1860—December.
THE PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL MESSAGE OF DECEMBER 3, 1860.
The Constitution makes it the duty of the President, from time to
time, to give to the Congress information of the state of the Union,
and to recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall
judge necessary and expedient. Custom has made the commencement of
each session of Congress a regular occasion for the discharge of
this duty, and has also established the propriety of performing it
at other times, whenever the President deems it necessary. It was
the purpose of this provision of the Constitution to make the
President a special guardian of the interests of the Union, by
making him the official witness of its condition to the legislative
department, and by giving to his recommendation of measures a high
claim upon its consideration. The performance of this duty involves
a wide range of observation over the whole condition of the country
at a given time, and it imposes upon Congress the correlative duty
of giving serious heed and prompt attention to any recommendations
which the President may make. No other functionary in the Government
is in a position to know so well as the President what the interests
of the Union from time to time demand at the hands of Congress, and
no other is clothed with this power of making official and therefore
weighty recommendations of measures requiring legislative action. No
state of parties, no objects of party policy, can excuse the
individual members of a Congress from the duty of giving immediate
attention to whatever suggestions the President may make in the
exercise of this great function as the constitutional adviser of the
legislature, and as guardian of the interests of the Union. At the
same time, it is to be remembered that this function is only an
advisory one; that it in no way enlarges the powers of the
Executive; and that the President can at no time exercise any powers
but those with which he has been clothed by the Constitution or by
the laws which have been passed in pursuance of its provisions.
Never was there an occasion when it was more necessary that this
duty should be performed by the President firmly, intelligibly,
boldly, conscientiously, than it was in the crisis existing at the
commencement of the session of Congress in December, 1860. Never was
it more imperatively necessary that Congress should at once take
into its “consideration” the measures recommended by the President.
The force of that term, as it is used in the Constitution, is not
limited to a mere reference of the President’s recommendations to
committees. It implies action, prompt and decisive action, one way
or the other, in proportion to the gravity of that condition of the
Union which the President has brought to the attention of the
Legislature. The President is entitled to know, and to know
speedily, whether the Congress concurs with or differs from him. The
country is entitled to know whether its Chief Magistrate is to be
clothed with the further powers for which he may have asked in order
to meet a given emergency; whether the Congress accepts, or refuses
to accept, his construction of the Constitution in regard to new and
difficult questions that have arisen; and whether, if the Congress
does not concur with the President, it has any other policy to
propose and carry out, adequate to the dangers that may be impending
over the Union. An examination of the course of President Buchanan
in the crisis to which we have now arrived conducts to the inquiry
whether he performed his duty, as he should have done, and whether
the Congress performed theirs according to the obligation that
rested upon them.
The “state of the Union,” of which the President had to give
Congress official information, was entirely unprecedented. That it
was alarming, cannot be doubted. It matters little whether the
people of the North felt much alarm. Popular opinion, so far as it
was not manifested by the depression of business and of the public
funds, did not reflect the gravity of the crisis. It was not
generally believed that an election of a President, conducted in a
regular and orderly manner, although it had resulted in the triumph
of a party obnoxious to the feelings of the Southern people, because
of its supposed hostility to them, would be or could be made the
occasion for a permanent disruption of the Union. And this was about
the only aspect in which the popular mind of the North regarded the
whole matter for a considerable period after the election. It was
not generally perceived that an entirely new question had arisen,
which made a peril of a new and formidable nature. The alleged
constitutional right of a State to withdraw itself from the Union,
on its own judgment that its interests or safety were no longer
compatible with its continuing as a member of it, although it had
long been theoretically discussed in many ways by individuals of
more or less importance, was now about to be asserted and acted upon
by the people of South Carolina. How was this crisis to be met? That
it was entirely out of all previous experience, that it was a
situation full of peril, that it entailed the consideration of
questions of Federal power never yet solved, because they had never
before arisen, was plain. That the President of the United States,
the official sentinel on the great watch-tower of the Union,
regarded its condition as one of imminent danger, was enough for the
Congress to know. That popular opinion in the North did not fully
comprehend the danger affords no excuse for any omission of duty,
any lack of wisdom or forethought, any failure to act promptly or
patriotically, which history may find reason to impute to those who
held the legislative power.
Mr. Buchanan, as the reader has seen, so soon as he had reason to
believe that South Carolina was about to put in practice its alleged
right of withdrawing from the Union, proceeded to take the opinion
of his official adviser in regard to his constitutional powers and
duties in such an emergency. Individually, he needed no man’s advice
upon such questions, for he was as able and well instructed a
constitutional jurist as any one who had ever filled the office of
President of the United States; familiar with all the teachings and
all the precedents of his predecessors, and abundantly learned in
the doctrines of the great judicial expounders of the Constitution.
But in his official capacity it was both proper and necessary that
he should call to his aid the sound judgment and the copious
learning of his Attorney General, before proceeding to discharge his
constitutional duty of giving to Congress information of the state
of the Union. He began to prepare his annual message immediately
after he had received the Attorney General’s answers to his
questions. The message was read to the cabinet before it was printed
in the usual form for communication to Congress. The members of the
cabinet, including General Cass, the Secretary of State, and with
the exceptions of Mr. Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr.
Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, warmly and emphatically
approved of it.[75] Messrs. Cobb and Thompson objected to so much of
the message as denied the right of secession, and to that part of it
which maintained the duty of defending the public property and
collecting the revenue in South Carolina. These questions having now
become vital, the two dissenting members of the cabinet, soon after
the message had been sent to Congress, resigned their places.[76]
Footnote 75:
Judge Black made a criticism, which will be adverted to hereafter.
