Sacred and inviolable, the Constitution is made for friends who acknowledge it, and not for enemies who disavow it; and it is made for a state of peace, and not for the fearful exigencies of war, treading down within its sphere all rights…

Born of violence, and looking to violence for victory, war discards all limitations except such as are supplied by the Rights of War.

Once begun, war is a law unto itself,--or, in other words, it has a law of its own, which is part of itself.

And just in proportion as you seek to moderate it by constitutional limitations do you take from war something of its efficiency.

Undertaking to limit the Rights of War by the Constitution, where are you to stop?

If the Constitution can wrest from Government the weapons of confiscation and liberation, there is no other weapon in the whole arsenal of war which it may not take also.

It was made by practical men, familiar with public law, who, seeing clearly the difference between peace and war, established powers accordingly.

While circumscribing the Peace Powers with constitutional checks, they left untouched the War Powers.

But in bestowing upon the Government War Powers without limitation, they embodied in the Constitution all the Rights of War as completely as if those rights had been severally set down and enumerated; and among the first of these is the…

In saying this I fail in no sympathy with peace, which I seek and reverence always, but simply exhibit war in some of its essential conditions.

But it declares a truth to which every war practically testifies, while it is founded in reason and the nature of things, confirmed by centuries as attesting witnesses.

The Constitution itself is only a human law; nor can it claim to speak in time of war, and within the sphere of war, more than any other human law.

How vain, then, to adduce against confiscation and liberation, as war measures, an objection derived from the Constitution! and how vain, also, to offer a penal statute, under the Peace Powers of the Constitution, as a war measure!

Better arrest it at once, if it is to be war on the one side and peace on the other,--if our enemies are to employ against us all the Rights of War, while we employ against them only the Rights of Peace.

Penal statutes are good for peace, when laws prevail; but in the midst of war, and against enemies, when laws are proverbially silent, they are absurd.

What enemy now arrayed in arms can be indicted, or, if indicted, convicted, under the most stringent of penal statutes?

Why new penalties for treason, which, from the nature of the case, cannot be enforced in this hour of need?

Why not see things as they are, and do what the moment requires?

The War Powers of Congress are ample; but in time of war a mere penal statute against a public enemy is not so much as a pop-gun.

There are Senators who claim these vast War Powers for the President, and deny them to Congress.

The President, it is said, as commander-in-chief, may seize, confiscate, and liberate under the Rights of War, but Congress cannot direct these things to be done.

Read the text of the Constitution, and you will find its powers vast as all the requirements of war.

There is nothing that may be done anywhere under the Rights of War, which may not be done by Congress.

I do not mean to question the powers of the President in his sphere, or of any military commander within his department; but I claim for Congress all that belongs to any Government in the exercise of the Rights of War.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.