[250]
faithfully support all acts of Congress, passed during the existing rebellion, with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held void by Congress, or by decision of the Supreme Court, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President, made during the existing rebellion, having reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court.
So help me God!
In a message to Congress, of the same date with the preceding proclamation, the
President of the
United States, after explaining the objects of the proclamation, says:
In the midst of other cares, however important, we must not lose sight of the fact that the war-power is still our main reliance.
To that power alone can we look, for a time, to give confidence to the people in the contested regions that the insurgent power will not again overrun them.
The intelligent reader will observe that this plan of the
President of the
United States to restore states to the
Union, to occupy the places of those which he had been attempting to destroy, does not contain a single feature to secure a republican form of government, nor a single provision authorized by the
Constitution of the United States.
With his usurped war power to sustain him in the work of destruction, he found it easy to destroy; he was powerless, however, to create or to restore.
In the former case, he had gone imperiously forward, trampling under foot every American political principle, and breaking through every constitutional limitation.
In the latter case, he could not advance one step without recognizing sound political principles and complying with their dictates.
On such foundation he must construct, or his work would be like the house founded on the sand.
It will now be shown what the true principles are, and then that the
President of the
United States perverted them, misstated them, and sought to reach his ends by groundless fabrications—as if he would enforce a fiction or establish a fallacy to be as good as truth.
It might be still further shown, if it had not already become self-evident, that this method was pursued with such a perversity and wickedness as to render it a characteristic feature of that war administration on whose skirts is the blood of more than a million of human beings.
The whole science of a republican government is to be found in this sentence of the
Declaration of Independence, made by the representatives of the
United States of America, in Congress assembled, on July 4, 1776.
It says:
That, to secure these rights [certain unalienable rights], governments are instituted among men—deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new
