Nor is it any the less “a crime against God and man and our own Constitution” in the case of Hayti than in the case of Mexico.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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If an engagement to fight Mexico for Texas, while we were at peace with Mexico, was nothing less than war with Mexico, so the present engagement to fight Hayti for Dominica, while we are at peace with Hayti, is nothing less than war with…
What was done under the latter had the concurrence of Congress and the President; so that the inchoate title of the United States was created by Act of Congress, in plain contradiction to the present case, where the title, whatever it may…
If the President were a king, with the kingly prerogative either to declare war or to make treaties, he might do what he has done; but being only President, with the limited powers established by the Constitution, he cannot do it.
Thus, on grounds of authority, as well as of reason, is it clear that the undertaking of the President to employ the War Powers without the authority of Congress was void, and every employment of these War Powers in pursuance thereof was a…
There is no comparison between the intended power of the President and the actual power of the British sovereign.
The provision in our Constitution, requiring the participation of the Senate, was another limitation of the One-Man Power, and a new contribution to Republican Institutions.
War is declared only by Congress and the President; a treaty is made only by the President and two thirds of the Senate.
As the power to declare war is lodged in Congress with the concurrence of the President, so is the power to make a treaty lodged in the President with the concurrence of two thirds of the Senate.
Otherwise the President alone might declare war, without an Act of Congress, doing indirectly what he cannot do directly, and thus overturning that special safeguard which places under the guardianship of Congress what Story justly calls…
Now nothing can be clearer than that this provision, introduced on the authority of the President alone, was beyond his powers, and therefore brutum fulmen, a mere wooden gun, until after the ratification of the treaty.
We are reminded of the unratified treaty, with its futile promise “against foreign interposition,”--that is, with the promise of the War Powers of our Government set in motion by the President alone, without an Act of Congress.
But this distinctive principle of our Constitution and new-found safeguard of popular rights has been set at nought by the President; or rather, in rushing to the goal of his desires, he has overleaped it, as if it were stubble.
Both must concur; and here is the triumph of Republican Institutions.
Not Congress alone, without the President, can declare war; nor can the President alone, without Congress.
The One-Man Power was set aside, and this kingly prerogative placed under the safeguard of the people, as represented in that highest form of national life, an Act of Congress.
In England, and in all other monarchies at the time, this power was the exclusive prerogative of the Crown, so that war was justly called “the last reason of kings.” The framers of our Constitution naturally refused to vest this kingly…
By the Constitution it is solemnly announced that to Congress is given the power “to declare war.” This allotment of power was made only after much consideration, and in obedience to those popular rights consecrated by the American…
The same spirit which set at defiance great principles of International Law, installing force instead, is equally manifest in disregard of the Constitution of the United States; and here one of its most distinctive principles is struck…
To vindicate these things, whether in Dominica or in Hayti, you must discard all acknowledged principles of International Law, and join those who, regardless of rights, rely upon arms.
Armed intervention consists in threatened or actual force, employed or to be employed by one state in regulating or determining the conduct or affairs of another.
And now I plead that all nations are equal before the Law, without distinction of color.
How often have I pleaded that all men are equal before the Law!
Thus is the Black Republic enrolled as an equal; and yet have we struck at this equality.
Thus, by Act of Congress and the appointment of a Minister, have we recognized the Equal Rights of Hayti in the Family of Nations, and placed the Black Republic under the safeguard of that great axiom of International Law which makes it…
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