EXTRACTS FROM PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S INAUGURAL, MARCH 4, 1861. (_Page
110._)
The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the
property and places belonging to the Government, and collect the duties
on imports; but, beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there
will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people
anywhere. Where hostility to the United States shall be so great and so
universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the
federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers
among the people with that object. While the strict legal right may
exist of the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the
attempt to do so would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable
withal, that I deem it better to forego for the time the use of such
offices. * * * * *
I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional
questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that
such decision must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit,
while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in
all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government; and
while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in
any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to
that particular case, with the chances that it may be overruled and
never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than
could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid
citizen must confess that, if the policy of the Government upon the
vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed
by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in
ordinary litigations between parties in personal actions, the people
will have ceased to be their own masters,--having, to that extent,
practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent
tribunal. Nor is there, in this view, any assault upon the Court or the
Judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink, to decide cases
properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs if others
seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.