The President's message of December, however, has all the
characteristics of a diplomatic paper, for diplomacy is said to abhor
certainty as Nature abhors a vacuum; and it was not within the power of
man to reach any fixed conclusion from that message. When the country
was agitated, when opinions were being formed, when we were drifting
beyond the power ever to return, this was not what we had a right to
expect from the Chief Magistrate. One policy or the other he ought to
have taken. If believing this to be a government of force, if believing
it to be a consolidated mass, and not a confederation of States, he
should have said: "No State has a right to secede; every State is
subordinate to the Federal Government, and the Federal Government must
empower me with physical means to reduce to subjugation the State
asserting such a right." If not, if a State-rights man and a
Democrat--as for many years it has been my pride to acknowledge our
venerable Chief Magistrate to be--then another line of policy should
have been taken. The Constitution gave no power to the Federal
Government to coerce a State; the Constitution gave an army for the
purposes of common defense, and to preserve domestic tranquillity; but
the Constitution never contemplated using that army against a State. A
State exercising the sovereign function of secession is beyond the reach
of the Federal Government, unless we woo her with the voice of
fraternity, and bring her back to the enticements of affection.
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