e States, and to employ such parts of the land
and naval forces of the United States as he may deem necessary to
enforce the faithful execution of the laws of the United States, or to
suppress such rebellion, in whatever State or Territory thereof the
laws of the United States may be forcibly opposed, or the execution
thereof forcibly obstructed."[399] This provision of the United States
Code consolidates a course of legislation which began at the time of the
Whiskey Rebellion of 1792.[400] In Martin _v._ Mott,[401] which arose
out of the War of 1812, it was held that the authority to decide whether
the exigency has arisen belongs exclusively to the President.[402] Even
before that time, Jefferson had in 1808, in the course of his efforts to
enforce the Embargo Acts, issued a proclamation ordering "all officers
having authority, civil or military, who shall be found in the vicinity"
of an unruly combination to aid and assist "by all means in their power,
by force of arms and otherwise" the suppression of such
combination.[403] Forty-six years later Attorney General Cushing advised
President Pierce that in enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,
marshals of the United States, had authority when opposed by unlawful
combinations, to summon to their aid not only bystanders and citizens
generally, but armed forces within their precincts, both State militia
and United States officers, soldiers, sailors, and marines,[404] a
doctrine which Pierce himself improved upon two years later by
asserting, with reference to the civil war then raging in Kansas, that
it lay within his obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully
executed to place the forces of the United States in Kansas at the
disposal of the marshal there, to be used as a portion of the _posse
comitatus_. Lincoln's call of April 15, 1861, for 75,000 volunteers was,
on the other hand, a fresh invocation, though of course on a vastly
magnified scale, of Jefferson's conception of a _posse comitatus_
subject to Presidential call.[405] The provision above extracted from
the United States Code ratifies this conception as regards the State
militias and the national forces.
SUSPENSION OF HABEAS CORPUS BY THE PRESIDENT
_See_ Article I, Section 9, clause 2, pp. 312-315.
PREVENTIVE MARTIAL LAW
The question of executive power in the presence of civil disorder is
dealt with in modern terms in Moyer _v._ Peabody,[406] decided in 1909,
to which the Debs Case,[407]
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