.

Another reason for retracing our steps will doubtless be seen by
Congress in the late manifestations of public opinion upon this subject.
We live in a country where the popular will always enforces obedience
to itself, sooner or later. It is vain to think of opposing it with
anything short of legal authority backed by overwhelming force. It can
not have escaped your attention that from the day on which Congress
fairly and formally presented the proposition to govern the Southern
States by military force, with a view to the ultimate establishment of
negro supremacy, every expression of the general sentiment has been more
or less adverse to it. The affections of this generation can not be
detached from the institutions of their ancestors. Their determination
to preserve the inheritance of free government in their own hands and
transmit it undivided and unimpaired to their own posterity is too
strong to be successfully opposed. Every weaker passion will disappear
before that love of liberty and law for which the American people are
distinguished above all others in the world.

How far the duty of the President "to preserve, protect, and defend
the Constitution" requires him to go in opposing an unconstitutional
act of Congress is a very serious and important question, on which
I have deliberated much and felt extremely anxious to reach a proper
conclusion. Where an act has been passed according to the forms of the
Constitution by the supreme legislative authority, and is regularly
enrolled among the public statutes of the country, Executive resistance
to it, especially in times of high party excitement, would be likely to
produce violent collision between the respective adherents of the two
branches of the Government. This would be simply civil war, and civil
war must be resorted to only as the last remedy for the worst of evils.
Whatever might tend to provoke it should be most carefully avoided.
A faithful and conscientious magistrate will concede very much to honest
error, and something even to perverse malice, before he will endanger
the public peace; and he will not adopt forcible measures, or such as
might lead to force, as long as those which are peaceable remain open to
him or to his constituents. It is true that cases may occur in which the
Executive would be compelled to stand on its rights, and maintain them
regardless of all consequences. If Congress should pass an act which is
not only in palpable conflict