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

“ [73] when Congress shall arm one part of the people against another, for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General Government in the exercise of its proper constitutional functions.... Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hands to preserve it by force.”

Having declared that secession was a crime, and the doctrine of State Supremacy a heresy dangerous to the nationality of the Republic, but that both might be indulged in to the fullest extent with impunity, because the Government, as an executive force, was constitutionally and utterly impotent to protect the nation against rebellious hands uplifted to destroy it — in other words, that the hands of wicked assassins were ready with strength to crush out the National life, but the Republic possessed no power, excepting that of moral suasion, to protect and preserve that life — the President proposed to conciliate its enemies, by allowing them to infuse deadly poison into the blood of their intended victim, which would slowly but as surely accomplish their purpose, in time. To do this, he proposed an “explanatory amendment” to the Constitution, on the subject of Slavery, which should give to the conspirators every thing which they had demanded, namely, the elevation of the Slave system to the dignity of a national institution, and thus sap the very foundations of our free government. This amendment was to consist of an express recognition of the right of property in slaves, in the States where it then existed or might thereafter exist; of the recognition of the duty of the National Government to protect that right in all the Territories throughout their Territorial existence; the recognition of the right of the Slave-owner to every privilege and advantage given him in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850; and a declaration that all the State laws impairing or defeating that law were violations of the Constitution, and consequently null and void.

This Message, so indecisive, and, in many respects, inconsistent, alarmed the people. They felt themselves, in a measure, adrift upon a sea of troubles without a competent pilot, a compass, or a pole-star. As we have observed, it pleased nobody. In the Chamber of the United States Senate, when as motion for its reference was made, it was spoken lightly of by the friends and foes of the Union. Clingman, of North Carolina, who, misrepresenting the sentiment of his State, was the first to sound the trumpet of disunion in that hall, at this time declared that it fell short of stating the case that was before the country. Wigfall, of Texas, said he could not understand it; and, at a later period,

January 10, 1861.

Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, said in the Senate, that it “had all the characteristics of a diplomatic paper, for diplomacy is said to abhor certainty, as nature abhors a vacuum; and it is not within the power of man to reach any fixed conclusion from that Message. When the country was agitated, when opinions were being formed, when we are drifting beyond the power ever to return, this was not what we had a right to expect from a Chief Magistrate. One policy or the other he ought to have taken.” “He should have taken the position,” he said, either of a “Federalist, that every State is subordinate to the Federal Government,” and he was bound to enforce its authority; or as a State Rights Democrat, which he professed to be, holding that “the Constitution gave no power to the Federal Government to coerce a State.” He said, truly, “That the ”