Year: 1860




The letter of Attorney General Black to


the President, on the right of secession, is


published in the Eastern papers The New


York Tribune, giving the substance of the
| letter, says:


Mr.. Black sees no legal way in which the
territory Of State can be entered by armed


Federal forces except in aid of the regular


Federal officers in the State. And where
these have ceased to exist, and their places
cannot be filled, Federal troops can have no
mission or place therein except by invitation
of the State authorities. The authority to
enforce the collection of the revenue he asserts
to be the unquestionable perogative of the
General Government, after secession as well
as before, and until Congress shall remit its
control over the established ports Of entry in
the seeding State.


On the point as to the protection of Gov
ernment property, Mr.. Black says:


Your right to take such measures as may
seem to be necessary for the protection of the
public property, is very clear. 1t results from
the proprietary rights of the government as
owner of the forts, arsenals. magazines, dock
yards, navy yards. custom houses public ships
and other property which the Unitod States
have bought, built and paid for. Besides, the
government of the United States is authoriz-
ed by the Constitution Tart. l, see. 81 ito ex-
ercise exclusive legislation in sll cases whatso-
ever over all places purchased by the
consent of the Legislature of the State in
which the same shall be, for the erection of
forts, magazines, arsenals, dock yards and 9TH
er public buildings" 1t is believed that DO
important public building has been bought or
erected on ground where the Legislature of the
State in which it is situated has not passed
law consenting to the purchase oft, and ceding
the exclusive jurisdiction. This government,
then, is not only the owner of those buildings
and grounds, but by virture of the supreme
and paramount law, it regulates the action
and Furnishes the officers Of all who are within
them. If any one of an owners rights is
palmer than another, il is that of keeping
possession and repelling intrusion. The right
of defending the public property includes also
the right of recapture after it has been unaw-
fully taken by another. President Jefferson
held the opinion, and acted upon it, that he
could order military force to take possession
of any land to which she had acquired
title, though the United States had new
er occupied il before, though a private
party claimed and held it, and though it was
not then needed nor proposed to be used for
any purpose connected with the operations Of
the government This may have been
stretch of Executive power but the right Of
retaking public property in which the govern
ment has been carrying on its lawful business,
and from which its officers have been unlaw-
fully thrust out, cannot well be doubted and
when it was asserted and executed at Har-
per's Ferry in October 1859, every one &C
knowlctlged the legal justice Of it.


The letter concludes:


'lf it be true that war can not be declared,
nor system of general hostilities carried on
by the central government against State,
then it seems to follow that an attempt to do
so would be, ipse Jfdeto, an expulsion of such
State from the Union. Being treated as an
alien and an enomy, she would be compelled
to- act accordingly And if Congress shall
break up the present Union by unconstitution-
ally putting strife and enmity and armed hos
tilty between different sections of the country
instead OF the domestic tranquility which
the Constitution was meant to insure, will not
all the States be absolved from their federal
Is any portion of the people
bound to contribute their money or their blood
to carry on a contest like that?


"1he right of the General Government to
preserve itself in its whole constitutional vigor
by repeing direct and positive aggression
upon its property or its officers can not be de-
ried. But this is totally different thing
from an offensive war to punish the people for
the political msdeeds of their State govern
ment, or to prevent threatened violation of
the Constitution, or to enforce an acknowledge
ment that the government of the United
States is supreme. The States are colleagues
of one another, and if some of them shall
conquer the rest, and hold them as subjugated
provinces, it would totally destroy the whole
theory upon which they are now connected.


"If this view of the subject be as correct
rs think it is, then the Union must utterly
perish at the moment when Congress shall arm
one part of the people against another for any
purpose beyond that of merely protecting the
General Government in the exercise of its |
proper constitutional functions"