ion utters its behests in the
name and by authority of the people, and it does not exact from States
any plighted public faith to maintain it. On the contrary, it makes its
own preservation depend on individual duty and individual obligation.
Sir, the States cannot omit to appoint Senators and Electors. It is not
a matter resting in State discretion or State pleasure. The Constitution
has taken better care of its own preservation. It lays its hand on
individual conscience and individual duty. It incapacitates any man to
sit in the legislature of a State, who shall not first have taken his
solemn oath to support the Constitution of the United States. From the
obligation of this oath, no State power can discharge him. All the
members of all the State legislatures are as religiously bound to
support the Constitution of the United States as they are to support
their own State constitution. Nay, Sir, they are as solemnly sworn to
support it as we ourselves are, who are members of Congress.

No member of a State legislature can refuse to proceed, at the proper
time, to elect Senators to Congress, or to provide for the choice of
Electors of President and Vice-President, any more than the members of
this Senate can refuse, when the appointed day arrives, to meet the
members of the other house, to count the votes for those officers, and
ascertain who are chosen. In both cases, the duty binds, and with equal
strength, the conscience of the individual member, and it is imposed on
all by an oath in the same words. Let it then never be said, Sir, that
it is a matter of discretion with the States whether they will continue
the government, or break it up by refusing to appoint Senators and to
elect Electors. They have no discretion in the matter. The members of
their legislatures cannot avoid doing either, so often as the time
arrives, without a direct violation of their duty and their oaths; such
a violation as would break up any other government.

Looking still further to the provisions of the Constitution itself, in
order to learn its true character, we find its great apparent purpose
to be, to unite the people of all the States under one general
government, for certain definite objects, and, to the extent of this
union, to restrain the separate authority of the States. Congress only
can declare war; therefore, when one State is at war with a foreign
nation, all must be at war. The President and the Senate only can make
peace; whe