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Davis, Jefferson, 1808-1889

"The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government"

'[198]
"Congress, then, has the power to provide for _organizing_ the
arms-bearing people of the State into militia. Each _State_ has
the power to officer and _train_ them when organized.
"_Congress_ may call forth the militia to execute Confederate
laws; the _State_ has not surrendered the power to call them
forth to execute State laws.
"Congress may call them forth to repel invasion; so may the
State, for the power is impliedly reserved of governing all the
militia, except the part in actual service of the Confederacy.
"I confess myself at a loss to perceive in what manner these
careful and well-defined provisions of the Constitution,
regulating the organization and government of the militia, can
be understood as applying in the remotest degree to the armies
of the Confederacy, nor can I conceive how the grant of
_exclusive_ power to declare and carry on war by armies raised
and supported by the Confederacy is to be restricted or
diminished by the clauses which grant a _divided_ power over the
militia. On the contrary, the delegation of authority over the
militia, so far as granted, appears to me to be plainly an
_additional_ enumerated power intended to strengthen the hands
of the Confederate Government in the discharge of its paramount
duty, the common defense of the States.
"You state, after quoting the twelfth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
grants of power to Congress, that 'these grants of power all
relate to the same subject-matter, and are all contained in the
same section of the Constitution, and, by a well-known rule of
construction, must be taken as a whole and construed together.


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