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excellency will not fail to see that no power is vested in the Executive
of the United States to anticipate insurrectionary movements against the
government of Rhode Island so as to sanction the interposition of the
military authority, but that there must be an actual insurrection,
manifested by lawless assemblages of the people or otherwise, to whom
a proclamation may be addressed and who may be required to betake
themselves to their respective abodes. I have, however, to assure your
excellency that should the time arrive--and my fervent prayer is
that it may never come--when an insurrection shall exist _against the
government_ of Rhode Island, and a requisition shall be made upon the
Executive of the United States to furnish that protection which is
guaranteed to each State by the Constitution and laws, I shall not be
found to shrink from the performance of a duty which, while it would be
the most painful, is at the same time the most imperative. I have also
to say that in such a contingency the Executive could not look into real
or supposed defects of the existing government in order to ascertain
whether some other plan of government proposed for adoption was better
suited to the wants and more in accordance with the wishes of any
portion of her citizens. To throw the Executive power of this Government
into any such controversy would be to make the President the armed
arbitrator between the people of the different States and their
constituted authorities, and might lead to a usurped power dangerous
alike to the stability of the State governments and the liberties of the
people. It will be my duty, on the contrary, to respect the requisitions
of that government which has been recognized as the existing government
of the State through all time past until I shall be advised in regular
manner that it has been altered and abolished and another substituted in
its place by legal and peaceable proceedings adopted and pursued by the
authorities and people of the State. Nor can I readily bring myself
to believe that any such contingency will arise as shall render the
interference of this Government at all necessary. The people of the
State of Rhode Island have been too long distinguished for their love
of order and of regular government to rush into revolution in order to
obtain a redress of grievances, real or supposed, which a government
under which their fathers lived in peace would not in due season
redress. No portion o