Up to this point in his argument, his opinions, whatever may be thought of their soundness, were confined to the legitimate field of executive interpretation, and such as in the exercise of his official discretion he might with undoubted propriety communicate to Congress.  But he had apparently failed to satisfy his own conscience in thus summarily reasoning the executive and governmental power of a young, compact, vigorous, and thoroughly organized nation of thirty millions of people into sheer nothingness and impotence.  How supremely absurd was the whole national panoply of commerce, credit, coinage, treaty power, judiciary, taxation, militia, army and navy, and Federal fag, if, through the mere joint of a defective law, the hollow reed of a secession ordinance could inflict a fatal wound!

[Illustration:  JAMES BUCHANAN.]

  [Sidenote] Appendix, “Globe,” Dec. 3, 1860, p. 3.

The President proceeds, therefore, to discuss the second head of the disunion question, by an attempt to formulate and define the powers and duties of Congress with reference to the threatened rebellion.  He would not only roll the burden from his own shoulders upon the National Legislature, but he would by volunteer advice instruct that body how it must be borne and disposed of.  Addressing Congress, he says in substance:  “You may be called upon to decide the momentous question, whether you possess the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union....  The question, fairly stated, is:  Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn, from the Confederacy!  If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and make war against a State.  After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress, or to any other department of the Federal Government....  It may be safely asserted that the power to make war against a State is at variance with the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution....  But if we possessed this power, would it be wise to exercise it under existing circumstances?...  Our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war....  Congress possesses many means of preserving it by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hand to preserve it by force.”

Why did the message thus leap at one bound without necessary connection or coherence from the discussion of executive to those of legislative powers?  Why waste words over doubtful theories when there was pressing need to suggest practical amendments to the statute whose real or imaginary defects Mr. Buchanan had pointed out?  Why indulge in lamentations over the remote possibility that Congress might violate the Constitution, when the occasion demanded only prompt preventive orders from the Executive to arrest the actual threatened violation of law by Charleston mobs?  Why talk of war against States when the duty of the hour was the exercise of acknowledged authority against insurrectionary citizens?