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- Aug 16, 2015
Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union,Show where Lincoln followed the Constitution
suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions".
Article II, Section 1 vests "The executive Power... in a President of the United States of America". It requires that a President:
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following
Oath or Affirmation:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Article II, Section 2 makes the President "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States".So our Constitution clearly requires the President to assure that the laws are faithfully executed and the Union defended from insurrection. The open question concerns a President's powers to suppress a rebellion when Congress is not in session. Faced with this emergency, Lincoln chose to act to save the Union and seek approval when Congress was able to convene. When Congress reconvened Lincoln explained his unilateral actions in a message to Congress in special session on July 4, 1861:
viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government and so to resist force employed for its destruction by force for its preservation.
Further,The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed, were being resisted, and failing of execution, in nearly one third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear, that by the use of the means necessary to their execution, some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen’s liberty, that practically, it relieves more of the guilty, than of the innocent, should, to a very limited extent, be violated? To state the question more directly, should all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken if the government should be overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it?
<Abraham Lincoln, Message to Congress, July 4, 1861. https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/july-4-1861-july-4th-message-congressSadly, there are those who would rather Lincoln had not been so aggressive, who would rather the United States had been 'balkanized'.
Given the extraordinary circumstances, I believe- like most Americans- that Lincoln acted prudently to prevent dissolution of our country.
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