Committee on the part of the Senate: William P. Fessenden, and others. Committee on the part of the House: Thaddeus Stevens, and others.

Excerpt from Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, at the First Session, Thirty-Ninth Congress On the contrary, we assert that no portion of the people of this country, whether in State or Territory, have the right, while remainin on its soil, to withdraw from or reject the authority of the United States. Fi'hey must obey its laws as paramount, and acknowledge its jurisdiction. They have no right to secede and while they can destroy their State gove cuts, and place them selves beyond the palc of the Union, so far as the exexe of State privileges is concerned, they cannot escape the obligations imposed upon them by the Constitution and the laws, nor im 'r the exercise of national authority. The Constitution, it will be observed, oes not act upon States, as such, but upon the people; while, therefore, the people cannot escape its authority, the States may, through the act of their people, cease to exist in an organized form, and thus dissolve their political relations with the United States. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.