constituted, is a body constitutionally competent to legislate for the whole country, is the most important of all practical questions. Let us see how the case stands.

The Constitution, ratified by the people of all the States, establishes a government of sovereign powers, supreme over the whole land, and the people of no State can rightly pass from under its authority except by the consent of the people of all the States, with whom it is bound by the most solemn and binding of contracts. The Rebel States broke, in fact, the contract they could not break in right. Assembled in conventions of their people, they passed ordinances of secession, withdrew their Senators and Representatives from Congress, and began the war by assailing a fort of the United States. The Secessionists had trusted to the silence of the Constitution in relation to the act they performed. A State in the American Union, as distinguished from a Territory, is constitutionally a part of the government to which it owes allegiance, and the seceded States had refused to be parts of the government, and had forsworn their allegiance. By the Constitution, the United States, in cases of "domestic violence" in a State, is to interfere, "on application of the Legislature, or of the Executive when the Legislature cannot be convened." But in this case legislatures, executives, conventions of the people, were all violators of the domestic peace, and of course made no application for interference. By the Constitution, Congress is empowered to suppress insurrections; but this might be supposed to mean insurrections like Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania, and not to cover the action of States seceding from the Congress which is thus empowered. The seceders, therefore, felt somewhat as did the absconding James II. when he flung the Great Seal into the Thames, and thought he had stopped the machinery of the English government.

Mr. Buchanan, then President of the United States, admitted at once that the Secessionists had done their work in such a way that, though they had done wrong, the government was powerless to compel them to do right. And here the matter should have rested, if the government established by the Constitution was such a government as Mr. Johnson's supporters now declare it to be. If it is impotent to prescribe terms of peace in relation to insurgent States, it is certainly impotent to make war on insurgent States. If insurgent States recover their former constitutional rights in laying down their arms, then there was no criminality in their taking them up; and if there was no criminality in their taking them up, then the United States was criminal in the war by which they were forced to lay them down. On this theory we have a government incompetent to legislate for insurgent States, because lacking their representatives, waging against them a cruel and unjust war. And this is the real theory of the defeated Rebels and Copperheads who formed the great mass of the delegates to the Johnson Convention. Should they get into power, they would feel themselves logically justified in annulling, not only all the acts of the "Rump Congress" since they submitted, but all the acts of the Rump Congresses during the time they had a Confederate Congress of their own. They may deny that this is their intention; but what intention to forego the exercise of an assumed right, held by those who are out of power, can be supposed capable of limiting their action when they are in?

But if the United States is a government having legitimate rights of sovereignty conferred upon it by the people of all the States, and if, consequently, the attempted secession of the people of one or more States only makes them criminals, without impairing the sovereignty of the United States, then the government, with all its powers, remains with the representatives of the loyal peo

ple. By the very nature of government as government, the rights and privileges guaranteed to citizens are guaranteed to loyal citizens; the rights and privileges guaranteed to States are guaranteed to loyal States; and loyal citizens and loyal States are not such as profess a willingness to be loyal after having been utterly worsted in an enterprise of gigantic disloyalty. The organic unity and continuity of the government would be broken by the return of disloyal citizens and Rebel States without their going through the process of being restored by the action of the government they had attempted to subvert; and the power to restore carries with it the power to decide on the terms of restoration. And when we speak of the government, we are not courtly enough to mean by the expression simply its executive branch. The question of admitting and implicitly of restoring States, and of deciding whether or not States have a republican form of government, are matters left by the Constitution to the discretion of Congress. As to the Rebel States now claiming representation, they have succumbed, thoroughly exhausted, in one of the costliest and bloodiest wars in the history of the world, a war which tasked the resources of the United States more than they would have been tasked by a war with all the great powers of Europe combined, a war which, in 1862, had assumed such proportions, that the Supreme Court decided that it gave the United States the same rights and privileges which the government might exercise in the case of a national and foreign war. The inhabitants of the insurgent States being thus judicially declared public enemies as well as Rebels, there would seem to be no doubt at all that the victorious close of actual hostilities could not deprive the government of the power of deciding on the terms of peace with public enemies. The government of the United States found the insurgent States thoroughly revolutionized and disorganized, with no State governments which could be recognized

without recognizing the validity of treason, and without the power or right to take even the initial steps for State reorganization. They were practically out of the Union as States; their State governments had lapsed; their population was composed of Rebels and public enemies, by the decision of the Supreme Court. Under such circumstances, how the Commander-in-Chief, under Congress, of the forces of the United States could re-create these defunct States, and make it mandatory on Congress to receive their delegates, has always appeared to us one of those mysteries of unreason which require faculties either above or below humanity to accept. In addition to this fundamental objection, there was the further one, that almost all of the delegates were Rebels presidentially pardoned into "loyal men," were elected with the idea of forcing Congress to repeal the test oath, and were incapacitated to be legislators even if they had been sent from loyal States. The few who were loyal men in the sense that they had not served the Rebel government, were still palpably elected by constituents who had; and the character of the constituency is as legitimate a subject of Congressional inquiry as the character of the representative.