Footnote 76:
Their resignations will be noted hereafter, as well as that of
General Cass, concerning whom see the President’s memorandum,
_post_.
Let it be remembered, then, that this message was prepared to be
submitted to Congress before the South Carolina Convention had
adopted its ordinance of secession. Surely, therefore, there can be
no just ground for imputing to the President any lack of preparation
to meet the threatened contingency of a secession of one or more
States, according to the measure of his official duty and powers. In
examining this message, of which I shall speak in conformity with my
most serious convictions, the reader should note that it had to be
prospective in its recommendations, in order that Congress might be
fully possessed of the methods of action which the President
intended to propose as the legitimate, as well as the expedient,
course to be pursued. But this was not the whole of the
constitutional duty that rested upon the Executive. He had, in
discharging his duty of giving to Congress information of the state
of the Union, to treat so far of the causes which had brought about
that condition as to point out measures of conciliation, as well as
measures for the exercise of authority. He had to recognize the
palpable fact that the two sections of the Union, the slaveholding
and the non-slaveholding States, stood divided from each other upon
a question which involved more of feeling than of practical
consequence; a feeling that had been aggravated on each side into an
undue importance by the circumstances of the late election. This
question related to the claim of Southern slaveholders to have their
right of property in slaves recognized in Territories of the United
States, whenever they should go there with such property. It was a
claim which the most considerate of those who asserted it most
strongly regarded as essential to the equality of their States as
members of the Union, in reference to the right of occupation of the
common property of all the States. It was based, to be sure, by many
who asserted it, upon a questionable proposition, which was that the
right of property in a slave, recognized by the local law of a
State, travelled with the person of the owner into a Territory of
the United States, without any law of the Territory to uphold it,
and even against a prohibition imposed by the legislative authority
which governed the Territory. But when has it been known in the
history of conflicting popular feelings, that the nature of such a
claim has diminished the fervor with which it has been defended,
when it has come to be regarded as a great political right, of
importance to those who assert it? Practically, it was not a matter
of importance to the slaveholding States, because there was no
Territory of the United States at that time in which slave labor
could become profitable, or in which the negro, in a state of
slavery, could thrive. But an exaggerated feeling of the political
importance of this supposed right had taken possession of the
Southern mind. On the other hand, there had come about in the North
an equally exaggerated sense of the importance of asserting in every
possible form of public action, that the Territories were dedicated
to freedom from slavery, and were to be so regarded forever. It was
chiefly upon this, as a fundamental principle of the future
legislation of the Union, that the Republican candidate had been
elected by the votes of the people of the free States.
Under these circumstances, no President of the United States, in
discharging his constitutional duty of giving to Congress
information of the state of the Union, could have avoided a
reference to this condition of conflicting sectional feelings and
determinations, especially at a moment when one of the Southern
States was about to act upon the assumption that the election of the
Northern candidate evinced a hostile disposition in the North
towards the people and the social institutions of the South, too
dangerous to be disregarded. If, by fairly holding the balance
between the two sections, President Buchanan could suggest any
course of conciliation and compromise that could be adopted without
impairing the authority of the Federal Government or weakening its
rights, it was his duty to point it out. The adoption of such a
course by Congress would certainly smooth the way for President
Lincoln, because it would leave South Carolina alone in her attitude
of secession, would tend with great force to prevent any of the
other cotton States from following her example, and would render a
civil war extremely improbable, because it would remove one great
cause for the spread of secession beyond the borders of that State.
When the recommendation of the message is examined with
impartiality, it will be found that it proposed an explanatory
amendment of the Constitution which was entirely reasonable, and
which would have terminated the existing dissensions, so far as they
depended upon this particular question.
But those dissensions had other causes, which it was equally the
duty of the President to bring before Congress and the country. For
a long period of time, the anti-slavery agitation in the North, not
confined to the question of slavery in the Territories, had awakened
apprehensions in the South for their domestic peace and safety. It
was undoubtedly but reasonable to expect the Southern people to rely
on the conservative force of Northern public opinion, to guard
against interference with slavery in the States by any form of
public action through the General Government, by whatever party it
might be administered. But who could insure them against the
consequences of such lawless acts as John Brown’s “raid” into
Virginia, undertaken in 1859, with the avowed purpose of producing a
slave insurrection? This occurrence, which was only a little more
than a twelvemonth old when Mr. Buchanan prepared his annual message
of December 3, 1860, had produced a sadder impression on the
Southern people against the Union than any previous event had ever
caused.[77] This painful impression was deepened by the popular
honors paid in the North to this man’s memory as a martyr in the
cause of liberty, for whom the prayers of churches were offered, and
who, after he had died the death of a felon, was canonized as a
saint, mouldering in the body in the grave, but in spirit marching
on to the accomplishment of his mission of liberator of the slaves.
