. My province is to execute and not to make the
laws. It belongs to Congress exclusively to repeal, to modify, or to
enlarge their provisions to meet exigencies as they may occur. I possess
no dispensing power.

I certainly had no right to make aggressive war upon any State, and
I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely withheld that
power even from Congress. But the right and the duty to use military
force defensively against those who resist the Federal officers in the
execution of their legal functions and against those who assail the
property of the Federal Government is clear and undeniable.

But the dangerous and hostile attitude of the States toward each other
has already far transcended and cast in the shade the ordinary executive
duties already provided for by law, and has assumed such vast and
alarming proportions as to place the subject entirely above and beyond
Executive control. The fact can not be disguised that we are in the
midst of a great revolution. In all its various bearings, therefore,
I commend the question to Congress as the only human tribunal under
Providence possessing the power to meet the existing emergency. To
them exclusively belongs the power to declare war or to authorize
the employment of military force in all cases contemplated by the
Constitution, and they alone possess the power to remove grievances
which might lead to war and to secure peace and union to this distracted
country. On them, and on them alone, rests the responsibility.

The Union is a sacred trust left by our Revolutionary fathers to their
descendants, and never did any other people inherit so rich a legacy.
It has rendered us prosperous in peace and triumphant in war. The
national flag has floated in glory over every sea. Under its shadow
American citizens have found protection and respect in all lands beneath
the sun. If we descend to considerations of purely material interest,
when in the history of all time has a confederacy been bound together
by such strong ties of mutual interest? Each portion of it is dependent
on all and all upon each portion for prosperity and domestic security.
Free trade throughout the whole supplies the wants of one portion from
the productions of another and scatters wealth everywhere. The great
planting and farming States require the aid of the commercial and
navigating States to send their productions to domestic and foreign
markets and to furnish the naval power to ren