It not being true, then, that the twenty-two hundred thousand loyal voters who placed Mr. Johnson in office, and whom he betrayed, have no means by their representatives in Congress to exert a controlling power in the reconstruction of the Rebel communities, the question comes up as to the conditions which Congress has imposed. It always appeared to us that the true measure of conciliation, of security, of mercy, of justice, was one which would combine the principle of universal amnesty, or an amnesty nearly universal, with that of universal, or at least of impartial suffrage. In regard to amnesty, the amendment to the Constitution which Congress has passed disqualifies no Rebels from voting, and only disqualifies them from holding office when they have hap

In

pened to add perjury to treason. regard to suffrage, it makes it for the political interest of the South to be just to its colored citizens, by basing representation on voters, and not on population, and thus places the indulgence of class prejudices and hatreds under the penalty of a corresponding loss of political power in the Electoral College and the National House of Representatives. If the Rebel States should be restored without this amendment becoming a part of the Constitution, then the recent Slave States will have thirty Presidential Electors and thirty members of the House of Representatives in virtue of a population they disfranchise, and the vote of a Rebel white in South Carolina will carry with it more than double the power of a loyal white in Massachusetts or Ohio. The only ground on which this disparity can be defended is, that as "one Southerner is more than a match for two Yankees," he has an inherent, continuous, unconditioned right to have this superiority recognized at the ballot-box. Indeed, the injustice of this is so monstrous, that the Johnson orators find it more convenient to decry all conditions of representation than to meet the incontrovertible reasons for exacting the condition which bases representation on voters. Not to make it a part of the Constitution would be, in Mr. Shellabarger's vivid illustration, to allow "that Lee's vote should have double the elective power of Grant's; Semmes's double that of Farragut's; Booth's — did he live double that of Lincoln's, his victim!"

In

It is also to be considered that these thirty votes would, in almost all future sessions of Congress, decide the fate of the most important measures. 1862 the Republicans, as Congress is now constituted, only had a majority of twenty votes. In alliance with the Northern Democratic party, the South with these thirty votes might repeal the Civil Rights Bill, the principle of which is embodied in the proposed amendment. It might assume the Rebel debt, which is repudiated in that

amendment. It might even repudiate the Federal debt, which is affirmed in that amendment. We are so accustomed to look at the Rebel debt as dead beyond all power of resurrection, as to forget that it amounts, with the valuation of the emancipated slaves, to some four thousand millions of dollars. If the South and its Northern Democratic allies should come into power, there is a strong probability that a measure would be brought in to assume at least a portion of this debt, - say two thousand millions. The Southern members would be nearly a unit for assumption, and the Northern Democratic members would certainly be exposed to the most frightful temptation that legislators ever had to resist. Suppose it were necessary to buy fifty members at a million of dollars apiece, that sum would only be two and a half per cent of the whole. Suppose it were necessary to give them ten millions apiece, even that would only be a deduction of twenty-five per cent from a claim worthless without their votes. The bribery might be conducted in such a way as to elude discovery, if not suspicion, and the measure would certainly be trumpeted all over the North as the grandest of all acts of statesmanlike “conciliation," binding the South to the Union in indissoluble bonds of interest. amendment renders the conversion of the Rebel debt into the most enormous of all corruption funds an impossibility.

The

But the character and necessity of the amendment are too well understood to need explanation, enforcement, or defence. If it, or some more stringent one, be not adopted, the loyal people will be tricked out of the fruits of the war they have waged at the expense of such unexampled sacrifices of treasure and blood. It never will be adopted unless it be practically made a condition of the restoration of the Rebel States; and for the unconditioned restoration of those States the President, through his most trusted supporters, has indicated his intention to venture a coup d'état. This threat has failed doubly

of its purpose. The timid, whom it was expected to frighten, it has simply scared into the reception of the idea that the only way to escape civil war is by the election of over a hundred and twenty Republican Representatives to the Fortieth Congress. The courageous, whom it was intended to defy, it has only exasperated into more strenuous efforts against the insolent renegade who had the audacity to make it.

Everywhere in the loyal States there is an uprising of the people only paralleled by the grand uprising of 1861. The President's plan of reconstruction having passed from a policy into a conspiracy, his chief supporters are now not so much his partisans as his accomplices; and against him and his accomplices the people will this autumn indignantly record the most overwhelmning of verdicts.

HEN we consider the conditions

WHEN

Hunder which the art of successful line-engraving is attained, the amount and quality of artistic knowledge implied, the years of patient, unwearied application imperiously demanded, the numerous manual difficulties to be overcome, and the technical skill to be acquired, it is not surprising that the names of so few engravers should be pre-eminent and familiar.