Such fanaticism might well be regarded with serious alarm by a
people who dwelt surrounded in every relation of life by a slave
population of another race, in many communities outnumbering the
Whites. Yet this was not all that tended to alienate the people of
the South from the Union. A provision of the Constitution which was
adopted by its framers as a fundamental condition of the new Union
that it aimed to establish, for the execution of which legislation
had been provided in 1793,—legislation which bore the name of
Washington himself, and which had been amended and strengthened in
1850 by a solemn Congressional agreement,—had been for seven years
resisted by combinations of individuals in the North, and by State
laws of obstruction that had no less of nullification as their
spirit and purpose than the nullifying ordinance of South Carolina,
by which she formerly undertook to obstruct another law of the
Union. It was impossible for the Southern People not to place this
resistance to the extradition of fugitive slaves among their
grievances. It was a real grievance, and one that, considering the
nature of the Constitutional mandate and stipulation, it was right
that they should complain of.
Footnote 77:
John Brown’s seizure of the armory, arsenal, and rifle factory of
the United States at Harper’s Ferry occurred October 16, 1859.
Was the President of the United States, standing at the threshold of
the secession movement, measuring as he was bound to do with a
comprehensive grasp the condition of the Union, to be silent
respecting these things? Was he, if he spoke to the South, warning
her that the election of Abraham Lincoln was no cause for her
attempting to leave the Union, and expounding to her the utter
futility of the doctrine of secession as a constitutional right—was
he to say nothing to the North of the duty which rested upon her to
remove all just causes of complaint, and thus to render secession
inexcusable to the Southern people themselves? A supreme ruler,
placed as Mr. Buchanan was at the period I am now considering, had a
complex duty to perform. It was to prevent, if he could, the
formation of any sort of Southern Confederacy among the cotton
States, and thereby to relieve his successor from the necessity of
having to encounter more than the secession of South Carolina. She
could be dealt with easily, standing alone, if Congress would clothe
the President with the necessary power to enforce the laws of the
Union within her limits. Backed by a new confederacy of her
contiguous sisters, containing five millions of people, and
controlling the whole cotton production of the country, the problem
for the new President would indeed be a formidable one. To prevent
this, certain measures of conciliation were deemed by President
Buchanan, in as honest and as wise a judgment as any statesman ever
formed, to be essential. When the reader has examined his
recommendations of constitutional amendments, along with the
practical measures for which he applied, and which Congress did not
adopt, he will have to ask himself, if Congress had done its duty as
the President performed his, is it within the bounds of probability
that Mr. Lincoln would have been embarrassed with the question about
the forts in Charleston harbor, or that the Montgomery government
would have ever existed, or that South Carolina, unaided and
undirected by that new confederacy, would ever have fired on Sumter?
As the internal affairs of the country claimed the first attention
of the President, and occupied a very large part of his message, I
quote the whole of what it said on this very grave topic:
FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:—
Throughout the year since our last meeting, the country has been
eminently prosperous in all its material interests. The general
health has been excellent, our harvests have been abundant, and
plenty smiles throughout the land. Our commerce and manufactures
have been prosecuted with energy and industry, and have yielded
fair and ample returns. In short, no nation in the tide of time
has ever presented a spectacle of greater material prosperity than
we have done, until within a very recent period.
Why is it, then, that discontent now so extensively prevails, and
the union of the States, which is the source of all these
blessings, is threatened with destruction?
The long continued and intemperate interference of the Northern
people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at
length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the
Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has
arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when
hostile geographical parties have been formed.
I have long foreseen, and often forewarned my countrymen of the
now impending danger. This does not proceed solely from the claim
on the part of Congress or the Territorial legislatures to exclude
slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different
States to defeat the execution of the fugitive slave law. All or
any of these evils might have been endured by the South, without
danger to the Union (as others have been), in the hope that time
and reflection might apply the remedy. The immediate peril arises,
not so much from these causes, as from the fact that the incessant
and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North
for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its
malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague
notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists
around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home has given
place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron
throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall
herself and her children before the morning. Should this
apprehension of domestic danger, whether real or imaginary, extend
and intensify itself, until it shall pervade the masses of the
Southern people, then disunion will become inevitable.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and has been
implanted in the heart of man by his Creator for the wisest
purpose; and no political union, however fraught with blessings
and benefits in all other respects, can long continue, if the
necessary consequence be to render the homes and the fire-sides of
nearly half the parties to it habitually and hopelessly insecure.
Sooner or later the bonds of such a Union must be severed. It is
my conviction that this fatal period has not yet arrived: and my
prayer to God is, that he would preserve the Constitution and the
Union throughout all generations.
But let us take warning in time, and remove the cause of danger.
It cannot be denied that for five and twenty years the agitation
at the North against slavery has been incessant. In 1835,
pictorial handbills and inflammatory appeals were circulated
extensively throughout the South, of a character to excite the
passions of the slaves, and, in the language of General Jackson,
“to stimulate them to insurrection and produce all the horrors of
a servile war.” This agitation has ever since been continued by
the public press, by the proceedings of State and county
conventions, and by abolition sermons and lectures. The time of
Congress has been occupied in violent speeches on this never
ending subject; and appeals, in pamphlet and other forms, indorsed
by distinguished names, have been sent forth from this central
point and spread broadcast over the Union.
How easy would it be for the American people to settle the slavery
question forever, and to restore peace and harmony to this
distracted country! They, and they alone, can do it. All that is
necessary to accomplish the object, and all for which the slave
States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to
manage their domestic institutions in their own way. As sovereign
States, they, and they alone, are responsible before God and the
world for the slavery existing among them. For this the people of
the North are not more responsible, and have no more right to
interfere, than with similar institutions in Russia or in Brazil.
Upon their good sense and patriotic forbearance, I confess, I
still greatly rely. Without their aid it is beyond the power of
any President, no matter what may be his own political
proclivities, to restore peace and harmony among the States.
