as also in a great measure foreign from the United States in its
causes, character, and objects. The attempt was understood to be made
in sympathy with an insurgent party in Ireland, and by striking at a
British Province on this continent was designed to aid in obtaining
redress for political grievances which, it was assumed, the people of
Ireland had suffered at the hands of the British Government during a
period of several centuries. The persons engaged in it were chiefly
natives of that country, some of whom had, while others had not, become
citizens of the United States under our general laws of naturalization.
Complaints of misgovernment in Ireland continually engage the attention
of the British nation, and so great an agitation is now prevailing in
Ireland that the British Government have deemed it necessary to suspend
the writ of habeas corpus in that country. These circumstances must
necessarily modify the opinion which we might otherwise have
entertained in regard to an expedition expressly prohibited by our
neutrality laws. So long as those laws remain upon our statute books
they should be faithfully executed, and if they operate harshly,
unjustly, or oppressively Congress alone can apply the remedy by their
modification or repeal.
Political and commercial interests of the United States are not
unlikely to be affected in some degree by events which are transpiring
in the eastern regions of Europe, and the time seems to have come when
our Government ought to have a proper diplomatic representation in
Greece.
This Government has claimed for all persons not convicted or accused or
suspected of crime an absolute political right of self-expatriation and
a choice of new national allegiance. Most of the European States have
dissented from this principle, and have claimed a right to hold such of
their subjects as have emigrated to and been naturalized in the United
States and afterwards returned on transient visits to their native
countries to the performance of military service in like manner as
resident subjects. Complaints arising from the claim in this respect
made by foreign states have heretofore been matters of controversy
between the United States and some of the European powers, and the
irritation consequent upon the failure to settle this question
increased during the war in which Prussia, Italy, and Austria were
recently engaged. While Great Britain has never acknowledged the right
of expatriation, she has not for some years past practically insisted
upon the opposite doctrine. France has been equally forbearing, and
Prussia has proposed a compromise, which, although evincing increased
liberality, has not been accepted by the United States. Peace is now
prevailing everywhere in Europe, and the present seems to be a
favorable time for an assertion by Congress of the principle so long
maintained by the executive department that naturalization by one state
fully exempts the native-born subject of any other state from the
performance of military service under any foreign government, so long
as he does not voluntarily renounce its rights and benefits.
In the performance of a duty imposed upon me by the Constitution I have
thus submitted to the representatives of the States and of the people
such information of our domestic and foreign affairs as the public
interests seem to require. Our Government is now undergoing its most
trying ordeal, and my earnest prayer is that the peril may be
successfully and finally passed without impairing its original strength
and symmetry. The interests of the nation are best to be promoted by
the revival of fraternal relations, the complete obliteration of our
past differences, and the reinauguration of all the pursuits of peace.
Directing our efforts to the early accomplishment of these great ends,
let us endeavor to preserve harmony between the coordinate departments
of the Government, that each in its proper sphere may cordially
cooperate with the other in securing the maintenance of the
Constitution, the preservation of the Union, and the perpetuity of our
free institutions.
***
State of the Union Address
Andrew Johnson
December 3, 1867
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:
The continued disorganization of the Union, to which the President has
so often called the attention of Congress, is yet a subject of profound
and patriotic concern. We may, however, find some relief from that
anxiety in the reflection that the painful political situation,
although before untried by ourselves, is not new in the experience of
nations. Political science, perhaps as highly perfected in our own time
and country as in any other, has not yet disclosed any means by which
civil wars can be absolutely prevented. An enlightened nation, however,
with a wise and beneficent constitution of free government, may
diminish their frequency and mitigate their severity by directing all
its proceedings in accordance with its fundamental law.
When a civil war has been brought to a close, it is manifestly the
first interest and duty of the state to repair the injuries which the
war has inflicted, and to secure the benefit of the lessons it teaches
as fully and as speedily as possible. This duty was, upon the
termination of the rebellion, promptly accepted not only by the
executive department, but by the insurrectionary States themselves, and
restoration in the first moment of peace was believed to be as easy and
certain as it was indispensable. The expectations, however, then so
reasonably and confidently entertained were disappointed by legislation
from which I felt constrained by my obligations to the Constitution to
withhold my assent.
