PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



ome consideration was given to the questions of pow- 

 er ami jm>prk'ty before this matter was acted upon. 

 The whole of the laws which were required to be faith- 

 fully executed were being resisted, and failing of exe- 

 cuti'on in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be 

 allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been 

 perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary 

 to their execution some single law, made in such ex- 

 treme tenderness of the citizen's liberty, that practi- 

 cally it relieves more of the guiltv than of the innocent, 

 should to a very limited extent be violated? To state 

 the question more directly : are all the laws but one to 

 go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces, 

 lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would 

 not the official oath be broken if the Government 

 should be overthrown, when it was believed that disre- 

 garding the single law would tend to preserve it ? But 

 it was not believed that this question was presented. It 

 at believed that any law was violated. The pro- 

 vision of the Constitution that " the privilege of the 

 writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless 

 when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public 

 safety may require it," is equivalent to a provision is 

 a provision that such privilege may be suspended 

 when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety 

 does require it. It was decided that we have a case 

 of rebellion, and that the public safety does require 

 the qualified suspension of the privilege of the writ 

 which was authorized to be made. Now, it is insisted 

 that Congress, and not the Executive, is vested with 

 this power. But the Constitution itself is silent as to 

 whicn or who is to exercise the power; and as the 

 provision was plainly made for a dangerous emer- 

 gency, it cannot be believed the framers of the in- 

 strument intended that in every case the danger 

 should run its course until Congress could be called 

 together ; the very assembling of which might be pre- 

 vented, as was intended in this case, by the rebellion. 



Xo more extended argument is now offered, as an 

 opinion, at some length, will probably be presented by 

 the Attorney-General. Whether there shall be any 

 legislation upon the subject, and if any, what, is sub- 

 mitted entirely to the better judgment of Congress. 



The forbearance of this Government had been so 

 extraordinary, and so long-continued, as to lead some 

 foreign nations to shape their action as if they sup- 

 posed the early destruction of our national Cnio'n was 

 probable. While this, on discovery, gave the Execu- 

 tive some concern, he is now happy to say that the 

 sovereignty and rights of the United States are now 

 everywhere practically respected by foreign Powers ; 

 and a general sympathy with the country is manifest- 

 ed throughout the world. 



The nports of the Secretaries of the Treasury, War, 

 and the Navy, will give the information in detail 

 deemed necessary and convenient for your delibera- 

 tion and action ; while the Executive and all the De- 

 partments will stand ready to supply omissions, or to 

 communicate new facts considered important for you 

 to know. 



It is now recommended that you give the legal 

 means for making this contest a short and decisive 

 one; that you place at the control of the Government, 

 for the work, at least four hundred thousand men. and 

 $400,000,000. That number of men is about one-tenth 

 of those of proper ages within the regions where, ap- 

 parently, all are willing to engage ; an3 the sum is less 

 than a twenty-third part of the money value owned by 

 the men who seem ready to devote the whole. A debt 

 ,000,000 now, is a less sum per head than was 

 the debt of our Revolution when we came out of that 

 struggle ; and the money value in the country now 

 bears even a greater proportion to what it was then, 

 than does the~population. Surely each man has as 

 strong a motive now to preserve our liberties, as each 

 had then to establish them. 



A right result, at this time, will be worth more to 

 the world than ten times the men and ten times the 

 money. The evidence reaching us from the country 

 leaves no doubt that the material for the work is abun- 

 dant, and that it needs only the band of legislation to 



give it legal sanction, and the hand of the Executive to 

 give it practical shape and efficiency. One of the 

 greatest perplexities of the Government is to avoid re- 

 ceiving troops faster than it can provide for them. In a 

 word, the people will save their Govermnent if the Gov- 

 ernment itself will do its part only indifferentlv well. 



It might seem, at first thought, to be of little differ- 

 ence whether the present movement at the South be 

 called " secession, or " rebellion." The movers, how- 

 ever, will understand the difference. At the beginning 

 they knew they could never raise their treason to any 

 respectable magnitude by any name which implies vio- 

 lation of law. They knew their people possessed as much 

 of moral sense, as much of devotion to law and order, and 

 as much pride in, and reverence for, the history and Gov- 

 ernment of their common country, as any other civilized 

 and patriotic people. They knew they could make no 

 advancement directly in the teeth of these strong and 

 noble sentiments. Accordingly they commenced by 

 an insidious debauching of the public mind. They 

 invented an ingenious sophism, which, if conceded, 

 was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the 

 incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union. The 

 sophism itself is : that any State of the Union may, con- 

 sistently with the national Constitution, and therefore 

 lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union with- 

 out the consent of tfie Union or of any other State. 

 The little disguise that the supposed right is to be 

 exercised only for just cause, themselves to be ihe sole 

 judge of its justice, is too thin to merit any notice. 



With rebellion thus sugar-coated, they have been 

 drugging the public mind of their section for more 

 than thirty years, and until at length they have brought 

 many good" men to a willingness to take up arms 

 against the Government the day after some assemblage 

 of men have enacted the farcical pretence of taking 

 their State out of the Union, who could have been 

 brought to no such thing the day before. 



This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of 

 its currency from the assumption that there is some 

 omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a 

 State to each State of our Federal Union. Our 

 States have neither more nor less power than that re- 

 served to them in the Union by the Constitution no 

 one of them ever having been a State out of the Union. 

 The original ones passed into the Union even before 

 they cast off their British colonial dependence; and 

 the new ones each came into the Union directly from 

 a condition of dependence, excepting Texas. And 

 even Texas, in its temporary independence, was never 

 designated a State. The new ones only took the des- 

 ignation of States on coming into the Union, while 

 that name was first adopted by the old ones in and by 

 the Declaration of Independence. Therein the " United 

 Colonies" were declared to be "free and independent 

 States ;" but, even then, the object plainly was not to 

 declare their independence of one another, or of the 

 Union, but directly the contrary; as their mutual 

 pledge, and their mutual action, before, at the time, 

 and afterwards, abundantly show. The express plight- 

 ing of faith by each and all of the original thir- 

 teen in the Articles of Confederation, two years later, 

 that the Union shall be perpetual, is most conclusive. 

 Having never been States, either in substance or in 

 name, outside of the Union, whence this magical om- 

 nipotence of "State rights," asserting a claim of power 

 to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said 

 about the "sovereignty" of the States; but the word, 

 even, is not in the national Constitution; nor, as is 

 .believed, in any of the State constitutions. What is 

 "sovereignty," in the political sense of the term? 

 Would if be far wrong to define it " apolitical com- 

 munity, without a political superior ? " Tested by this, 

 no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sov- 

 ereignty. And even Texas gave up the character on 

 coming into the Union ; by which act she acknowledg- 

 ed the Constitution of the United States and the laws 

 and treaties of the United States made in pursuance 

 of the Constitution, to be, for her, the supreme law of 

 the land. The States have their status in the Union, 

 and they have no other legal siatus. IS they break 