Wisely limited and restrained as is his power under our
Constitution and laws, he alone can accomplish but little for good
or for evil on such a momentous question.
And this brings me to observe, that the election of any one of our
fellow-citizens to the office of President does not of itself
afford just cause for dissolving the Union. This is more
especially true if his election has been effected by a mere
plurality and not a majority of the people, and has resulted from
transient and temporary causes, which may probably never again
occur. In order to justify a resort to revolutionary resistance,
the Federal Government must be guilty of “a deliberate; palpable,
and dangerous exercise” of powers not granted by the Constitution.
The late Presidential election, however, has been held in strict
conformity with its express provisions. How, then, can the result
justify a revolution to destroy this very Constitution? Reason,
justice, a regard for the Constitution, all require that we shall
wait for some overt and dangerous act on the part of the President
elect, before resorting to such a remedy. It is said, however,
that the antecedents of the President elect have been sufficient
to justify the fears of the South that he will attempt to invade
their constitutional rights. But are such apprehensions of
contingent danger in the future sufficient to justify the
immediate destruction of the noblest system of government ever
devised by mortals? From the very nature of his office, and its
high responsibilities, he must necessarily be conservative. The
stern duty of administering the vast and complicated concerns of
this Government affords in itself a guarantee that he will not
attempt any violation of a clear constitutional right.
After all, he is no more than the Chief Executive officer of the
Government. His province is not to make but to execute the laws;
and it is a remarkable fact in our history that, notwithstanding
the repeated efforts of the anti-slavery party, no single act has
ever passed Congress, unless we may possibly except the Missouri
Compromise, impairing in the slightest degree the rights of the
South to their property in slaves. And it may also be observed,
judging from present indications, that no probability exists of
the passage of such an act by a majority of both Houses, either in
the present or the next Congress. Surely, under these
circumstances, we ought to be restrained from present action by
the precept of Him who spake as man never spoke, that “sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof.” The day of evil may never come
unless we shall rashly bring it upon ourselves.
It is alleged as one cause for immediate secession, that the
Southern States are denied equal rights with the other States in
the common Territories. But by what authority are these denied?
Not by Congress, which has never passed, and I believe never will
pass, any act to exclude slavery from these Territories. And
certainly not by the Supreme Court, which has solemnly decided
that slaves are property, and like all other property their owners
have a right to take them into the common Territories and hold
them there under the protection of the Constitution.
So far, then, as Congress is concerned, the objection is not to
anything they have already done, but to what they may do
hereafter. It will surely be admitted that this apprehension of
future danger is no good reason for an immediate dissolution of
the Union. It is true that the Territorial legislature of Kansas,
on the 23d February, 1860, passed in great haste an act over the
veto of the Governor, declaring that slavery “is and shall be
forever prohibited in this Territory.” Such an act, however,
plainly violating the rights of property secured by the
Constitution, will surely be declared void by the judiciary,
whenever it shall be presented in a legal form.
Only three days after my inauguration, the Supreme Court of the
United States solemnly adjudged that this power did not exist in a
Territorial legislature. Yet such has been the factious temper of
the times that the correctness of this decision has been
extensively impugned before the people, and the question has given
rise to angry political conflicts throughout the country. Those
who have appealed from this judgment of our highest constitutional
tribunal to popular assemblies, would, if they could, invest a
Territorial legislature with power to annul the sacred rights of
property. This power Congress is expressly forbidden by the
Federal Constitution to exercise. Every State legislature in the
Union is forbidden by its own constitution to exercise it. It
cannot be exercised in any State except by the people in their
highest sovereign capacity when framing or amending their State
constitution. In like manner it can only be exercised by the
people of a Territory, represented in a convention of delegates,
for the purpose of framing a constitution preparatory to admission
as a State into the Union. Then, and not until then, are they
invested with power to decide the question whether slavery shall
or shall not exist within their limits. This is an act of
sovereign authority and not of subordinate Territorial
legislation. Were it otherwise, then indeed would the equality of
the States in the Territories be destroyed and the rights of
property in slaves would depend not upon the guarantees of the
Constitution, but upon the shifting majorities of an irresponsible
Territorial legislature. Such a doctrine, from its intrinsic
unsoundness, cannot long influence any considerable portion of our
people, much less can it afford a good reason for a dissolution of
our Union.
The most palpable violations of constitutional duty which have yet
been committed consist in the acts of different State legislatures
to defeat the execution of the fugitive slave law. It ought to be
remembered, however, that for these acts neither Congress nor any
President can justly be held responsible. Having been passed in
violation of the Federal Constitution, they are therefore null and
void. All the courts, both State and national, before whom the
question has arisen, have, from the beginning, declared the
fugitive slave law to be constitutional. The single exception is
that of a State court in Wisconsin; and this has not only been
reversed by the proper appellate tribunal, but has met with such
universal reprobation, that there can be no danger from it as a
precedent. The validity of this law has been established over and
over again by the Supreme Court of the United States with
unanimity. It is founded upon an express provision of the
Constitution, requiring that fugitive slaves who escape from
service in one State to another shall be “delivered up” to their
masters. Without this provision, it is a well known historical
fact that the Constitution itself could never have been adopted by
the convention. In one form or other, under the acts of 1793 and
1850, both being substantially the same, the fugitive slave law
has been the law of the land from the days of Washington until the
present moment. Here, then, a clear case is presented, in which it
will be the duty of the next President, as it has been my own, to
act with vigor in executing this supreme law against the
conflicting enactments of State legislatures. Should he fail in
the performance of this high duty, he will then have manifested a
disregard of the Constitution and laws, to the great injury of the
people of nearly one-half of the States of the Union. But are we
to presume in advance that he will thus violate his duty? This
would be at war with every principle of justice and of Christian
charity. Let us wait for the overt act. The fugitive slave law has
been carried into execution in every contested case since the
commencement of the present administration; though often, it is to
be regretted, with great loss and inconvenience to the master, and
with considerable expense to the Government. Let us trust that the
State legislatures will repeal their unconstitutional and
obnoxious enactments. Unless this shall be done without
unnecessary delay, it is impossible for any human power to save
the Union.