It is therefore a source of profound regret that in complying with the
obligation imposed upon the President by the Constitution to give to
Congress from time to time information of the state of the Union I am
unable to communicate any definitive adjustment satisfactory to the
American people, of the questions which since the close of the
rebellion have agitated the public mind. On the contrary, candor
compels me to declare that at this time there is no Union as our
fathers understood the term, and as they meant it to be understood by
us. The Union which they established can exist only where all the
States are represented in both Houses of Congress; where one State is
as free as another to regulate its internal concerns according to its
own will, and where the laws of the central Government, strictly
confined to matters of national jurisdiction, apply with equal force to
all the people of every section. That such is not the present "state of
the Union" is a melancholy fact, and we must all acknowledge that the
restoration of the States to their proper legal relations with the
Federal Government and with one another, according to the terms of the
original compact, would be the greatest temporal blessing which God, in
His kindest providence, could bestow upon this nation. It becomes our
imperative duty to consider whether or not it is impossible to effect
this most desirable consummation. The Union and the Constitution are
inseparable. As long as one is obeyed by all parties, the other will be
preserved; and if one is destroyed, both must perish together. The
destruction of the Constitution will be followed by other and still
greater calamities. It was ordained not only to form a more perfect
union between the States, but to "establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity." Nothing but implicit obedience to its requirements in all
parts of the country will accomplish these great ends. Without that
obedience we can look forward only to continual outrages upon
individual rights, incessant breaches of the public peace, national
weakness, financial dishonor, the total loss of our prosperity, the
general corruption of morals, and the final extinction of popular
freedom. To save our country from evils so appalling as these, we
should renew our efforts again and again.
To me the process of restoration seems perfectly plain and simple. It
consists merely in a faithful application of the Constitution and laws.
The execution of the laws is not now obstructed or opposed by physical
force. There is no military or other necessity, real or pretended,
which can prevent obedience to the Constitution, either North or South.
All the rights and all the obligations of States and individuals can be
protected and enforced by means perfectly consistent with the
fundamental law. The courts may be everywhere open, and if open their
process would be unimpeded. Crimes against the United States can be
prevented or punished by the proper judicial authorities in a manner
entirely practicable and legal. There is therefore no reason why the
Constitution should not be obeyed, unless those who exercise its powers
have determined that it shall be disregarded and violated. The mere
naked will of this Government, or of some one or more of its branches,
is the only obstacle that can exist to a perfect union of all the
States.
On this momentous question and some of the measures growing out of it I
have had the misfortune to differ from Congress, and have expressed my
convictions without reserve, though with becoming deference to the
opinion of the legislative department. Those convictions are not only
unchanged, but strengthened by subsequent events and further reflection
The transcendent importance of the subject will be a sufficient excuse
for calling your attention to some of the reasons which have so
strongly influenced my own judgment. The hope that we may all finally
concur in a mode of settlement consistent at once with our true
interests and with our sworn duties to the Constitution is too natural
and too just to be easily relinquished.
It is clear to my apprehension that the States lately in rebellion are
still members of the National Union. When did they cease to be so? The
"ordinances of secession" adopted by a portion (in most of them a very
small portion) of their citizens were mere nullities. If we admit now
that they were valid and effectual for the purpose intended by their
authors, we sweep from under our feet the whole ground upon which we
justified the war. Were those States afterwards expelled from the Union
by the war? The direct contrary was averred by this Government to be
its purpose, and was so understood by all those who gave their blood
and treasure to aid in its prosecution. It can not be that a successful
war, waged for the preservation of the Union, had the legal effect of
dissolving it. The victory of the nation's arms was not the disgrace of
her policy; the defeat of secession on the battlefield was not the
triumph of its lawless principle. Nor could Congress, with or without
the consent of the Executive, do anything which would have the effect,
directly or indirectly, of separating the States from each other. To
dissolve the Union is to repeal the Constitution which holds it
together, and that is a power which does not belong to any department
of this Government, or to all of them united.
This is so plain that it has been acknowledged by all branches of the
Federal Government. The Executive (my predecessor as well as myself)
and the heads of all the Departments have uniformly acted upon the
principle that the Union is not only undissolved, but indissoluble.
Congress submitted an amendment of the Constitution to be ratified by
the Southern States, and accepted their acts of ratification as a
necessary and lawful exercise of their highest function. If they were
not States, or were States out of the Union, their consent to a change
in the fundamental law of the Union would have been nugatory, and
Congress in asking it committed a political absurdity. The judiciary
has also given the solemn sanction of its authority to the same view of
the case. The judges of the Supreme Court have included the Southern
States in their circuits, and they are constantly, in banc and
elsewhere, exercising jurisdiction which does not belong to them unless
those States are States of the Union.
