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President Abraham Lincoln Message to Congress in Special Session, July 4, 1861 Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed., Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writing, 1859–1865; Speeches, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings, Presidential Messages, and Proclamations (New York: The Library of America, 1989), 246–61. For approximately eighty days, from April 15, when President Abraham Lincoln declared the southern states in rebellion and called up the militia, to July 4, 1861, when Congress met in special session, Lincoln faced the crisis of the Union by himself. Institutionally , the federal government became concentrated into the presidency, and Lincoln employed his presidential war powers and the mandates of his presidential oath to undertake a wide variety of actions that had never been undertaken by any president. For example, he expanded the military and authorized its payment without congressional appropriation. Lincoln declared a naval blockade of the so-called Confederacy and authorized the military to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (a judicial inquiry into why the executive had arrested and held an individual) in certain areas in and around Washington, D.C. and Maryland for the purpose of protecting the capitol. Thus, because of its timing, Lincoln’s July 4, 1861, message to Congress was an important one. The president had several goals for this state paper: first, to explain his actions taken since the crisis started; second, to demonstrate the unconstitutionality of session; andthird,torestatehisdeterminationtoputdowntheinsurrection, defend constitutional self-government, and advance liberty for plain people. After reviewing the events and decisions surrounding the fall of Fort Sumter and examining his actions as president to deal with the crisis, Lincoln argued that he “believed that nothing has been done beyond the constitutional competency of Congress .” On its face a dangerous precedent (the idea that a president could do anything if he believed Congress possessed the power to do the same, or would later approve his actions), Lincoln understood that serious questions had been raised about his decisions Documentary History of the American Civil War Era 248 in those eighty days when he acted alone. He defended himself, saying, “These measures, whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon, under what appeared to be a popular demand, and a public necessity; trusting, then as now, that Congress would readily ratify them.” On reflection and assessment, scholars acknowledge that Lincoln stretched the powers of the president in ways and manners that it had not been used previously; but, then again, no chief executive had faced such a domestic crisis, and few presidents had taken their oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution, the country, and what the Founders had established as seriously as Lincoln. Decisions had to be made, and Lincoln made them. In time, Congress approved (and often expanded upon) every action Lincoln took during the crisis. Lincoln followed up his statement in his March 4, 1861, inaugural address wherein he called secession “the essence of anarchy.” The president boiled down the secessionists’ arguments into mere sophistry. He argued that southerners had “invented an ingenious sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is, that any state of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully, and peacefully, withdraw from the Union, without the consent of the Union, or of any other state. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for just cause, themselves to be the sole judge of its justice, is too thin to merit any notice.” He analyzed the nature of a “state” and found that it has no existence outside of the nation. Lincoln then raised, analyzed, and disposed of secession as an appropriate response for grievances, saying, “What is now combatted, is the position that secession is consistent with the Constitution—is lawful, and peaceful.” He opposed this argument, and Lincoln was willing to defend self-government under the Constitution against the insurrectionists. On this point, Lincoln concluded about the crisis, “This is essentially a People’s contest.” He then described his and his political party’s vision for the country and for the people in the country, continuing, “On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in...

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