[354] other than the troops of the United States, and that their troops were therefore not prohibited from entering a state against its wishes, and for purpose hostile to its policy, the section of the Constitution referred to fortifies the fact, heretofore noticed, of the refusal of the convention, when forming the Constitution, to delegate to the federal government power to coerce a state. By its last clause it was provided that not even to suppress domestic violence could the general government, on its own motion, send troops of the United States into the territory of one of the states. That section reads thus:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and on application of the Legislature, or of the executive (when the Legislature can not be convened), against domestic violence.Surely, if federal troops could not be sent into a a state without its application, even to protect it against domestic violence, still less could it be done to overrule the will of its people. That, instead of an obligation upon the citizens of other states to respond to a call by the President for troops to invade a particular state, it was in April, 1861, deemed a high crime to so use them: reference is here made to the published answers of the governors of states which had not seceded to the requisition made upon them for troops to be employed against the states which had seceded. Governor Letcher of Virginia replied to the requisition of the United States Secretary of War as follows:
I am requested to detach from the militia of the State of Virginia the quota designated in a table which you append, to serve as infantry or riflemen, for the period of three months, unless sooner discharged. In reply to this communication, I have only to say that the militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for such an object—an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution, or the Act of 1795—will not be complied with.Governor Magoffin of Kentucky replied:
Your dispatch is received. In answer, I say emphatically, Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States.Governor Harris of Tennessee replied:
Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but fifty thousand, if necessary, for the defense of our rights, or those of our Southern brothers.Governor Jackson of Missouri answered:
Requisition is illegal, unconstitutional, revolutionary, inhuman, diabolical, and can not be complied with.