The Southern States, standing on the basis of the Constitution,
have a right to demand this act of justice from the States of the
North. Should it be refused, then the Constitution, to which all
the States are parties, will have been wilfully violated by one
portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security
and happiness of the remainder. In that event, the injured States,
after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to
obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to
the Government of the Union.
I have purposely confined my remarks to revolutionary resistance,
because it has been claimed within the last few years that any
State, whenever this shall be its sovereign will and pleasure, may
secede from the Union in accordance with the Constitution, and
without any violation of the constitutional rights of the other
members of the Confederacy. That as each became parties to the
Union by the vote of its own people assembled in convention, so
any one of them may retire from the Union in a similar manner by
the vote of such a convention.
In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must
be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere
voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by
any one of the contracting parties. If this be so, the Confederacy
is a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first
adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States. In this
manner our thirty-three States may resolve themselves into as many
petty, jarring, and hostile republics, each one retiring from the
Union without responsibility whenever any sudden excitement might
impel them to such a course. By this process a Union might be
entirely broken into fragments in a few weeks, which cost our
forefathers many years of toil, privation, and blood to establish.
Such a principle is wholly inconsistent with the history as well
as the character of the Federal Constitution. After it was framed,
with the greatest deliberation and care, it was submitted to
conventions of the people of the several States for ratification.
Its provisions were discussed at length in these bodies, composed
of the first men of the country. Its opponents contended that it
conferred powers upon the Federal Government dangerous to the
rights of the States, whilst its advocates maintained that, under
a fair construction of the instrument, there was no foundation for
such apprehensions. In that mighty struggle between the first
intellects of this or any other country, it never occurred to any
individual, either among its opponents or advocates, to assert or
even to intimate that their efforts were all vain labor, because
the moment that any State felt herself aggrieved she might secede
from the Union. What a crushing argument would this have proved
against those who dreaded that the rights of the States would be
endangered by the Constitution. The truth is, that it was not
until many years after the origin of the Federal Government that
such a proposition was first advanced. It was then met and refuted
by the conclusive arguments of General Jackson, who, in his
message of the 16th January, 1833, transmitting the nullifying
ordinance of South Carolina to Congress, employs the following
language: “The right of the people of a single State to absolve
themselves at will, and without the consent of the other States,
from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberty and
happiness of the millions composing this Union, cannot be
acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant
both to the principles upon which the General Government is
constituted, and to the objects which it was expressly formed to
attain.”
It is not pretended that any clause in the Constitution gives
countenance to such a theory. It is altogether founded upon
inference, not from any language contained in the instrument
itself, but from the sovereign character of the several States by
which it was ratified. But is it beyond the power of a State, like
an individual, to yield a portion of its sovereign rights to
secure the remainder? In the language of Mr. Madison, who has been
called the father of the Constitution, “It was formed by the
States—that is, by the people in each of the States acting in
their highest sovereign capacity, and formed, consequently, by the
same authority which formed the State constitutions. Nor is the
Government of the United States, created by the Constitution, less
a government, in the strict sense of the term, within the sphere
of its powers, than the governments created by the constitutions
of the States are within their several spheres. It is, like them,
organized into legislative, executive, and judiciary departments.
It operates, like them, directly on persons and things; and, like
them, it has at command a physical force for executing the powers
committed to it.”
It was intended to be perpetual, and not to be annulled at the
pleasure of any one of the contracting parties. The old articles
of confederation were entitled “Articles of confederation and
perpetual union between the States;” and by the thirteenth article
it is expressly declared that “the articles of this confederation
shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the union shall
be perpetual.” The preamble to the Constitution of the United
States, having express reference to the articles of confederation,
recites that it was established “in order to form a more perfect
union.” And yet it is contended that this “more perfect union”
does not include the essential attribute of perpetuity.
But that the Union was designed to be perpetual, appears
conclusively from the nature and extent of the powers conferred by
the Constitution on the Federal Government. These powers embrace
the very highest attributes of national sovereignty. They place
both the sword and the purse under its control. Congress has power
to make war and to make peace; to raise and support armies and
navies, and to conclude treaties with foreign governments. It is
invested with the power to coin money, and to regulate the value
thereof, and to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among
the several States. It is not necessary to enumerate the other
high powers which have been conferred upon the Federal Government.
In order to carry the enumerated powers into effect, Congress
possesses the exclusive right to lay and collect duties on
imports, and, in common with the States, to lay and collect all
other taxes.
