nor less than revolution; that the Executive has no right to recognize the secession of a State; that the Constitution has established a perfect government in all its forms, legislative, executive, and judicial, and this government, to the extent of its powers, acts directly upon the individual citizen of every State and executes its own decrees by the agency of its own officers; and, finally, that the Executive cannot be absolved from his duty to execute the laws. But, continued the President, the laws can only be executed in certain prescribed methods, through the agency of courts, marshals, posse comitatus, aided, if necessary, by the militia or land and naval forces. The means and agencies, therefore, fail, and the performance of this duty becomes impraticable, when, as in South Carolina, universal public sentiment has deprived him of courts, marshals, and posse. Present laws being inadequate to overcome a united opposition, even in a single State, Congress alone has the power to decide whether they can be effectually amended.1 1 The logic of the message President Buchanan admitted breaks down by the palpable his own error, and repudiated his omission to state the well-known own doctrine, when on January fact that, though every citizen 2, following, he nominated a of South Carolina, or any other citizen of Pennsylvania for the State, might refuse to accept or office of collector of the port of execute the office of United Charleston, South Carolina. States marshal, or, indeed, any Federal office, the want could be immediately lawfully supplied by appointing any qualified citizen of any other State, who might lawfully and properly lead either a posse, or Federal forces, or State militia, to put down obstruction of the Federal laws, insurrection, or rebellion. Sections two and three of the Act of February 28, 1795, authorize the President, when the execution of the laws is obstructed by insurrection too powerful for courts and marshals, to call forth the militia of any and all the States, first and primarily to "suppress such combinations," and, secondly, "to cause the CH. XXII. CH. XXII. It will be seen from the above summary, that the whole of the President's rambling discussion of the first head of the disunion question resulted logically in three ultimate conclusions: (1) That South Carolina was in revolt; (2) that the Constitution, the laws, and moral obligation all united gave the Government the right to suppress this revolt by executing the laws upon and against the citizens of that State; (3) that certain defects in the laws paralyzed their practical enforcement. Up to this point in his argument, his opinions, whatever may be thought of their soundness, were confined to the legitimate field of executive interpretation, and such as in the exercise of his official discretion he might with undoubted propriety communicate to Congress. But he had apparently failed to satisfy his own conscience in thus summarily reasoning the executive and governmental power laws to be duly executed; and assertion that the army can only follow a marshal and his writ in case of rebellion, is not only unsupported by the language of the act, but utterly refuted by strong implication. The last section repeals a former provision limiting the President's action to cases of insurrection of which United States judges shall have given him notice, and thereby remits him to any and all of his official sources of information. Jackson's famous force bill only provided certain supplementary details; it directly recognized and invoked the great powers of the Act of 1795, and expiring by limitation, left its wholesome plenitude and broad original grant of authority unrepealed and unimpaired. of a young, compact, vigorous, and thoroughly CH. XXII. organized nation of thirty millions of people into sheer nothingness and impotence. How supremely absurd was the whole national panoply of commerce, credit, coinage, treaty power, judiciary, taxation, militia, army and navy, and Federal flag, if, through the mere joint of a defective law, the hollow reed of a secession ordinance could inflict a fatal wound! The President proceeds, therefore, to discuss the second head of the disunion question, by an attempt to formulate and define the powers and duties of Congress with reference to the threatened rebellion. He would not only roll the burden from his own shoulders upon the National Legislature, but he would by volunteer advice instruct that body how it must be borne and disposed of. Addressing Congress, he says in substance: "You may be called upon to decide the momentous question, whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union. . . . The question, fairly stated, is: Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and make war against a State. After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress, or to any other department of the Federal Government. . . It may be safely asserted that the power to make war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit VOL. II.-24 |