In our own country, at least, the instinct and habit of the people do not favor the growth and perfection of an art only possible under such conditions.

So fully and satisfactorily, however, have these demands been met in Marshall's lineengraving of the head of Abraham Lincoln, executed after Mr. Marshall's own painting, that we are induced to these preliminary thoughts as much by a sense of national pride as of delight and surprise.

Our admiration of the engraving is first due to its value as a likeness; for it is only when the heart rests from a full and satisfied contemplation of the face endeared to us all, that we can regard it for its artistic worth.

Mr. Marshall did not need this last work, to rank him at the head of American engravers; for his portraits of Washington and Fenimore Cooper had done that already; but it has lifted him to a place with the foremost engravers of the world.

The greatness and glory of his success, in this instance, are to be measured by the inherent difficulties in the subject itself.

The intellectual and physical traits of

Abraham Lincoln were such as the world had never seen before. Original, peculiar, and anomalous, they seemed incapable of analysis and classification.

While the keen, comprehensive intellect within that broad, grand forehead was struggling with the great problems of national fate, other faculties of the same organization, strongly marked in the lower features of his face, seemed to be making light of the whole matter.

His character and the physical expression of it were unique, and yet made up of the most complex elements; - simple, yet incomprehensible; strong, yet gentle; inflexible, yet conciliating; human, yet most rare; the strangest, and yet for all in all the most lovable, character in history.

To represent this man, to embody these characteristics, was the work prescribed the artist. Instead of being fetters, these contradictions seem to have been incentives to the artist. Justice to himself, as to an American who loved Lincoln, and justice to the great man, the truest American of his time, appear also to have been his inspiration.

Neglected now, this golden opportunity might be lost forever, and the future be haunted by an ideal only, and never be familiarized with the plain, good face we knew. For what could the future make of all these caricatures and uncouth efforts at portraiture, rendered only more gro tesque when stretched upon the rack of a thousand canvases? No less a benefactor

to art than to humanity is he who shall deliver the world of these.

The artist has chosen, with admirable judgment, a quiet, restful, familiar phase of Mr. Lincoln's life, with the social and genial sentiments of his nature at play, rather than some more impressive and startling hour of his public life, when a victory was gained, or an immortal sentence uttered at Gettysburg or the Capitol, or when, as the great Emancipator, he walked with his liberated children through the applauding streets of Richmond. It was tempting to paint him as President, but triumphant to represent him as a man.

Though the face is wanting in the crowning glory of the dramatic, the romantic, the picturesque, elements so fascinating to an artist, we still feel no loss in the absence of these; for Mr. Marshall has found abundant material in the rich and varied • qualities that Mr. Lincoln did possess, and has treated them with the loftier sense of justice and truth. He has employed no adventitious agencies to give brilliancy or emphasis to any salient point in the character of the man he portrays; he has treated Mr. Lincoln as he found him; he has interpreted him as he would have interpreted himself; in inspiration, in execution, and in result, he thought of none other, he labored for none other, he has given us none other, than simple, honest Abraham Lincoln.

Were all the biographies and estimates of the President's character to be lost, it would seem as if, from this picture alone,

the distinguishing qualities of his head and heart might be saved to the knowledge of the future; for a rarer exhibition seems impossible of the power of imparting inner spiritual states to outward physical expression.

As a work of art, we repeat, this is beyond question the finest instance of line-engraving yet executed on this continent. Free from carelessness or coarseness, it is yet strong and emphatic; exquisitely finished, yet without painful over-elaboration; with no weary monotony of parallel lines to fill a given space, and no unrelieved masses of shade merely because here must the shadow fall.

As a likeness, it is complete and final. Coming generations will know Abraham Lincoln by this picture, and will tenderly and lovingly regard it; for all that art could do to save and perpetuate this lamented man has here been done. What it lacks, art is incapable to express; what it has lost, memory is powerless to restore.

There is, at least, some temporary solace to a bereaved country in this, — that so much has been saved from the remorseless demands of Death; though the old grief will ever come back to its still uncomforted heart, when it turns to that tomb by the Western prairie, within whose sacred silence so much sweetness and kindly sympathy and unaffected love have passed away, and the strange pathos, that we could not understand, and least of all remove, has faded forever from those sorrowful eyes.

Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. The Story of a Picture. By F. B. CARPENTER. New York: Hurd and Houghton.

THE grandeur which can survive proximity was peculiarly Abraham Lincoln's. Had that great and simple hero had a valet, it is hard to conceive of him as so attended, he must still have been a hero even to the eye grown severe in dusting clothes and brushing shoes. Indeed, first

and last, he was subjected to very critical examination by the valet-spirit throughout the world; and he seems to have passed it triumphantly, for all our native valets, North and South, as well as those of the English press, have long since united in honoring him.

We see him in this book of Mr. Carpenter's to that advantage which perfect unaffectedness and sincerity can never lose. It is certainly a very pathetic figure, however, that the painter presents us, and not