Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

The President then spoke of the necessity of acquiescence of either minorities or majorities in the decisions of questions. Without such acquiescence, the Government could not exist. “If a minority in such case,” he said, “will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new Confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? . . . Plainly, the central idea of secession is anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism.”

The President referred to the binding character of the decisions of the Supreme Court in all special cases; but he said, evidently with the action of Chief-Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case in his mind,¹ “The candid citizen must confess, that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” He referred to the impossibility of a dissolution of the Union, physically speaking. The people of the respective sections, who differed widely in opinions, might, like a divorced husband and wife, separate absolutely, by going out of the reach of each other, but the territory of the respective sections must remain “face to face,” and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. The question then arises, whether that intercourse would be more agreeable after separation. “Can aliens,” asked the President, “make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced among aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.”

The President recognized the right of the people to change their existing form of government when they should become weary of it, either by amending the Constitution or by revolution; and, in view of present difficulties, he expressed his concurrence in the proposition for a Convention of Representatives of all the States, to deliberate on constitutional amendments; and he went so far as to say, that he had no objections to any amendment which should, by an express and irrevocable decree, provide that the National Government should never interfere with Slavery in the States where it existed. The Chief Magistrate, he said, had no power to fix any terms for a separation of States. That was for the people to do. His business was only to execute the laws. He believed in the ultimate wisdom and justice of the American people. “Why not have a patient confidence in that justice?” he asked. “Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? ”