The President has no legislative power; he cannot declare martial law, for it overthrows the constitution, and his will would become the law; how can the President, an executive officer, nullify laws and condemn and punish at his pleasure?
The great latent power in the constitution is, in Art. I., Sec. 8, to provide for the common defense and general welfare. Under this section almost all the outrages of the war were committed, restrained only by international rules of war; but these were utterly ignored under the plea that this war is only a rebellion, a family affair. Under this article resides the power to imposes taxes to any amount for the common defense and public welfare.
The confiscation act of Congress was declared by the United States Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, and, in truth, it was passed as a punishment against the "rebels," without an indictment, trial, or conviction. The constitution declares that the trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury.
As the slave owners were called the only privileged class in the United States, it is pertinent to inquire if they did not exist in all the States when the Union was formed, and if the North did not sell their title to be yet a privileged class for a mess of pottage; and then howled at the purchasers for being a privileged people!
Who demanded the continual enlargement of slavery by making it legal to steal or purchase negroes from Africa until the year 1808, to give employment to the six hundred slave ships owned in the North? for the statement is that toward the close of the slave trade there were about that number belonging to New England and New York engaged in that pious enterprise. We know the town of Newport, R. I., had one hundred and seventy ships employed in this money-making trade in the year 1750, and undoubtedly the number increased largely in after years, when made legal; so, on the whole, no doubt six hundred ships were in the trade.
The question here presents itself—and it is a proper one to ask—who first owned these slaves; how did they obtain them; how did they treat them; and to whom did they sell these human beings for money; and then, with the price of blood in their pockets, begin to preach against the sin of slavery? Ye hypocrites! who thank God "we are not slave owners, we got rid of them long ago."
It has been said by a Northern writer that "indirectly, and for the purpose of a more equal distribution of direct taxes, the framers of the constitution tolerated while they condemned slavery; but they tolerated it because they believed it would soon disappear. They even refused to allow the charter of their own liberties to be polluted by the mention of the word slave; but take heed, did not this convention give way to the clamor of the owners of slave ships to continue for twenty years the increase of slavery? They could not, consistently with honor or self-respect, transmit to future ages the evidence that some of them had trampled upon the inalienable rights of others."
"Though slavery was thus tolerated by being ignored, we should not dishonor the memory of those who organized the government to suppose that they did intend to bestow upon it the power to maintain its own authority, the right to overthrow or remove slavery or whatever might prove fatal to its permanence or destroy its usefulness."
The answer is: Yes, but not by making war and laying waste the country; burning dwellings, public buildings, towns; sinking shipping, blockades; capturing, killing, imprisoning innocent people; nor by creating enormous debts, nor yet by cruel war, but by removing the evil by compensation "for the term of service" of the slaves to their owners.
The government is under obligation to compensate parents, masters of apprentices, masters of slaves for loss of service and labor of their subjects who are enlisted in the army and navy, for the constitution recognizes slaves as "persons held to labor or service."