ower has
been delegated to Congress, or to any other department of the
Federal Government, to coerce a State into submission which is
attempting to withdraw, or has actually withdrawn," from the Union.
He emphasized his position by further declaring that, "so far from
this power having been delegated to Congress, it was expressly
refused by the convention which framed the Constitution." Congress
"possesses many means," Mr. Buchanan added, "of preserving the
Union by conciliation; but the sword was not placed in their hands
to preserve it by force."

The fatal admission was thus evolved from the mind of the President,
that any State which thought itself aggrieved and could not secure
the concessions demanded, might bring the Government down in ruins.
The power to destroy was in the State. The power to preserve was
not in the Nation. The President apparently failed to see that if
the Nation could not be preserved by force, its legal capacity for
existence was dependent upon the concurring and continuing will of
all the individual States. The original bond of union was, therefore,
for the day only, and the provision of the Constitution which gave
to the Supreme Court jurisdiction in controversies between States
was binding no further than the States chose to accept the decisions
of the Court.

The difference between the President and the Secessionists of the
South was a difference of opinion as to the time for action, and
as to the name by which that action should be called. In principle
there was concurrence. The President insisted that the injured
party should appeal to the aggressor, and then to the courts, with
the reserved right of revolution always in view and to be exercised
if neither the aggressor nor the courts furnished satisfactory
redress. The President recognized the reserved right of revolution
in the States, and it was a necessary incident of that right that
each State might decide when the right should be exercised. He
suggested that, as justification of revolution, the Federal Government
must be guilty of "a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise"
of powers not granted by the Constitution, quoting from the text
of the State-rights declaration by Virginia in 1798. But in all
his arguments he left the State to be the ultimate judge of the
constitutionality of the Acts of the Federal Government. Under
these doctrines the Government of the United States was shorn of
all power to preserve i