CONGRESS, U. S. 



241 



man who lacks judgment; and his error of 

 judgment might lead him into improper meas- 

 ures. Are not those measures to be opposed, 

 because you do not impugn the motive of the 

 man who has committed it ? That is one point 

 on which I think the senator's argument has 

 led him into error." 



Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, followed in a lengthy 

 speed), saying : " In this day of bold and ruth- 

 less innovation, it has also been claimed that 

 the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus 

 is an executive and not a legislative power ? Is 

 there anything more untrue than that position ? 

 What ! a right to repeal a law, to dispense with, 

 to suspend a law temporarily, is an executive 

 power ? Sir, what is the essence and nature of 

 an executive power in our Government? It is 

 to execute the law, to enforce the law ; not to 

 throw obstructions in the way of the law, and 

 to defy its execution. "Why, sir, this ques- 

 tion was tested two centuries ago in England. 

 The Stuarts claimed the power to suspend the 

 law, to dispense with the law ; and the claim 

 and exercise of this high prerogative, even in 

 that monarchical Government, brought one of 

 them to the block, and lost to the other his 

 crown and sent him an exile into foreign coun- 

 tries. Have we come to this, that an act of 

 tyranny, of oppression, which in England lost 

 a head to one monarch and a diadem to 

 another, shall be claimed as the constitutional 

 right of the President of the United States ? 

 Sir, here is a short argument upon this ques- 

 tion of habeas corpus, which, to my mind and 

 judgment, is unanswerable : the power to pass 

 a law is a legislative power, it is not an execu- 

 tive one ; the power to repeal a law is a legis- 

 lative power, it is not an executive one. What 

 is the suspension of a law but its temporary 

 repeal? The only executive function in rela- 

 tion to a law is to enforce it. What process 

 of reasoning, what rule of logic, would allow 

 the President of the United States the power 

 to suspend a law that would not give him the 

 greater power of repealing it ? 



" The President and all men who do these 

 acts are trespassers trespassers by the law. 

 They may be sued as trespassers, and when 

 they are, they can give the whole state of fact 

 in evidence before the jury in mitigation of 

 damages ; and in such cases as have occurred 

 and many others, the verdict of the jury would 

 be that the plaintiff recover one cent. But, 

 sir, this Congress, with all its fancied power, 

 with all the power which it may imagine ap- 

 pertains to it in time of war, can pass no law 

 that would screen the President of the United 

 States from an action of trespass in such a state 

 of fact as that, in the name of the humblest cit- 

 izen of America. No, sir ; any act which you 

 may pass on the subject being pleaded as a de- 

 fence, would be laughed at by a lawyer engaged 

 in the prosecution, and would be hooted in 

 scorn by any man sitting as a judge who had 

 the legal learning and independence that should 

 belong to a court. 



VOL. III. 16 A 



" I am no prophet, but I will tell you where 

 we are drifting to. The power of the nation 

 and of this Government is in the valley of the 

 Mississippi, and that power is going to enlarge 

 from day to day until it overshadows the 

 Pacific and the Atlantic slopes. The people of 

 the great West and the Northwest understand 

 this Constitution, the masses of them. They 

 have given their minds and their hearts to its 

 support. They will, when it becomes neces- 

 sary, give their lives, too, to this holy cause, 

 and they will be willing martyrs in its defence 

 and for its preservation. No Utopian dream 

 for the freedom of the negro will ever lure or 

 corrupt them from their allegiance to the Con- 

 stitution. They know that the State of Ken- 

 tucky has as much right to continue that con- 

 dition of the African race, domestic slavery, as 

 Massachusetts or Rhode Island had to abolish 

 it. The Constitution is so written. That is its 

 provision ; that is its spirit. Away with this 

 nonsense, that slavery has been the cause of 

 the war. 



"How many wars have been waged, the 

 Christian religion being the pretext ! What 

 oceans of blood have been shed in the name of 

 our holy religion, and to propagate the faith 

 that was given to us by the Redeemer of the 

 world ! Will you charge the Christian religion 

 with having caused these wars, and say that 

 therefore the Christian religion is to be put 

 down? What caused the war of 1812? Was 

 it not the violation of ' free trade and sailors' 

 rights ? ' Was it not that England claimed to 

 be the mistress of the seas, and to exercise upon 

 the decks of our vessels the ruthless power of 

 dragging native citizens from under the stars 

 and stripes, and making them fight against 

 their country under the union jack? You 

 might as well say, destroy the foreign com- 

 merce of the United States and the shipping of 

 the Eastern States, because this commerce and 

 shipping was the cause of that war." 



The question was now taken on laying the 

 resolution on the table, and decided as follows : 



YEAS Messrs. Anthony, Arnold, Browning, 

 Chandler, Clark, Collamer, Dixon, Doolittle, Fessen- 

 den, Field, Foot, Foster, Grimes, Hale, Harlan, Harris, 

 Howard, Howe, King, Lane of Kansas, Merrill, Sum- 

 ner, Ten Eyck, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson, Wilmot, 

 Wilson of Massachusetts, and Wright 29. 



NAYS Messrs. Bayard, Carlile, Cowan, Davis, 

 Harding, Henderson, Kennedy, Nesmith, Powell, Kice, 

 Saulsbury, Willey, and Wilson of Missouri 13. 



In the House, on December 8th, Mr. Stevens, 

 of Pennsylvania, introduced a bill to indemnify 

 the President and other persons for suspending 

 the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and 

 acts done in pursuance thereof, which was read. 

 Objection was made to the second reading, 

 which was not sustained. The bill was then 

 put on its passage. 



Mr. Olin, of New York, said : " I hold that 

 the President had the authority by law, and 

 was the proper tribunal, to exercise all the 

 power that he has exercised in suspending 



