[72]. Senate Documents, 1857-'58, vol. iii., p. 4.
[73]. The President’s letter to the Attorney General, requiring his opinion on these questions, bears date on the 17th of November, 1860.
[74]. Mr. Jefferson Davis, who represents, with as much logical consistency as any one, the whole of the doctrine or theory of secession, has always maintained that the distinction between coercing a State, and coercing the individual inhabitants of that State to submit to the laws of the United States, is no distinction at all: that the people of the State are the State; and that to use a military force to execute the laws of the United States upon individuals, within the limits of a State that has seceded from the Union, is to make war upon the State. (See his speech in the Senate, January 10, 1861, and his recent work on the Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Index, verb. “Secession.”) Let us, for a moment, inquire whether Buchanan’s distinction was answered “by reason of its very absurdity.” 1. The States, in their corporate and political capacity, are not the subjects or objects of Federal legislation. The legislative powers of the Federal Constitution are not intended to be exercised over States, but they are intended to be exercised over individuals. An act of Congress never commands a State to do anything; it commands private individuals to do a great many things. The States are prohibited by the Constitution from doing certain things, but these prohibitions execute themselves through the action of the judicial power upon persons. No State can be acted upon by the judicial power at the instance of the United States. Every inhabitant of a State can be acted upon by the judicial power, in regard to anything that is within the scope of the legislative powers of the Constitution. 2. The coercion of individuals to obey the laws of the United States constitutes the great difference between our present Constitution and the Articles of Confederation. 3. The right to use force to execute the laws of the United States, by removing all obstructions to their execution, not only results from the power to legislate on the particular subject, but it is expressly recognized by the Constitution. The character of that force and the modes in which it may be employed, depend both on direct constitutional provision, and on the legislative authority over all the people of the United States in respect to certain subjects and relations. All this will be conceded to be true, so long as a State remains in the Union. Does it cease to be true, when a State interposes her sovereign will, and says that the laws of the United States shall not be executed within her limits, because she has withdrawn the powers which she deposited with the General Government? What does this make, but a new case of obstruction to the execution of the Federal laws, to be removed by acting on the individuals through whom the obstruction is practically tried? And if, in the removal of the obstruction, the use of military power becomes necessary, is war made upon the State? It is not, unless we go the whole length of saying that the interposition of the sovereign will of the State ipso facto makes her an independent power, erects her into a foreign nation, and makes her capable of being dealt with as one enemy is dealt with by another. To deny the right of the United States to execute its laws, notwithstanding what is called the secession of a State, is to impale one’s self upon the other horn of the dilemma: for if that right does not exist, it must be because the State has become absolutely free and independent of the United States, and may be made a party to an international war. Mr. Buchanan saw and constantly and consistently acted upon the true distinction between making war upon a State, and enforcing the laws of the United States upon the inhabitants of a State.
[75]. Judge Black made a criticism, which will be adverted to hereafter.
[76]. Their resignations will be noted hereafter, as well as that of General Cass, concerning whom see the President’s memorandum, post.
[77]. John Brown’s seizure of the armory, arsenal, and rifle factory of the United States at Harper’s Ferry occurred October 16, 1859.
[78]. Mr. Buchanan, in constructing this great argument, doubtless had very important sources from which to draw his reasoning, in Mr. Webster’s replies to Mr. Hayne and Mr. Calhoun, in General Jackson’s great proclamation and message in the time of nullification, in the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the writings of Hamilton, Madison and others of the early expounders of the Constitution. But who can justly deny to him the merit of concentrating his materials into a powerful statement, of that theory of our Constitution on which the rightfulness of the late civil war must rest in history, or be left without any justification but the power of numbers and the principle that might makes right!
[79]. The following extracts are taken from an official letter addressed by Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State, to Mr. C. F. Adams, who had just gone abroad as United States Minister to England. The letter bears date April 10th, 1861. “You will hardly be asked by responsible statesmen abroad, why has not the new administration already suppressed the revolution. Thirty-five days are a short period in which to repress, chiefly by moral means, a movement which is so active whilst disclosing itself throughout an empire...... He (President Lincoln) believes that the citizens of those States, as well as the citizens of the other States, are too intelligent, considerate, and wise to follow the leaders to that destructive end (anarchy). For these reasons, he would not be disposed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs, namely, that the Federal Government could not reduce the seceding States to obedience by conquest, even although he were disposed to question that proposition. But, in fact, the President willingly accepts it as true. Only an imperial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the state. This federal, republican country of ours is of all forms of government the very one which is most unfitted for such a labor. Happily, however, this is only an imaginary defect. The system has within itself adequate, peaceful, conservative and recuperative forces. Firmness on the part of the Government in maintaining and preserving the public institutions and property, and in executing the laws where authority can be exercised without waging war, combined with such measures of justice, moderation and forbearance as will disarm reasoning opposition, will be sufficient to secure the public safety, until returning reflection, concurring with the fearful experience of social evils, the inevitable fruits of faction, shall bring the recusant members cheerfully into the family, which, after all, must prove their best and happiest, as it undeniably is their most natural home.” He then goes on to show that the calling of a national convention, by authority of Congress, will remove all real obstacles to a re-union, by revising the Constitution, and he adds: “Keeping that remedy steadily in view, the President on the one hand will not suffer the Federal authority to fall into abeyance, nor will he on the other hand aggravate existing evils by attempts at coercion which must assume the form of direct war against any of the revolutionary States.” It is impossible for human ingenuity to draw a sensible distinction between the policy of President Lincoln, as laid down by Mr. Seward just before the attack on Fort Sumter, and the policy adopted and steadily pursued by President Buchanan; and it is to be hoped that the world will hereafter hear no more reproaches of President Buchanan, because he denied the authority of the Federal Government to make aggressive war upon a State to compel it to remain in the Union, or because he proposed conciliatory measures looking to an amendment of the Constitution.
[80]. This mass of private letters is so great, and so fully represents various classes of the community, that I have felt entirely warranted in treating it as the best evidence of the currents of public opinion, as they were setting immediately after the publication of the message. The President could do nothing more with such a correspondence than to have each letter carefully read by a competent private secretary, and its contents duly noted for his information. The whole of it gave him the means of knowing the feelings of the people far better than he could know them by reading the public prints.
[81]. Buchanan’s Defence, pp. 112-113.