374 WRIGHT— POWER TO MAKE POLITICAL DECISIONS. 



" After reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the 

 United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the 

 American soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced and that 

 the two nations are now^ at war. 



" As war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists 

 by the act of Mexico herself, we are called upon by every consideration of 

 duty and patriotism to vindicate with decision the honor, the rights and the 

 interests of our country. 



" In further vindication of our rights and defense of our territory, 

 I invoke the prompt action of Congress to recognize the existence of the 

 war, and to place at the disposition of the Executive the means of prose- 

 cuting the war with vigor, and thus hastening the restoration of peace." 



The Supreme Court accepted the views of Hamilton and Polk, when 

 in the prize cases, it held that President Lincoln had properly 

 recognized the southern rebellion as war.^^ 



" If a war be made by invasion of a foreign nation, the President is 

 not only authorized but bound to resist force by force. He does not initiate 

 the war, but is bound to accept the challenge without waiting for any 

 special legislative authority. And whether the hostile party be a foreign 

 invader, or States organized in rebellion, it is none the less a war, although 

 the declaration of it be 'unilateral.' Lord Stowell (i Dodson 247) ob- 

 serves, ' If is not the less a war on that account, for war may exist without 

 a declaration on either side. It is so laid down by the best writers on the 

 law of nations. A declaration of war by one country only is not a mere 

 challenge to be accepted or refused at pleasure by the other. . . . 



" This greatest of civil wars was not gradually developed by popular 

 commotion, tumultuous assemblies, or local unorganized insurrections. How- 

 ever long may have been its previous conception, it nevertheless sprung forth 

 suddenly from the parent brain, a Minerva in the full panoply of war. The 

 President was bound to meet it in the shape it presents itself, without wait- 

 ing for Congress to baptize it with a name ; and no name given to it by him 

 or them could change the fact. . . . 



" Whether the President, in fulfilling his duties as Commander-in-Chief 

 in suppressing an insurrection, has met with such armed hostile resistance, 

 and a civil war of such alarming proportions, as will compel him to accord 

 to them the character of belligerents, is a question to be decided by him, 

 and this Court must be governed by the decision and acts of the political 

 department of the government to which this power was intrusted. ' He 

 must determine what degree of force the crisis demands.' The Proclamation 

 of blockade is itself official and conclusive evidence to the Court that a 

 state of war existed which demanded and authorized a recourse to such a 

 measure, under the circumstances peculiar to the case." 



15 The Prize Cases, 2 Black 635, 638. Approved Matthews v McStea, 

 91 U. S. 7 (1875). 



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