Page:Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction.djvu/38

24 adequate powers, was a question; but the spirit of the people and general ideas of necessity were convenient sources of authority that never failed of application when the direct mandate of written law was lacking. A question that arose immediately was in reference to personal and property rights of dwellers in the insurrectionary districts. Such persons were still, on the theory of the government, citizens of the United States; but were they, as such, entitled, under the present circumstances, to the protection of their civil rights which is normally secured by our system?

War is the negation of civil rights. Granting the power in Congress to designate certain citizens as public enemies in the technical sense, the exercise of that power puts in the hands of the government a control over the life, liberty and property of all such citizens, limited only by the dictates of humanity and a respect for the practice of nations. The insurgents become, in short, belligerent enemies, with the rights and duties which international law ascribes to such. From the moment that they assume that character the constitutional guarantees of civil liberty lose their effect as against the executive. It becomes authorized to enforce submission to the laws by bullets, not by indictments. "Due process of law" ceases to be the necessary condition to a deprivation of civil rights. All the safeguards so carefully constructed by the constitution for the protection of citizens