nt is invested with sovereign powers on special
subjects, which can only be opposed or abrogated by revolution; that
secession is unconstitutional, and is, therefore, neither more nor
less than revolution; that the Executive has no right to recognize the
secession of a State; that the Constitution has established a perfect
government in all its forms, legislative, executive, and judicial, and
this government, to the extent of its powers, acts directly upon the
individual citizen of every State and executes its own decrees by the
agency of its own officers; and, finally, that the Executive cannot be
absolved from his duty to execute the laws.

But, continued the President, the laws can only be executed in certain
prescribed methods, through the agency of courts, marshals, _posse
comitatus_, aided, if necessary, by the militia or land and naval
forces. The means and agencies, therefore, fail, and the performance
of this duty becomes impraticable, when, as in South Carolina,
universal public sentiment has deprived him of courts, marshals, and
_posse_. Present laws being inadequate to overcome a united
opposition, even in a single State, Congress alone has the power to
decide whether they can be effectually amended.[7]

It will be seen from the above summary, that the whole of the
President's rambling discussion of the first head of the disunion
question resulted logically in three ultimate conclusions: (1) That
South Carolina was in revolt; (2) that the Constitution, the laws, and
moral obligation all united gave the Government the right to suppress
this revolt by executing the laws upon and against the citizens of
that State; (3) that certain defects in the laws paralyzed their
practical enforcement.

Up to this point in his argument, his opinions, whatever may be
thought of their soundness, were confined to the legitimate field of
executive interpretation, and such as in the exercise of his official
discretion he might with undoubted propriety communicate to Congress.
But he had apparently failed to satisfy his own conscience in thus
summarily reasoning the executive and governmental power of a young,
compact, vigorous, and thoroughly organized nation of thirty millions
of people into sheer nothingness and impotence. How supremely absurd
was the whole national panoply of commerce, credit, coinage, treaty
power, judiciary, taxation, militia, army and navy, and Federal fag,
if, through the mere joint of a defective law,