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Our legislators and theorizers have been puttering and quibbling upon the idea
It should be remembered that these States as re-created — not re-constructed — are mere creatures of the national power. Our legislators and theorizers have been puttering and quibbling upon the idea, that because there can be no secession, or dissolution of the Union, upon any principle of reserved right, therefore there can be no destruction of the States. By a flimsy fiction it is held that Georgia was a State of the Union at the very time when a hostile government was organized there, dominated every foot of her territory, exacted allegiance snd tribute from every inhabitant of her soil, and furnished her contingent for armed resistance to the United States.
It is a shallow trick of the sciolist. The act of rebellion, when it is so far successful as to overturn the government of a State of this Union, and establish a hostile one in its stead, destroys that State...
— from a letter addressed to a “Wise Man” by Comfort Servosse, on the (needed) role of the National Government in securing the safety and well-being of, and color-blind justice for freedmen in the South, in
Albion Winegar Tourgée, A Fool’s Errand, by One of the Fools (1879; this edition 1880) : 232
(1879) : 212 (this being one of several scans of 1879 edition at hathitrust
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Albion Winegar Tourgée (1838-1905), wikipedia