may
be called upon to make between the government of a State and any portion
of its citizens who may assail it with domestic violence, or may be in
actual insurrection against it, I can only look to the Constitution and
laws of the United States, which plainly declare the obligations of the
executive department and leave it no alternative as to the course it
shall pursue.

By the fourth section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the
United States it is provided that "the United States shall guarantee to
every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall
protect each of them against invasion, and, on application of the
legislature or executive (when the legislature can not be convened),
_against domestic violence_." And by the act of Congress approved on the
28th February, 1795, it is declared "that in case of an insurrection in
any State _against the government thereof_ it shall be lawful for the
President of the United States, upon application of the legislature
of such State or by the executive (when the legislature can not be
convened), to call forth such numbers of the militia of any other State
or States as may be applied for, as he may judge sufficient to suppress
such insurrection." By the third section of the same act it is provided
"that whenever it may be necessary, in the judgment of the President, to
use the military force hereby directed to be called forth, the President
shall forthwith, by proclamation, command such insurgents to disperse
and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within a reasonable
time." By the act of March 3, 1807, it is provided "that in all cases of
insurrection or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States
or of any individual State or Territory where it is lawful for the
President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose
of suppressing such insurrection or of causing the laws to be duly
executed, it shall be lawful for him to employ for the same purposes
such part of the land or naval force of the United States as shall be
judged necessary, having first observed all the prerequisites of the
law in that respect."

This is the first occasion, so far as the government of a State and its
people are concerned, on which it has become necessary to consider of
the propriety of exercising those high and most important of
constitutional and legal functions.

By a careful consideration of the above-recited acts of Congress yo