conformably to proceedings in admiralty or revenue cases, are of a different and far more effective character. Those clauses in the act which allow of the employment in the service of the United States of colored persons, so far as they may be serviceable, and the freeing of the slaves of rebels, whether captured, seized, fugitive, abandoned, or found within the lines of the army, may be of practical efficacy, because these measures do not require the aid of any secession jury to carry them into effect.*

STATUTES OF LIMITATION WILL PROTECT TRAITORS.

The statutes limiting the time during which rebels and traitors shall be liable to indictment ought also to be considered. By the act of 1790, no person can be punished unless indicted for treason within three years after the treason was committed, if punishable capitally; nor unless indicted within two years from the time of committing any offence punishable with fine or forfeiture. Thus, by the provisions of these laws, if the war should last two years, or if it should require two or three years after the war shall have been ended to reëstablish regular proceedings in courts, all the criminals in the seceded States will escape by the operation of the statutes of limitations. It is true, that if traitors flee from justice these limitations will not protect them; but this exception will apply to few individuals, and those who flee will not be likely to be caught. Unless these statutes are modified, those who have caused and maintained the rebellion will escape from punishment.†

* See Note to the Forty-third Edition: "The United States may call on all its Subjects to do Military Duty." pp. 478-493.

† Note to Tenth Edition. Several bills were introduced during the session of Congress (1863-64) to remedy the difficulties here pointed out.

CHAPTER VIII.

INTERFERENCE OF GOVERNMENT WITH THE DOMESTIC AFFAIRS OF THE STATES.

PARTY PLATFORMS CANNOT ALTER THE CONSTITUTION.*

POLITICAL parties, in times of peace, have often declared that they do not intend to interfere with slavery in the States. President Buchanan denied that government had any power to coerce the seceded States into submission to the laws of the country. When President Lincoln called into service the army and navy, he announced that it was not his purpose to interfere with the rights of loyal citizens, nor with their domestic affairs. Those who have involved this country in bloody war, all sympathizers in their treason, and others who oppose the present administration, unite in denying the right of the President or of Congress to interfere with slavery, even if such interference is the only means by which the Union can be saved from destruction. No constitutional power can be obliterated by any denial or abandonment thereof, by individuals, by political parties, or by Congress.

The war power of the President to emancipate enemy's slaves has been the subject of a preceding chapter. Congress has power to pass laws necessary and proper to provide for the defence of the country in time of war, by appropriating private property to public use, with just compensation therefor, as shown in Chapter I.; also laws enforcing emancipation, confiscation, and all other belligerent rights, as shown in Chapter II.; and

* Note to Forty-third Edition. See the political platforms of the Republican and of the Democratic parties during the contest for the presidency between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas. Also, the Resolutions of Congress referred to in note to page 133. Also, the Note on "Slavery," pp. 393-400.

it is the sole judge as to what legislation, to effect these objects, the public welfare and defence require; it may enact laws abolishing slavery, whenever slavery, ceasing to be merely a private and domestic relation, becomes a matter of national concern, and the public welfare and defence cannot be provided for and secured without interfering with slaves. Laws passed for that purpose, in good faith, against belligerent subjects, not being within any express prohibition of the constitu tion, cannot lawfully be declared void by any department of government. Reasons and authority for these propositions have been stated in previous chapters.

DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS.

Among the errors relating to slavery which have found their way into the public mind, errors traceable directly to a class of politicians who are now in open rebellion, the most important is, that Congress has no right to interfere in any way with slavery. Their assumption is, that the States in which slaves are held are alone competent to pass any law relating to an institution which belongs exclusively to the domestic affairs of the States, and in which Congress has no right to interfere in any way whatever.*

From a preceding chapter, (see page 17,) it will be seen, that if slaves are property, property can be interfered with under the constitution; if slavery is a domestic institution, as Mormonism or apprenticeship is, each of them can law

*Note to Forty-third Edition. - Not long before this essay was first published, Congress had passed by a unanimous vote the following declaratory resolution: "Resolved, That neither the Federal government, nor the people, nor the governments of the non-slaveholding States have the right to legislate upon or interfere with slavery in any of the slaveholding States of the Union;" and had proposed to amend the Constitution so that Art. XIII. would have read as follows: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of such State."

fully be interfered with and annulled. But slavery has a double aspect. So long as it remains in truth "domestic," that is to say, according to Webster's Dictionary, "pertaining to house or home," so long government cannot be affected by it, and have no ground for interfering with it; when, on the contrary, it no longer pertains only to house and home, but enters into vital questions of war, aid and comfort to public enemies, or any of the national interests involved in a gigantic rebellion; when slavery, rising above its comparative insignificance as a household affair, becomes a vast, an overwhelming power which is used by traitors to overthrow the government, and may be used by government to overthrow traitors, it then ceases to be merely domestic; it becomes a belligerent power, acting against the "public welfare and common defence." No institution continues to be simply "domestic" after it has become the effective means of aiding and supporting a public enemy.

When an "institution" compels three millions of subjects to become belligerent traitors, because they are slaves of disloyal masters, slavery becomes an affair which is of the utmost public and national concern. But the constitution not only empowers, but, under certain contingencies, requires slavery in the States to be interfered with. No one who will refer to the sections of that instrument here cited, will probably venture to deny the power of Congress, in one mode or another, to interfere for or against the institution of slavery.

CONGRESS MAY PASS LAWS INTERFERING FOR THE PRESERVATION AND PROTECTION OF SLAVERY IN THE STATES.

Art. IV. Sect. 2, required that fugitive slaves should be delivered up, and the fugitive slave laws were passed to carry this clause into effect.

Art. I. Sect. 9, required that the foreign slave trade should not be interfered with prior to 1808, but allowed an importation tax to be levied on each slave, not exceeding ten dollars per head.

Art. V. provided that no amendment of the constitution should be made, prior to 1808, affecting the preceding clause.

Art. I. Sect. 2 provides that three fifths of all slave shall be included in representative numbers.

CONGRESS MAY INTERFERE AGAINST SLAVERY IN THE STATES.

Art. I. Sect. 8. Congress has power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes. Under this clause Congress can in effect prohibit the inter-state slave trade, and so pass laws diminishing or destroying the value of slaves in the border States, and practically abolish slavery in those States.

CONGRESS MAY INTERFERE WITH SLAVERY BY CALLING UPON THE SLAVES, AS SUBJECTS, TO ENTER MILITARY SERVICE.

Art. I. Sect. 8. Congress has the power to declare war and make rules for the government of land and naval forces, and under this power to decide who shall constitute the militia of the United States, and to enrol and compel into the service of the United States all the slaves, as well as their masters, and thus to interfere with slavery in the States.

CONGRESS MAY INTERFERE WITH SLAVERY IN THE STATES BY CUTTING OFF THE SUPPLY OF SLAVES TO SUCH STATES.

The law now prohibiting the importation of slaves, and making slave trading piracy, is an interference with slavery, by preventing their introduction into the