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 ment" of the Constitution on the subject of slavery. with Congress or the State legislatures, as may be deemed most advisable to attain the object. explanatory amendThis might originate 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.* 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 * 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! 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.* 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, chicfly 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. CHAPTER XVII. 1860 December. RECEPTION OF THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE IN THE CABINET, IN CONGRESS, AND IN THE COUNTRY-THE FIRM ATTITUDE AND WISE POLICY OF REFERENCE EFERENCE has already been made to what took place when this annual message was read to the cabinet, before it was transmitted to Congress. Recent revelations made by Judge Black in the public prints disclose the nature of an objection made by him to the expression "to coerce a State into submission, which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the Confederacy." His criticism did not apply to the legal proposition of the message, in which he entirely concurred; but his apprehension was that the expression would be read superficially, and be misunderstood. The President did not think so, nor did the other members of the cabinet. It is only necessary for me to repeat that the message clearly and unequivocally pointed out that the coercive power of the Federal Government was necessarily confined and must be applied to the execution upon individuals of the laws of the United States; and that it explicitly stated, with proper references to the proceedings of the framers of the Constitution, that a power to coerce a State by force of arms was expressly rejected by them, since it would, if applied, be equivalent to a declaration of war against the State by the Government of the Union. But the apprehension felt by the learned Attorney General was caused, I presume, by his anxiety concerning the reception of the message in the South and among the secessionists. It was their misconstruction that he feared. He could not well have supposed that Northern statesmen, grounded at least in the fundamental principles of the Constitution usually accepted at the North, and with the clear distinction put before them in the message between coercing a State and coercing individuals, would impute to the President an intention to renounce the right to use force in the execution of the laws and the protection of the public property of the Union. In point of fact, as the sequel will show, nearly the whole Republican party, after the message became public, without any rational excuse for such a misconstruction, saw fit to treat the message as a denial by the President of any power to enforce the laws against the citizens of a State after secession, and even after actual rebellion. If this was what the Attorney General anticipated, it would seem that the President, having taken great care to make clear the distinction, was not bound to suppose that a merely partisan spirit of misrepresentation would be applied to such a document as this message, to the extent of utterly perverting its meaning. On the other hand, the disunionists did not misunderstand or misconstrue the message. They saw clearly that it not only denounced secession, but that while it enunciated the doctrine that the Federal Government could not apply force to prevent a State from adopting an ordinance of secession, it could and must use force, if need be, to execute its laws, notwithstanding the secession. This was a doctrine opposed toto cœlo, and in all its branches, to the secessionist's theory of the Constitution. It met them upon their own ground, for it utterly denied that a State ordinance of secession could absolve its people from obeying the laws of the United States. Accordingly they denounced the message; and upon their theory of the Constitution they denounced it rightly. All friendly intercourse between the leading disunionists in Congress and the President ceased after the message became public; and from the multitude of private letters which reached the President from the South, now lying before me, it is apparent that throughout that section he was regarded, alike by the enemies and the friends of the Union, as having made the issue on which the secessionists desired to have the whole controversy turn. They were just as ready to accept the issue of a constitutional power in the Federal Government to enforce its laws after secession, as they were to accept the issue of coercing a State to remain in the Union. As soon as the message was published, "thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallambrosa," private letters of appro |