272 



CONGEESS, U. S. 



nearly three years in subduing, a position 

 which it never could have attained for itself. 

 It is to acknowledge that the experiment our 

 fathers made, and the institutions under which 

 we have lived and grown, can no longer be 

 maintained by the people ; not that the experi- 

 ment itself, or that the institutions themselves 

 are failures, but that the people to whom their 

 preservation has been intrusted have become 

 unworthy of them, and are lacking in that vir- 

 tue and intelligence which are necessary to en- 

 able them to preserve institutions won for and 

 bequeathed to them by the founders of the 

 Government. 



"The whole scope and plan of the powers 

 of the Government, as ascertained by the Con- 

 stitution, is to operate upon individuals and 

 not States. The Government of the United 

 States enforces obedience to its Constitution 

 and laws, by exacting their rigid observance 

 from individuals and not from States. You 

 have no power under the Constitution to co- 

 erce a State. You have no power under the 

 Constitution to use force against a State as 

 such; but you are coniined in the employment 

 of all the force which belongs to you under the 

 Constitution, to its assertion as against individ- 

 uals and not against States. This very prop- 

 osition, to authorize the Government that was 

 about to be formed, to use force against a State, 

 was made in the Convention that framed the 

 Constitution of the United States, and was 

 postponed without a dissenting voice. In the 

 plan of a Constitution and form of Government 

 submitted to the Convention by Mr. Randolph, 

 in the shape of resolutions, the sixth resolution 

 contained a grant of power 'authorizing an 

 exercise of, the force of the whole against a 

 delinquent State,' and when it came up for con- 

 sideration 



Mr. Madison observed that the more he reflected on 

 the use of force, the more he doubted the practica- 

 bility, the justice, and the efficacy of it, when applied 

 to people collectively and not individually. An union 

 of these State containing such an ingredient seemed 

 to provide for its own destruction. The use of force 

 against a State would look more like a declaration of 

 war than an infliction of punishment ; and would 

 probably be considered by the party attacked as a dis- 

 solution of all previous compacts by which' it might 

 be bound. He hoped that such a system would be 

 framed as might render this unnecessary, and moved 

 that the clause be postponed. This motion was agreed 

 to, nem con. The Madison Papers, vol. 2, p. 761. 



" Here, then, we have the authority which is 

 claimed by the Senator from Ohio denied in the 

 Convention that framed the Constitution, and 

 the nature of the force and against whom it is 

 to be used clearly defined. 



"Now, sir, what are the war powers of the 

 General Government ? They are contained in 

 the Constitution. Congress has the power 

 To declare war, grant letters of marque and repris- 

 al, and make rules concerning captures ot land and 

 water; to raise and support armies; but no appro- 

 priation of money to that use shall be for a longer 

 term than two years; to provide and maintain a 

 Navy ; to make rules for the government and regula- 

 tion of the land and naval forces. 



" That is the extent of the war powers of 

 Congress. When Congress has declared -war, 

 when Congress has raised its army, the mode 

 and manner of conducting that war is intrusted 

 to the Executive and the military authorities of 

 the Government, and they are to be bound in 

 its conduct, by the laws of war. To suppose 

 that a Government created by each State for 

 itself, a Government that could have no force or 

 effect in any single State until it was ratified and 

 adopted by that State for itself, would contain 

 a grant of power to make war upon the State 

 so adopting, is to suppose that the men who 

 created it were wholly irrational. It is to sup- 

 pose that they had learned nothing in the war 

 out of which they had just come. The Gov- 

 ernment of the United States is the child of 

 civil war. It is the creature of civil war. It 

 was framed by men who resorted to civil war 

 for the purpose of severing the tie which united 

 them with the mother country. It was estab- 

 lished upon the principle that there could be a 

 union in the same Government for common 

 purposes between States of different local inter- 

 ests and different local institutions. The prin- 

 ciple that was established by the foundation of 

 this Government was, that a union of States 

 having different interests and dissimilar local 

 institutions could be formed for purposes of 

 common defence. If the power which is pro- 

 posed to be exercised here is exerted, and if 

 it is necessary to be exerted to maintain terri- 

 torial unity, it is a declaration that after seventy 

 years of trial that principle has proven to be 

 a failure, and we are at war in 1864 to destroy 

 what it took seven years of war from 1776 to 

 1783, and six years of peace, to establish. 



"Mr. President, I have no interest in this 

 question of slavery. I dislike to discuss it. I 

 only refer to it because it has been selected as 

 the institution to be annihilated, and because 

 through it State rights are to be stricken down 

 and State sovereignty ignored. The argument 

 that slavery is the cause of the war, that there 

 can be no union with slaveholding States, is an 

 argument against the facts asserted and the 

 principles established by the formation of the 

 Government ; it is an argument against the 

 right of a State to govern itself and to prescribe 

 and regulate within its own jurisdiction its own 

 domestic and internal policy ; it is an argument 

 which, if acquiesced in, must inevitably destroy 

 our present beautiful system of Government 

 and erect upon its ruins a strong central Gov- 

 ernment ; it is an argument tending to consoli- 

 dation of power in the central Government ; 

 it is an argument against any union between 

 States of different geographical interests and of 

 dissimilar local institutions. If we are unable 

 by constitutional means to resist the power of 

 secession and preserve the Union, then has our 

 experiment proven a failure. 



" We have never as a Congress recognized 

 the Confederate States as a belligerent power. 

 If it be true, as the Senator from Ohio says, 

 'that they have won a position beyond the 



