a provision that the writ of habeas corpus shall be suspended only when "in cases of rebellion or invaion the public safety may require it." And our history shows that such a power was exercised in the earliest days of the republic, and while the Government was administered by the framers of the Constitution, and their immediate contemporaries, with Washington at their head.

Nor will the right to exercise such a power be affected by the circumstance that the rebellion purports to be justified by a State, when the insurgents are resisting the lawful and constitutional authority of the Federal Government.

The doctrine of State sovereignty does not legitimately lead to any such conclusion, because it does not require its advocates to deny the sovereignty of the national Government. As stated in the preceding chapter, the Constitution divides the sovereign power, and allots distinct and different portions of it to the Federal Government and to the States respectively. It was evidently the design of the framers of that instrument to render a conflict of jurisdiction between the two impossible, by drawing a clear line of demarkation, which should restrain each within certain distinctly defined limits. Every citizen of the nation was to owe a double allegiance, that is, an allegiance to two separate sovereigns-but this double allegiance was never to require from him inconsistent duties and obliga

tions. A clash of rightful jurisdiction between the States and the nation was rendered impossible by the enumeration of specific powers granted to the latter, and the provision that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or the people." And as it is entirely clear that no case of the exercise of authority can be suggested, which will not fall within one of the two classes, that is, powers delegated, or powers not delegated, it is apparent that the two governments can never rightfully require from the citizen obedience at the same time to two contradictory mandates. Whenever such a conflict apparently occurs, one of the two must necessarily be a usurper.

The fact that cases have continually arisen where each government claimed that the Constitution authorized it to exercise jurisdiction, does not militate against the soundness or the application of this principle. Such conflicts of authority have resulted, not from any actual omission in the Constitution to provide for every possible case, for, as we have seen, every possible case is provided for; but merely from the imperfection of human language, which has frequently rendered it impossible to ascertain immediately, by reference to the words used in the Constitution, whether in a particular case jurisdiction was granted to the Federal Government or re

served to the States. A precisely similar state of things, and for the same reason, frequently occurs under the provisions of the constitutions and statutes of the different States, when the question arises between the State government and the citizen, or between different departments of the State government. In neither case was it intended that any doubt should exist; and in each case, when the question arises, the object of the tribunal which settles it is to ascertain, not how to provide for the contingency which has occurred, but how the constitution or statute in question provided for it; and when that is once ascertained, the effect is the same as if such a provision, for such a particular case, was incorporated into the body of the instrument itself. And the object of creating a national tribunal, with power to settle such questions as they might arise, was to avoid all danger of a resort to the sword, and to protect the citizen against the consequences of mistaking the sovereignty to which obedience was due.

It is one of the results of the impossibility that any conflict of rightful authority between the State and Nation should ever occur under the Constitution, that neither can, in any case, have the power to molest the other, or empower the common subjects of both to molest the other, in the full and unrestricted exercise of its allotted portion of the sovereign power. It is, therefore, clear that the doc

trine of State sovereignty does not justify a rebellion against the rightful power of the general Government, notwithstanding that such rebellion may be sanctioned by the authority of the State.

The great point of difference between us and the South, respecting the constitutionality of the war on our part, arises not out of the doctrine that the States are sovereign as to all matters not delegated to the United States by the terms of the Constitution, but because the southern statesmen affirm the existence of a State sovereignty which overrides the Constitution. They contend that any State has the constitutional right to withdraw at pleasure from the Union; and that whenever it exercises that right, the allegiance which the individual citizen of that State owed, under the Constitution, to the national Government is at once dissolved, the entire allegiance of the citizen is ipso facto transferred to the State, thus rendered, by its own act, completely sovereign and independent; and an attempt on the part of the general Government to coerce obedience from the citizen becomes an act of usurpation. It follows from their premises that a war waged for such a purpose is a war of conquest merely, a striking coincidence with the conclusion to which those who deny the existence of any State sovereignty whatever have also arrived from their premises. It is by no means the first time that moderate men have had occasion to notice the remarkable similarity of

the conclusions upon constitutional questions which the extremists of the northern and southern sections have reached, starting from premises as wide apart as the poles, and pursuing their converging course with mutual hatred and reviling.

I shall not encumber these pages with a dissertation upon the constitutional right of secession. So far as I am informed, no public man at the North maintains, at least openly, the existence of such a right, and its fallacy has been demonstrated repeatedly by arguments which appear to us to be entirely conclusive. It is impossible at present to procure the adjudication of the Supreme Court upon this question, and its consequent determination as a proposition of constitutional law. That tribunal is entirely competent to dispose of it (so perfect were the provisions which our forefathers made for the peaceful settlement of all our disputes), but the sword has been appealed to, and the sword alone can now decide the issue.

But it has been maintained, by statesmen of both sections of the country, that the Federal Government has no power to coerce the States, because the very idea of sovereignty is inconsistent with the right of coercion by any other power, and hence it is said that when a State attempts to exercise the pretended right of secession, the national Government is powerless to redress the wrongful act by force of arms. There would be considerable force