This Rhode Island disturbance, as everybody knows, was brought to the knowledge of the President of the United States[3] by the public authorities of Rhode Island; and how did he treat it?  The United States have guaranteed to each State a republican form of government.  And a law of Congress has directed the President, in a constitutional case requiring the adoption of such a proceeding, to call out the militia to put down domestic violence, and suppress insurrection.  Well, then, application was made to the President of the United States, to the executive power of the United States.  For, according to our system, it devolves upon the executive to determine, in the first instance, what are and what are not governments.  The President recognizes governments, foreign governments, as they appear from time to time in the occurrences of this changeful world.  And the Constitution and the laws, if an insurrection exists against the government of any State, rendering it necessary to appear with an armed force, make it his duty to call out the militia and suppress it.

Two things may here be properly considered.  The first is, that the Constitution declares that the United States shall protect every State against domestic violence; and the law of 1795, making provision for carrying this constitutional duty into effect in all proper cases, declares, that, “in case of an insurrection in any State against the government thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call out the militia of other States to suppress such insurrection.”  These constitutional and legal provisions make it the indispensable duty of the President to decide, in cases of commotion, what is the rightful government of the State.  He cannot avoid such decision.  And in this case he decided, of course, that the existing government, the charter government, was the rightful government.  He could not possibly have decided otherwise.

In the next place, if events had made it necessary to call out the militia, and the officers and soldiers of such militia, in protecting the existing government, had done precisely what the defendants in this case did, could an action have been maintained against them?  No one would assert so absurd a proposition.

In reply to the requisition of the Governor, the President stated that he did not think it was yet time for the application of force; but he wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, in which he directed him to confer with the Governor of Rhode Island; and, whenever it should appear to them to be necessary, to call out from Massachusetts and Connecticut a militia force sufficient to terminate at once this insurrection, by the authority of the government of the United States.  We are at no loss, therefore, to know how the executive government of the United States treated this insurrection.  It was regarded as fit to be suppressed.  That is manifest from the President’s letters to the Secretary of War and to Governor King.