[ [5]] Slavery existed by virtue of express enactments in the several constitutions of the slave States, but the Constitution of the United States gave it only implied recognition and toleration.
[ [6]] "It was with some surprise, I confess, that I read the message of the President. The message laid down certain conditions as those upon which alone the great Confederacy of the United States could be preserved from disruption. In so doing the President appeared to be preparing beforehand an apology for the secession. Had the conditions, indeed, been such as the Northern States would be likely to accept, the message might have been considered one of peace. But it seems very improbable that the Northern States should now, at the moment of their triumph, and with large majorities of Republicans in their assemblies, submit to conditions which, during many years of struggle, they have rejected or evaded."—Lord John Russell to Lord Lyons, December 26, 1860. British Blue Book.
[ [7]] The logic of the message breaks down by the palpable omission to state the well-known fact that, though every citizen of South Carolina, or any other State, might refuse to accept or execute the office of United States marshal, or, indeed, any Federal office, the want could be immediately lawfully supplied by appointing any qualified citizen of any other State, who might lawfully and properly lead either a posse, or Federal forces, or State militia, to put down obstruction of the Federal laws, insurrection, or rebellion. President Buchanan admitted his own error, and repudiated his own doctrine, when on January 2, following, he nominated a citizen of Pennsylvania for the office of collector of the port of Charleston, South Carolina.
Sections two and three of the Act of February 28, 1795, authorize the President, when the execution of the laws is obstructed by insurrection too powerful for courts and marshals, to call forth the militia of any and all the States, first and primarily to "suppress such combinations," and, secondly, "to cause the laws to be duly executed, and the use of militia so to be called forth may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the then next session of Congress." In performing this duty the act imposes but a single condition or prerequisite on the Executive: he shall "by proclamation command the insurgents to disperse." These sections are complete, harmonious, self-sufficient, and, in their chief provisions, nowise dependent upon or connected with any other section or clause of the act. They place under the President's command the whole militia, and by a subsequent law (March 3, 1807) also the entire army and navy of the Union, against rebellion. The assertion that the army can only follow a marshal and his writ in case of rebellion, is not only unsupported by the language of the act, but utterly refuted by strong implication. The last section repeals a former provision limiting the President's action to cases of insurrection of which United States judges shall have given him notice, and thereby remits him to any and all of his official sources of information. Jackson's famous force bill only provided certain supplementary details; it directly recognized and invoked the great powers of the Act of 1795, and expiring by limitation, left its wholesome plenitude and broad original grant of authority unrepealed and unimpaired.
[ [8]] "Happily our civil war was undertaken and prosecuted in self-defense, not to coerce a State, but to enforce the execution of the laws within the States against individuals, and to suppress an unjust rebellion raised by a conspiracy among them against the Government of the United States."—Buchanan, in "Mr. Buchanan's Administration," p. 129.
[ CHAPTER XXIII ]
THE CHARLESTON CONSPIRATORS
As President Buchanan might have foreseen, his inconsistent message proved satisfactory to neither friend nor foe. The nation was on the eve of rebellion and had urgent need of remedial acts, not of temporizing theories, least of all theories which at the late Presidential election had been rejected as errors and dangers. The message served as a topic to initiate debate in Congress; but this debate, resting only on the main subject long enough to cover the Chief Magistrate's views and recommendations as a whole, with almost unanimous expressions of dissent, and even of contempt, passed on to words of mutual defiance and open declarations of revolutionary purpose.
The conspirators in the Cabinet had done their work. By the official declarations of the President of the United States, the Government had tied its own hands—had resolved and proclaimed the duty and policy of non-resistance to organized rebellion. Henceforth disunionists, secessionists, nullifiers, and conspirators of every kind had but to combine under alleged State action, and through the instrumentalities of State Legislatures and State conventions cast off without let or hinderance their Federal obligations by resolves and ordinances. The semblance of a vote, a few scratches of the pen, a proclamation, and a new flag, and at once without the existence of a corporal's squad, or the smell of burnt powder, there would appear on the horizon of American politics, if not a de jure at least a de facto State!
If there had hitherto been any doubt or hesitation in the minds of the principal secession leaders of the South, it vanished under the declared policy of inaction of the Federal Administration. The President's message was a practical assurance of immunity from arrest and prosecution for treason. It magnified their grievances, specifically pointed out a contingent right and duty of revolution, acknowledged that mere public sentiment might override and nullify Federal laws, and pointedly bound up Federal authority in narrow legal and Constitutional restrictions. It was blind as a mole to find Federal power, but keen-eyed as a lynx to discover Federal impotence.