If the Southern States are component parts of the Union, the
Constitution is the supreme law for them, as it is for all the other
States. They are bound to obey it, and so are we. The right of the
Federal Government, which is clear and unquestionable, to enforce the
Constitution upon them implies the correlative obligation on our part
to observe its limitations and execute its guaranties. Without the
Constitution we are nothing; by, through, and under the Constitution we
are what it makes us. We may doubt the wisdom of the law, we may not
approve of its provisions, but we can not violate it merely because it
seems to confine our powers within limits narrower than we could wish.
It is not a question of individual or class or sectional interest, much
less of party predominance, but of duty--of high and sacred duty--which
we are all sworn to perform. If we can not support the Constitution
with the cheerful alacrity of those who love and believe in it, we must
give to it at least the fidelity of public servants who act under
solemn obligations and commands which they dare not disregard.
The constitutional duty is not the only one which requires the States
to be restored. There is another consideration which, though of minor
importance, is yet of great weight. On the 22d day of July, 1861,
Congress declared by an almost unanimous vote of both Houses that the
war should be conducted solely for the purpose of preserving the Union
and maintaining the supremacy of the Federal Constitution and laws,
without impairing the dignity, equality, and rights of the States or of
individuals, and that when this was done the war should cease. I do not
say that this declaration is personally binding on those who joined in
making it, any more than individual members of Congress are personally
bound to pay a public debt created under a law for which they voted.
But it was a solemn public, official pledge of the national honor, and
I can not imagine upon what grounds the repudiation of it is to be
justified. If it be said that we are not bound to keep faith with
rebels, let it be remembered that this promise was not made to rebels
only. Thousands of true men in the South were drawn to our standard by
it, and hundreds of thousands in the North gave their lives in the
belief that it would be carried out. It was made on the day after the
first great battle of the war had been fought and lost. All patriotic
and intelligent men then saw the necessity of giving such an assurance,
and believed that without it the war would end in disaster to our
cause. Having given that assurance in the extremity of our peril, the
violation of it now, in the day of our power, would be a rude rending
of that good faith which holds the moral world together; our country
would cease to have any claim upon the confidence of men; it would make
the war not only a failure, but a fraud.
Being sincerely convinced that these views are correct, I would be
unfaithful to my duty if I did not recommend the repeal of the acts of
Congress which place ten of the Southern States under the domination of
military masters. If calm reflection shall satisfy a majority of your
honorable bodies that the acts referred to are not only a violation of
the national faith, but in direct conflict with the Constitution, I
dare not permit myself to doubt that you will immediately strike them
from the statute book.
To demonstrate the unconstitutional character of those acts I need do
no more than refer to their general provisions. It must be seen at once
that they are not authorized. To dictate what alterations shall be made
in the constitutions of the several States; to control the elections of
State legislators and State officers, members of Congress and electors
of President and Vice-President, by arbitrarily declaring who shall
vote and who shall be excluded from that privilege; to dissolve State
legislatures or prevent them from assembling; to dismiss judges and
other civil functionaries of the State and appoint others without
regard to State law; to organize and operate all the political
machinery of the States; to regulate the whole administration of their
domestic and local affairs according to the mere will of strange and
irresponsible agents, sent among them for that purpose--these are
powers not granted to the Federal Government or to any one of its
branches. Not being granted, we violate our trust by assuming them as
palpably as we would by acting in the face of a positive interdict; for
the Constitution forbids us to do whatever it does not affirmatively
authorize, either by express words or by clear implication. If the
authority we desire to use does not come to us through the
Constitution, we can exercise it only by usurpation, and usurpation is
the most dangerous of political crimes. By that crime the enemies of
free government in all ages have worked out their designs against
public liberty and private right. It leads directly and immediately to
the establishment of absolute rule, for undelegated power is always
unlimited and unrestrained.
