John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

When, on December 3d, the President's message was laid before Congress, it was found to contain the most unjust and indefensible allegations, the most glaringly inconsistent and irreconcilable doctrines, the most childish and useless suggestions. He charged that Southern discontent was caused by “long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States,” in face of the well-known fact that Southern interference in free territory was the cause of the crisis. He declared that, while a State had no right to secede, the Constitution gave no right to coerce a State into submission when it had withdrawn, or was attempting to withdraw, from the confederacy. This was raising a false issue. The question was not of acting against a State for either constitutional or unconstitutional efforts, but of suppressing insurrection and punishing individuals for violation of United States laws. Finally, he argued that, to enforce United States laws, a United States Court must first issue a writ and a United States Marshal execute it; and that where judges and marshals had resigned, and a universal popular feeling opposed, such execution became impossible. In this he ignored the fact that he had power to instantly appoint new judges and marshals, and make the whole army, navy, and militia of the nation a posse comitatus to execute their process; and within one month after signing this message, he, himself, actually nominated a citizen of Pennsylvania Collector of the Port of Charleston, in signal defiance of his own theory. As a fitting climax to such puerile reasoning, he urged an amendment of the Constitution that would give slavery the very concession in repudiation of which the people had just overwhelmingly elected Lincoln. As a specimen of absurdity, stupidity, and wilful wrongheaded-ness, this message is not equalled in American political literature.