But the Constitution has not only conferred these high powers upon
Congress, but it has adopted effectual means to restrain the
States from interfering with their exercise. For that purpose it
has in strong prohibitory language expressly declared that “no
State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation;
grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of
credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment
of debts; pass any bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law, or law
impairing the obligation of contracts.” Moreover, “without the
consent of Congress no State shall lay any imposts or duties on
any imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary
for executing its inspection laws,” and if they exceed this
amount, the excess shall belong to the United States. And “no
State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of
tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into
any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign
power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such
imminent danger as will not admit of delay.”
In order still further to secure the uninterrupted exercise of
these high powers against State interposition, it is provided
“that this Constitution and the laws of the United States which
shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which
shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be
the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall
be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any
State to the contrary notwithstanding.”
The solemn sanction of religion has been superadded to the
obligations of official duty, and all Senators and Representatives
of the United States, all members of State legislatures, and all
executive and judicial officers, “both of the United States and of
the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to
support this Constitution.”
In order to carry into effect these powers, the Constitution has
established a perfect Government in all its forms, legislative,
executive, and judicial; and this Government to the extent of its
powers acts directly upon the individual citizens of every State,
and executes its own decrees by the agency of its own officers. In
this respect it differs entirely from the government under the old
confederation, which was confined to making requisitions on the
States in their sovereign character. This left in the discretion
of each whether to obey or to refuse, and they often declined to
comply with such requisitions. It thus became necessary for the
purpose of removing this barrier, and, “in order to form a more
perfect union,” to establish a Government which could act directly
upon the people and execute its own laws without the intermediate
agency of the States. This has been accomplished by the
Constitution of the United States. In short, the Government
created by the Constitution, and deriving its authority from the
sovereign people of each of the several States, has precisely the
same right to exercise its power over the people of all these
States in the enumerated cases, that each one of them possesses
over subjects not delegated to the United States, but “reserved to
the States respectively or to the people.”
To the extent of the delegated powers the Constitution of the
United States is as much a part of the constitution of each State,
and is as binding upon its people, as though it had been textually
inserted therein.
This Government, therefore, is a great and powerful government,
invested with all the attributes of sovereignty over the special
subjects to which its authority extends. Its framers never
intended to implant in its bosom the seeds of its own destruction,
nor were they at its creation guilty of the absurdity of providing
for its own dissolution. It was not intended by its framers to be
the baseless fabric of a vision, which, at the touch of the
enchanter, would vanish into thin air, but a substantial and
mighty fabric, capable of resisting the slow decay of time, and of
defying the storms of ages. Indeed, well may the jealous patriots
of that day have indulged fears that a government of such high
powers might violate the reserved rights of the States, and wisely
did they adopt the rule of a strict construction of these powers
to prevent the danger. But they did not fear, nor had they any
reason to imagine that the Constitution would ever be so
interpreted as to enable any State by her own act, and without the
consent of her sister States, to discharge her people from all or
any of the federal obligations.
It may be asked, then, are the people of the States without
redress against the tyranny and oppression of the Federal
Government? By no means. The right of resistance on the part of
the governed against the oppression of their governments cannot be
denied. It exists independently of all constitutions, and has been
exercised at all periods of the world’s history. Under it, old
governments have been destroyed and new ones have taken their
place. It is embodied in strong and express language in our own
Declaration of Independence. But the distinction must ever be
observed that this is revolution against an established
government, and not a voluntary secession from it by virtue of an
inherent constitutional right. In short, let us look the danger
fairly in the face; secession is neither more nor less than
revolution. It may or it may not be a justifiable revolution; but
still it is revolution.
What, in the meantime, is the responsibility and true position of
the Executive? He is bound by solemn oath, before God and the
country, “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” and
from this obligation he cannot be absolved by any human power. But
what if the performance of this duty, in whole or in part, has
been rendered impracticable by events over which he could have
exercised no control? Such, at the present moment, is the case
throughout the State of South Carolina, so far as the laws of the
United States to secure the administration of justice by means of
the federal judiciary are concerned. All the federal officers
within its limits, through whose agency alone these laws can be
carried into execution, have already resigned. We no longer have a
district judge, a district attorney, or a marshal in South
Carolina. In fact, the whole machinery of the Federal Government
necessary for the distribution of remedial justice among the
people has been demolished, and it would be difficult, if not
impossible, to replace it.
The only acts of Congress on the statute book, bearing upon this
subject, are those of the 28th February, 1795, and 3d March, 1807.
These authorize the President, after he shall have ascertained
that the marshal, with his posse comitatus, is unable to execute
civil or criminal process in any particular case, to call forth
the militia and employ the army and navy to aid him in performing
this service, having first by proclamation commanded the
insurgents “to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective
abodes within a limited time.” This duty cannot by possibility be
performed in a State where no judicial authority exists to issue
process, and where there is no marshal to execute it, and where,
even if there were such an officer, the entire population would
constitute one solid combination to resist him.
The bare enumeration of these provisions proves how inadequate
they are, without further legislation, to overcome a united
opposition in a single State, not to speak of other States who may
place themselves in a similar attitude. Congress alone has power
to decide whether the present laws can or cannot be amended so as
to carry out more effectually the objects of the Constitution.
The same insuperable obstacles do not lie in the way of executing
the laws for the collection of the customs. The revenue still
continues to be collected, as heretofore, at the custom-house in
Charleston, and should the collector unfortunately resign, a
successor may be appointed to perform this duty.
