162.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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