Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/446

408 arms. If senators on the other side of the chamber last winter had co-operated with senators on this side, and we could have had a corresponding action in the House, I have no doubt all these difficulties could have been settled. * * * When the warlike spirit that now sweeps over this land shall have subsided, the people of this country will calmly and dispassionately look into the history of the times, and if this government be overthrown, impartial history will hold you responsible for it; for you could have settled the controversy; you could have settled it peaceably; you could have settled it without impairing any rights of any man or any State in the North by granting proper guarantees to the South which would do you, your property or your States no harm. You declined to do it; the responsibility is with you. The defense of the President was equally strenuous, and the resolution confirming his acts was agreed to.

Perplexing questions confronted both governments immediately upon the institution of hostilities between States which had so long continued in the Union together, under their constitutional agreement. Among them were the war power of the President of the United States, or of Congress, the extent of the authority of military commanders, the disposition of captured or refugee slaves, the relation of the people of a seceded State to the State government, the treatment of persons captured in arms on land or sea, and such like. The Federal Government caused all these questions to become all the more perplexing by its persistence in assuming that the secession of the States was a mere insurrection and their confederation was only a combination of individuals. Certain constitutional difficulties that stood in the way of coercion were so plainly pointed out by jurists who were accustomed to construe the law without regard to political necessities that for a time the administration moved with some care in military operations against the Southern States. A few of these questions are here briefly mentioned