Following “The Federalist” is the eminent commentator already cited, who insists that “it is too much to expect that a free people would confide to a single magistrate, however respectable, the sole authority to act conclusively, as well as exclusively, upon the subject of treaties”; and that, “however proper it may be in a monarchy, there is no American statesman but must feel that such a prerogative in an American President would be inexpedient and dangerous,”—that “it would be inconsistent with that wholesome jealousy which all republics ought to cherish of all depositaries of power”; and then he adds:—
“The check which acts upon the mind, from the consideration that what is done is but preliminary, and requires the assent of other independent minds to give it a legal conclusiveness, is a restraint which awakens caution and compels to deliberation.”[85]
The learned author then dwells with pride on the requirement of the Constitution, which, while confiding the power to the Executive Department, “guards it from serious abuse by placing it under the ultimate superintendence of a select body of high character and high responsibility”; and then, after remarking that “the President is the immediate author and finisher of all treaties,” he concludes, in decisive words, that “no treaty so formed becomes binding upon the country, unless it receives the deliberate assent of two thirds of the Senate.”[86]
Nothing can be more positive. Therefore, even at the expense of repetition, I insist, that, as the power to declare war is under the safeguard of Congress with the concurrence of the President, so is the power to make a treaty in the President with the concurrence of two thirds of the Senate,—but the act of neither becomes binding without this concurrence. Thus, on grounds of authority, as well as of reason, is it clear that the undertaking of the President to employ the War Powers without the authority of Congress was void, and every employment of these War Powers in pursuance thereof was a usurpation.
If the President were a king, with the kingly prerogative either to declare war or to make treaties, he might do what he has done; but being only President, with the limited powers established by the Constitution, he cannot do it. The assumption in the Dominican treaty is exceptional and abnormal, being absolutely without precedent. The treaty with France in 1803 for the cession of Louisiana contained no such assumption; nor did the treaty with Spain in 1819 for the cession of Florida; nor did the treaty with Mexico in 1848, by which the title to Texas and California was assured; nor did the treaty with Mexico in 1853, by which new territory was obtained; nor did the treaty with Russia in 1867 for the cession of her possessions in North America. In none of these treaties was there any such assumption of power. The Louisiana treaty stipulated that possession should be taken by the United States “immediately after the ratification of the present treaty by the President of the United States, and in case that of the First Consul shall have been previously obtained.”[87] The Florida treaty stipulated “six months after the exchange of the ratification of this treaty, or sooner, if possible.”[88] But these stipulations, by which possession on our part, with corresponding responsibilities, was adjourned till after the exchange of ratifications, were simply according to the dictate of reason, in harmony with the requirement of our Constitution.
The case of Texas had two stages: first, under an unratified treaty; and, secondly, under a Joint Resolution of Congress. What was done under the latter had the concurrence of Congress and the President; so that the inchoate title of the United States was created by Act of Congress, in plain contradiction to the present case, where the title, whatever it may be, is under an unratified treaty, and is created by the President alone. Here is a manifest difference, not to be forgotten.
During the pendency of the treaty, there was an attempt by John Tyler, aided by his Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun, to commit the United States to the military support of Texas. It was nothing but an attempt. There was no belligerent intervention or act of war, but only what Benton calls an “assumpsit” by Calhoun. On this “assumpsit” the veteran Senator, in the memoirs of his Thirty Years in the Senate, breaks forth in these indignant terms:—
“As to secretly lending the Army and Navy of the United States to Texas to fight Mexico while we were at peace with her, it would be a crime against God and man and our own Constitution, for which heads might be brought to the block, if Presidents and their Secretaries, like Constitutional Kings and Ministers, should be held capitally responsible for capital crimes.”[89]