[257] revolution. And when the so-called state officers elected by it entered upon their duties, they inaugurated a revolution. The subsequent organization of the state of West Virginia and its separation from the state of Virginia were acts of secession. Thus we have, in these movements, insurrection, revolution, and secession. The reader, in his simplicity, may naturally expect to find the government of the United States arrayed, with all its military forces, against these illegitimate proceedings. Oh, no! It made all the difference in the world, with the ministers of that government, ‘whose ox it was that gored by the bull.’ She was the nursing mother to the whole thing, and to insure its vitality fed it; not, like the fabled bird, with her own blood, but by the butchery of the mother of states. The words of the Constitution of the United States applicable to this case are these:
No new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress.1Will any intelligent person assert that the consent of the state of Virginia was given to the formation of this new state, or that the government of Francis H. Pierpont held the true and lawful jurisdiction of the state of Virginia? Yet the Congress of the United States asserted in the act above quoted that ‘the Legislature of Virginia did give its consent to the formation of a new State within the jurisdiction of the State of Virginia.’ This was not true, but was an attempt, by an act of Congress, to aid a fraud and perpetuate a monstrous usurpation. For there is no grant of power to Congress in the Constitution nor in the American theory of government to justify it. If it is said that the government of Francis H. Pierpont was the only one recognized by Congress as the government of the state of Virginia, that does not alter the fact. The recognition of Congress cannot make a state of an organization which is not a state. There is no grant of power to Congress in the Constitution for that purpose. If it is said that the government of Francis H. Pierpont was established by the only qualified voters in the state of Virginia, that is as equally unfounded as the other assertions. Neither the Congress of the United States nor the government of the United States can determine the qualifications of voters at an election for delegates to a state constitional convention, or for the choice of state officers. There was no grant of power either to the President or to Congress for that purpose. All these efforts were usurpations, by which it was sought, through groundless