634 



PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



mitted a political absurdity. The Judiciary has also 

 given the solemn sanction of its authority to the 

 same view of the case. The Judges of the Supreme 

 Court have included the Southern States in their 

 circuits, and they are constantly, in bane and else- 

 where, exercising jurisdiction which does not belong 

 to them, unless those States are States of the Union. 



If the Southern States are component parts of 

 the Union, the Constitution is the supreme law for 

 them, as it is for all the other States. They are 

 bound to obey it, and so are we. The right of the 

 Federal Government, which is clear and unquestion- 

 able, to enforce the Constitution upon them, implies 

 the correlative obligation on our part to observe its 

 limitations and execute its guarantees. Without the 

 Constitution we are nothing ; by, through, and under 

 the Constitution we are what it makes us. We may 

 doubt the wisdom of the law ; we may not approve 

 its provisions, but we cannot violate it merely be- 

 cause it seems to confine our powers within limits 

 narrower than we could wish. It is not a question 

 of individual, or class, or sectional interest, much 

 less of party predominance, but of duty of high and 

 sacred duty which we are all sworn to perform. If 

 we cannot support the Constitution with the cheer- 

 ful alacrity of those who love and believe in it, we 

 must give to it at least the fidelity of public servants 

 who act under solemn obligations and commands 

 which they dare not disregard. 



The constitutional duty is not the only one which 

 requires the States to be restored. There is another 

 consideration which, though of minor importance, is 

 yet of great weight. On the 22d day of July, 1801, 

 Congress declared, by an almost unanimous vote of 

 both Houses, that the war should be conducted solely 

 for the purpose of preserving the Union, and main- 

 taining the supremacy of the Federal Constitution 

 and laws, without impairing the dignity, equality, 

 and rights of the States or of individuals ; and that 

 when this was done the war should cease. I do not 

 say that this declaration is personally binding on 

 those who joined in making it, any more than indi- 

 vidual members of Congress are personally bound to 

 pay a public debt created under a law for wljich they 

 voted. But it was a solemn, public, official pledge 

 of the national honor, and I cannot imagine upon 

 what grounds the repudiation of it is to be justified. 

 If it be said that we are not bound to keep faith with 

 rebels, let it be remembered that this promise was 

 not made to rebels only. Thousands of true men in 

 the South were drawn to our standard by it, and 

 hundreds of thousands in the North gave their lives 

 in the belief that it would be carried out. It was 

 made on the day after the first great battle of the 

 war had been fought and lost. All patriotic and in- 

 telligent men then saw the necessity of giving such 

 an assurance, and believed that without it the war 

 would end in disaster to our cause. Having given 

 that assurance in the extremity of our peril, the 

 violation of it now, in the day of our power, would 

 be a rude rending of that good faith which holds the 

 moral world together ; our country would cease to 

 have any claim upon the confidence of men ; it 

 would make the war not only a failure, but a fraud. 



Being sincerely convinced that these views are 

 correct, I would be unfaithful to my duty if I did not 

 recommend the repeal of the acts of Congress which 

 place ten of the Southern States under the domina- 

 tion of military masters. If calm reflection shall 

 satisfy a majority of your honorable bodies that the 

 acts referred to are not only a violation of the na- 

 tional faith, but in direct conflict with the Constitu- 

 tion, I dare not permit myself to doubt that you will 

 immediately strike them from the statute-book. 



To demonstrate the unconstitutional character of 

 those acts, I need do no more than refer to their 

 general provisions. It must be seen at once that 

 they are not authorized. To dictate what alterations 

 shall be made in the constitutions of the several 

 States ; to control the elections of State legislators 



and State officers, members of Congress and electors 

 of President and Vice-President, by arbitrarily de- 

 claring who shall vote and who shall be excluded 

 from that privilege ; to dissolve State Legislatures or 

 prevent them from assembling; to dismiss judges 

 and other civil functionaries of the State, and ap- 

 point others without regard to State law ; to organize 

 and operate all the political machinery of the States ; 

 to regulate the whole administration of their domestic 

 and local affairs according to the mere will of strange 

 and irresponsible agents, sent among them for that 

 purpose these are powers not granted to the Fed- 

 eral Government, or to any one of its branches. Not 

 being granted, we violate our trust by assuming 

 them as palpably as we would by acting in the face 

 of a positive interdict; for the Constitution forbids 

 us to do whatever it does not affirmatively authorize 

 either by express words or by clear implication. If 

 the authority we desire to use does not come to us 

 through the Constitution, we can exercise it only by 

 usurpation, and usurpation is the most dangerous of 

 political crimes. By that crime the enemies of free 

 government in all ages have worked out their de- 

 signs against public liberty and private right. It 

 leads directly and immediately to the establishment 

 of absolute rule; for undelegated power is always 

 unlimited and unrestrained. 



The acts of Congress in question are not only ob- 

 jectionable for their assumption of ungranted power, 

 but many of their provisions are in conflict with the 

 direct prohibitions of the Constitution. The Consti- 

 tution commands that a republican form of govern- 

 ment shall be guaranteed to all the States ; that no 

 person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property 

 without due process of law, arrested without a 

 judicial warrant, or punished without a fair trial be- 

 fore an impartial jury; that the privilege of habeas 

 corpus shall not be denied in time of peace; and 

 that no bill of attainder shall be passed, even against 

 a single individual. Yet the system of measures 

 established by these acts of Congress does totalty 

 subvert and destroy the form, as well as the sub- 

 stance, of republican government in the ten States to 

 which they apply. It binds them hand and foot in 

 absolute slavery, and subjects them to a strange and 

 hostile power, more unlimited and more likely to be 

 abused than any other now known among civilized 

 men. It tramples down all those rights in which the 

 essence of liberty consists, and which a free govern- 

 ment is always most careful to protect. It denies 

 the Jtdbeas corpus and the trial by jury. Personal 

 freedom, property, and life, if assailed by the passion, 

 the prejudice, or the rapacity of the ruler, have no 

 security whatever. It has the effect of a bill of at- 

 tainder, or bill of pains and penalities, not upon a 

 few individuals, but upon whole masses, including 

 the millions who inhabit the subject States, and even 

 their unborn children. These wrongs, being ex- 

 pressly forbidden, cannot be constitutionally inflict- 

 ed upon any portion of our people, no matter how 

 they may have come within our jurisdiction, and no 

 matter whether they live in States, Territories, or 

 districts. 



I have no desire to save from the proper and just 

 consequences of their great crime those who en- 

 gaged in rebellion against the Government; but as a 

 mode of punishment, the measures under considera- 

 tion are the most unreasonable that could be invented. 

 Many of those people are perfectly innocent ; many 

 kept their fidelity to the Union untainted to the last; 

 many were incapable of any legal offence ; a large 

 proportion even of the persons able to bear arms 

 were forced into rebellion against their will ; and of 

 those who are guilty with their own consent, the de- 

 grees of guilt are as various as the shades of their 

 character and temper. But these acts of Congress 

 confound them all together in one common doom. 

 Indiscriminate vengeance upon classes, sects, and 

 parties, or upon whole communities, for offences 

 committed by a portion of them against the govern- 



