ry citizen of South
Carolina, or any other State, might refuse to accept or execute the
office of United States marshal, or, indeed, any Federal office, the
want could be immediately lawfully supplied by appointing any qualified
citizen of any other State, who might lawfully and properly lead either
a _posse_, or Federal forces, or State militia, to put down obstruction
of the Federal laws, insurrection, or rebellion. President Buchanan
admitted his own error, and repudiated his own doctrine, when on
January 2, following, he nominated a citizen of Pennsylvania for the
office of collector of the port of Charleston, South Carolina.

Sections two and three of the Act of February 28, 1795, authorize the
President, when the execution of the laws is obstructed by insurrection
too powerful for courts and marshals, to call forth the militia of any
and all the States, first and primarily to "suppress such
combinations," and, secondly, "to cause the laws to be duly executed,
and the use of militia so to be called forth may be continued, if
necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement
of the then next session of Congress." In performing this duty the act
imposes but a single condition or prerequisite on the Executive: he
shall "by proclamation command the insurgents to disperse." These
sections are complete, harmonious, self-sufficient, and, in their chief
provisions, nowise dependent upon or connected with any other section
or clause of the act. They place under the President's command the
whole militia, and by a subsequent law (March 3, 1807) also the entire
army and navy of the Union, against rebellion. The assertion that the
army can only follow a marshal and his writ in case of rebellion, is
not only unsupported by the language of the act, but utterly refuted by
strong implication. The last section repeals a former provision
limiting the President's action to cases of insurrection of which
United States judges shall have given him notice, and thereby remits
him to any and all of his official sources of information. Jackson's
famous force bill only provided certain supplementary details; it
directly recognized and invoked the great powers of the Act of 1795,
and expiring by limitation, left its wholesome plenitude and broad
original grant of authority unrepealed and unimpaired.

[8] "Happily our civil war was undertaken and prosecuted in self-defense,
not to coerce a State, but to enforce the executio