The acts of Congress in question are not only objectionable for their
assumption of ungranted power, but many of their provisions are in
conflict with the direct prohibitions of the Constitution. The
Constitution commands that a republican form of government shall be
guaranteed to all the States; that no person shall be deprived of life,
liberty, or property without due process of law, arrested without a
judicial warrant, or punished without a fair trial before an impartial
jury; that the privilege of habeas corpus shall not be denied in time
of peace, and that no bill of attainder shall be passed even against a
single individual. Yet the system of measures established by these acts
of Congress does totally subvert and destroy the form as well as the
substance of republican government in the ten States to which they
apply. It binds them hand and foot in absolute slavery, and subjects
them to a strange and hostile power, more unlimited and more likely to
be abused than any other now known among civilized men. It tramples
down all those rights in which the essence of liberty consists, and
which a free government is always most careful to protect. It denies
the habeas corpus and the trial by jury. Personal freedom, property,
and life, if assailed by the passion, the prejudice, or the rapacity of
the ruler, have no security whatever. It has the effect of a bill of
attainder or bill of pains and penalties, not upon a few individuals,
but upon whole masses, including the millions who inhabit the subject
States, and even their unborn children. These wrongs, being expressly
forbidden, can not be constitutionally inflicted upon any portion of
our people, no matter how they may have come within our jurisdiction,
and no matter whether they live in States, Territories, or districts.
I have no desire to save from the proper and just consequences of their
great crime those who engaged in rebellion against the Government, but
as a mode of punishment the measures under consideration are the most
unreasonable that could be invented. Many of those people are perfectly
innocent; many kept their fidelity to the Union untainted to the last;
many were incapable of any legal offense; a large proportion even of
the persons able to bear arms were forced into rebellion against their
will, and of those who are guilty with their own consent the degrees of
guilt are as various as the shades of their character and temper. But
these acts of Congress confound them all together in one common doom.
Indiscriminate vengeance upon classes, sects, and parties, or upon
whole communities, for offenses committed by a portion of them against
the governments to which they owed obedience was common in the
barbarous ages of the world; but Christianity and civilization have
made such progress that recourse to a punishment so cruel and unjust
would meet with the condemnation of all unprejudiced and right-minded
men. The punitive justice of this age, and especially of this country,
does not consist in stripping whole States of their liberties and
reducing all their people, without distinction, to the condition of
slavery. It deals separately with each individual, confines itself to
the forms of law, and vindicates its own purity by an impartial
examination of every case before a competent judicial tribunal. If this
does not satisfy all our desires with regard to Southern rebels, let us
console ourselves by reflecting that a free Constitution, triumphant in
war and unbroken in peace, is worth far more to us and our children
than the gratification of any present feeling.
I am aware it is assumed that this system of government for the
Southern States is not to be perpetual. It is true this military
government is to be only provisional, but it is through this temporary
evil that a greater evil is to be made perpetual. If the guaranties of
the Constitution can be broken provisionally to serve a temporary
purpose, and in a part only of the country, we can destroy them
everywhere and for all time. Arbitrary measures often change, but they
generally change for the worse. It is the curse of despotism that it
has no halting place. The intermitted exercise of its power brings no
sense of security to its subjects, for they can never know what more
they will be called to endure when its red right hand is armed to
plague them again. Nor is it possible to conjecture how or where power,
unrestrained by law, may seek its next victims. The States that are
still free may be enslaved at any moment; for if the Constitution does
not protect all, it protects none.
It is manifestly and avowedly the object of these laws to confer upon
Negroes the privilege of voting and to disfranchise such a number of
white citizens as will give the former a clear majority at all
elections in the Southern States. This, to the minds of some persons,
is so important that a violation of the Constitution is justified as a
means of bringing it about. The morality is always false which excuses
a wrong because it proposes to accomplish a desirable end. We are not
permitted to do evil that good may come. But in this case the end
itself is evil, as well as the means. The subjugation of the States to
Negro domination would be worse than the military despotism under which
they are now suffering. It was believed beforehand that the people
would endure any amount of military oppression for any length of time
rather than degrade themselves by subjection to the Negro race.
Therefore they have been left without a choice. Negro suffrage was
established by act of Congress, and the military officers were
commanded to superintend the process of clothing the Negro race with
the political privileges torn from white men.
The blacks in the South are entitled to be well and humanely governed,
and to have the protection of just laws for all their rights of person
and property. If it were practicable at this time to give them a
Government exclusively their own, under which they might manage their
own affairs in their own way, it would become a grave question whether
we ought to do so, or whether common humanity would not require us to
save them from themselves. But under the circumstances this is only a
speculative point. It is not proposed merely that they shall govern
themselves, but that they shall rule the white race, make and
administer State laws, elect Presidents and members of Congress, and
shape to a greater or less extent the future destiny of the whole
country. Would such a trust and power be safe in such hands?