In my annual message I expressed the conviction, which I have long deliberately held, and which recent reflection has only tended to deepen and confirm, that no State has a right by its own act to secede from the Union or throw off its federal obligations at pleasure.  I also declared my opinion to be that even if that right existed and should be exercised by any State of the Confederacy the executive department of this Government had no authority under the Constitution to recognize its validity by acknowledging the independence of such State.  This left me no alternative, as the chief executive officer under the Constitution of the United States, but to collect the public revenues and to protect the public property so far as this might be practicable under existing laws.  This is still my purpose.  My province is to execute and not to make the laws.  It belongs to Congress exclusively to repeal, to modify, or to enlarge their provisions to meet exigencies as they may occur.  I possess no dispensing power.

I certainly had no right to make aggressive war upon any State, and I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely withheld that power even from Congress.  But the right and the duty to use military force defensively against those who resist the Federal officers in the execution of their legal functions and against those who assail the property of the Federal Government is clear and undeniable.

But the dangerous and hostile attitude of the States toward each other has already far transcended and cast in the shade the ordinary executive duties already provided for by law, and has assumed such vast and alarming proportions as to place the subject entirely above and beyond Executive control.  The fact can not be disguised that we are in the midst of a great revolution.  In all its various bearings, therefore, I commend the question to Congress as the only human tribunal under Providence possessing the power to meet the existing emergency.  To them exclusively belongs the power to declare war or to authorize the employment of military force in all cases contemplated by the Constitution, and they alone possess the power to remove grievances which might lead to war and to secure peace and union to this distracted country.  On them, and on them alone, rests the responsibility.

The Union is a sacred trust left by our Revolutionary fathers to their descendants, and never did any other people inherit so rich a legacy.  It has rendered us prosperous in peace and triumphant in war.  The national flag has floated in glory over every sea.  Under its shadow American citizens have found protection and respect in all lands beneath the sun.  If we descend to considerations of purely material interest, when in the history of all time has a confederacy been bound together by such strong ties of mutual interest?  Each portion of it is dependent on all and all upon each portion for prosperity and domestic security.  Free trade throughout the whole supplies the wants of one portion from the productions of another and scatters wealth everywhere.  The great planting and farming States require the aid of the commercial and navigating States to send their productions to domestic and foreign markets and to furnish the naval power to render their transportation secure against all hostile attacks.