Then, in regard to the property of the United States in South
Carolina. This has been purchased, for a fair equivalent, “by the
consent of the legislature of the State,” “for the erection of
forts, magazines, arsenals,” etc., and over these the authority
“to exercise exclusive legislation,” has been expressly granted by
the Constitution to Congress. It is not believed that any attempt
will be made to expel the United States from this property by
force; but if in this I should prove to be mistaken, the officer
in command of the forts has received orders to act strictly on the
defensive. In such a contingency the responsibility for
consequences would rightfully rest upon the heads of the
assailants.
Apart from the execution of the laws, so far as this may be
practicable, the Executive has no authority to decide what shall
be the relations between the Federal Government and South
Carolina. He has been invested with no such discretion. He
possesses no power to change the relations heretofore existing
between them, much less to acknowledge the independence of that
State. This would be to invest a mere executive officer with the
power of recognizing the dissolution of the Confederacy among our
thirty-three sovereign States. It bears no resemblance to the
recognition of a foreign _de facto_ government, involving no such
responsibility. Any attempt to do this would, on his part, be a
naked act of usurpation. It is, therefore, my duty to submit to
Congress the whole question in all its bearings. The course of
events is so rapidly hastening forward that the emergency may soon
arise when you may be called upon to decide the momentous question
whether you possess the power, by force of arms, to compel a State
to remain in the Union. I should feel myself recreant to my duty
were I not to express an opinion on this important subject.
The question fairly stated is: Has the Constitution delegated to
Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is
attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the
Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the
principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to
declare and to make war against a State. After much serious
reflection, I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power
has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the
Federal Government. It is manifest, upon an inspection of the
Constitution, that this is not among the specific and enumerated
powers granted to Congress; and it is equally apparent that its
exercise is not “necessary and proper for carrying into execution”
any one of these powers. So far from this power having been
delegated to Congress, it was expressly refused by the convention
which framed the Constitution.
It appears from the proceedings of that body that on the 31st May,
1787, the clause “_authorizing an exertion of the force of the
whole against a delinquent State_,” came up for consideration. Mr.
Madison opposed it in a brief but powerful speech, from which I
shall extract but a single sentence. He observed: “The use of
force against a State would look more like a declaration of war
than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered
by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by
which it might be bound.” Upon his motion the clause was
unanimously postponed, and was never, I believe, again presented.
Soon afterwards, on the 8th June, 1787, when incidentally
adverting to the subject, he said: “Any government for the United
States, formed on the supposed practicability of using force
against the unconstitutional proceedings of the States, would
prove as visionary and fallacious as the Government of Congress,”
evidently meaning the then existing Congress of the old
Confederation.
Without descending to particulars, it may be safely asserted that
the power to make war against a State is at variance with the
whole spirit and intent of the Constitution. Suppose such a war
should result in the conquest of a State, how are we to govern it
afterwards? Shall we hold it as a province and govern it by
despotic power? In the nature of things we could not, by physical
force, control the will of the people and compel them to elect
Senators and Representatives to Congress, and to perform all the
other duties depending upon their own volition, and required from
the free citizens of a free State as a constituent member of the
Confederacy.
But, if we possessed this power, would it be wise to exercise it
under existing circumstances? The object would doubtless be to
preserve the Union. War would not only present the most effectual
means of destroying it, but would banish all hope of its peaceful
reconstruction. Besides, in the fraternal conflict a vast amount
of blood and treasure would be expended, rendering future
reconciliation between the States impossible. In the meantime, who
can foretell what would be the sufferings and privations of the
people during its existence?
The fact is, that our Union rests upon public opinion, and can
never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war.
If it cannot live in the affections of the people, it must one day
perish. Congress possesses many means of preserving it by
conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hand to
preserve it by force.
But may I be permitted solemnly to invoke my countrymen to pause
and deliberate, before they determine to destroy this, the
grandest temple which has ever been dedicated to human freedom
since the world began. It has been consecrated by the blood of our
fathers, by the glories of the past, and by the hopes of the
future. The Union has already made us the most prosperous, and ere
long will, if preserved, render us the most powerful nation on the
face of the earth. In every foreign region of the globe the title
of American citizen is held in the highest respect, and when
pronounced in a foreign land it causes the hearts of our
countrymen to swell with honest pride. Surely, when we reach the
brink of the yawning abyss, we shall recoil with horror from the
last fatal plunge.
By such a dread catastrophe, the hopes of the friends of freedom
throughout the world would be destroyed, and a long night of
leaden despotism would enshroud the nations. Our example for more
than eighty years would not only be lost, but it would be quoted
as conclusive proof that man is unfit for self-government.
It is not every wrong—nay, it is not every grievous wrong—which
can justify a resort to such a fearful alternative. This ought to
be the last desperate remedy of a despairing people, after every
other constitutional means of conciliation had been exhausted. We
should reflect that, under this free Government, there is an
incessant ebb and flow in public opinion. The slavery question,
like everything human, will have its day. I firmly believe that it
has reached and passed the culminating point. But if, in the midst
of the existing excitement, the Union shall perish, the evil may
then become irreparable.
Congress can contribute much to avert it, by proposing and
recommending to the legislatures of the several States the remedy
for existing evils which the Constitution has itself provided for
its own preservation. This has been tried at different critical
periods of our history, and always with eminent success. It is to
be found in the fifth article, providing for its own amendment.
