Mr. Breckenridge.  Mr. President, I have tried on more than one occasion in the Senate, in parliamentary and respectful language, to express my opinions in regard to the character of our Federal system, the relations of the States to the Federal Government, to the Constitution, the bond of the Federal political system.  They differ utterly from those entertained by the Senator from Oregon.  Evidently, by his line of argument, he regards this as an original, not a delegated Government, and he regards it as clothed with all those powers which belong to an original nation, not only with those powers which are delegated by the different political communities that compose it, and limited by the written Constitution that forms the bond of Union.  I have tried to show that, in the view that I take of our Government, this war is an unconstitutional war.  I do not think the Senator from Oregon has answered my argument.  He asks, what must we do?  As we progress southward and invade the country, must we not, said he, carry with us all the laws of war?  I would not progress southward and invade the country.

The President of the United States, as I again repeat, in my judgment only has the power to call out the military to assist the civil authority in executing the laws; and when the question assumes the magnitude and takes the form of a great political severance, and nearly half the members of the Confederacy withdraw themselves from it, what then?  I have never held that one State or a number of States have a right without cause to break the compact of the Constitution.  But what I mean to say is that you cannot then undertake to make war in the name of the Constitution.  In my opinion they are out.  You may conquer them; but do not attempt to do it under what I consider false political pretenses.  However, sir, I will not enlarge upon that.  I have developed these ideas again and again, and I do not care to re-argue them.  Hence the Senator and I start from entirely different stand-points, and his pretended replies are no replies at all.

The Senator asks me, “What would you have us do?” I have already intimated what I would have us do.  I would have us stop the war.  We can do it.  I have tried to show that there is none of that inexorable necessity to continue this war which the Senator seems to suppose.  I do not hold that constitutional liberty on this continent is bound up in this fratricidal, devastating, horrible contest.  Upon the contrary, I fear it will find its grave in it.  The Senator is mistaken in supposing that we can reunite these States by war.  He is mistaken in supposing that eighteen or twenty million upon the one side can subjugate ten or twelve million upon the other; or, if they do subjugate them, that you can restore constitutional government as our fathers made it.  You will have to govern them as Territories, as suggested by the Senator, if ever they are reduced to the dominion of the United States, or, as the Senator