Under this article, amendments have been proposed by two-thirds of
both Houses of Congress, and have been “ratified by the
legislatures of three-fourths of the several States,” and have
consequently become parts of the Constitution. To this process the
country is indebted for the clause prohibiting Congress from
passing any law respecting an establishment of religion, or
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or of the right
of petition. To this we are, also, indebted for the Bill of
Rights, which secures the people against any abuse of power by the
Federal Government. Such were the apprehensions justly entertained
by the friends of State rights at that period as to have rendered
it extremely doubtful whether the Constitution could have long
survived without those amendments.
Again, the Constitution was amended by the same process, after the
election of President Jefferson by the House of Representatives,
in February, 1803. This amendment was rendered necessary to
prevent a recurrence of the dangers which had seriously threatened
the existence of the Government during the pendency of that
election. The article for its own amendment was intended to secure
the amicable adjustment of conflicting constitutional questions
like the present, which might arise between the governments of the
States and that of the United States. This appears from
contemporaneous history. In this connection, I shall merely call
attention to a few sentences in Mr. Madison’s justly celebrated
report, in 1799, to the legislature of Virginia. In this, he ably
and conclusively defended the resolutions of the preceding
legislature, against the strictures of several other State
legislatures. These were mainly founded upon the protest of the
Virginia legislature against the “alien and sedition acts,” as
“palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution.” In
pointing out the peaceful and constitutional remedies—and he
referred to none other—to which the States were authorized to
resort on such occasions, he concludes by saying, “that the
legislatures of the States might have made a direct representation
to Congress, with a view to obtain a rescinding of the two
offensive acts, or they might have represented to their respective
Senators in Congress, their wish that two-thirds thereof would
propose an explanatory amendment to the Constitution, or
two-thirds of themselves, if such had been their option, might by
an application to Congress, have obtained a convention for the
same object.” This is the very course which I earnestly recommend,
in order to obtain an “explanatory amendment” of the Constitution
on the subject of slavery. This might originate with Congress or
the State legislatures, as may be deemed most advisable to attain
the object.
The explanatory amendment might be confined to the final
settlement of the true construction of the Constitution on three
special points:
1. An express recognition of the right of property in slaves in
the States where it now exists or may hereafter exist.
2. The duty of protecting this right in all the common Territories
throughout their Territorial existence, and until they shall be
admitted as States into the Union, with or without slavery, as
their constitutions may prescribe.
3. A like recognition of the right of the master to have his
slave, who has escaped from one State to another, restored and
“delivered up” to him, and of the validity of the fugitive slave
law enacted for this purpose, together with a declaration that all
State laws impairing or defeating this right, are violations of
the Constitution, and are consequently null and void. It may be
objected that this construction of the Constitution has already
been settled by the Supreme Court of the United States, and what
more ought to be required? The answer is, that a very large
proportion of the people of the United States still contest the
correctness of this decision, and never will cease from agitation,
and admit its binding force, until clearly established by the
people of the several States in their sovereign character. Such an
explanatory amendment would, it is believed, forever terminate the
existing dissensions, and restore peace and harmony among the
States.
It ought not to be doubted that such an appeal to the arbitrament
established by the Constitution itself would be received with
favor by all the States of the Confederacy. In any event, it ought
to be tried in a spirit of conciliation before any of these States
shall separate themselves from the Union.
When I entered upon the duties of the Presidential office, the
aspect neither of our foreign nor domestic affairs was at all
satisfactory. We were involved in dangerous complications with
several nations, and two of our Territories were in a state of
revolution against the Government. A restoration of the African
slave trade had numerous and powerful advocates. Unlawful military
expeditions were countenanced by many of our citizens, and were
suffered, in defiance of the efforts of the Government, to escape
from our shores for the purpose of making war upon the unoffending
people of neighboring republics with whom we were at peace. In
addition to these and other difficulties, we experienced a
revulsion in monetary affairs, soon after my advent to power, of
unexampled severity, and of ruinous consequences to all the great
interests of the country. When we take a retrospect of what was
then our condition, and contrast this with its material prosperity
at the time of the late Presidential election, we have abundant
reason to return our grateful thanks to that merciful Providence
which has never forsaken us as a nation in all our past trials.
With respect to the supposed right of secession as a deduction from
the nature of the Union, as established by the Constitution—a theory
on which the secessionists from the first desired the whole issue to
be based, with all its resulting consequences—I shall close this
chapter with the remark that, after a long familiarity with our
constitutional literature, I know of no document which, within the
same compass, states so clearly and accurately what I regard as the
true theory of our Constitution, as this message of President
Buchanan. Had I the power to change it, I would not alter a word.
The President, after stating a case which might justify revolution
under this as under all other governments, after all peaceful and
constitutional means to obtain redress had been exhausted, proceeded
to discuss the supposed constitutional right of secession, with the
power of a statesman and the precision of a jurist.[78]
Footnote 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!
Among all the reproaches that have been cast upon President
Buchanan, none has been more persistently repeated than that which
has imputed to him a “temporizing policy;” and the doctrine on which
he denied that the Federal Government could make aggressive war upon
a State for the purpose of preventing her from seceding from the
Union, has been represented as the strongest proof of his want of
the vigor necessary for the emergency. Little are the objectors
aware that the policy of Mr. Lincoln’s administration, until after
the attack on Fort Sumter, was identical with that of Mr. Buchanan.
Mr. Lincoln’s policy was largely shaped by his Secretary of State,
Mr. Seward; and there can be no better authority than Mr. Seward’s
for proof of that policy.[79]
Footnote 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.