Reports of the Select Committee of Five (Classic Reprint)

Download or read book Reports of the Select Committee of Five (Classic Reprint) written by and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Reports of the Select Committee of Five The special committee, to whom was referred the message of the President of the United States, communicated to Congress January 9, 1861, having carefully considered the matters embraced in that paper, do now respectfully submit the accompanying bill in reference to that part thereof relating to the collection of the revenues of the United States; and Mr. John Gochrane, in reporting the bill from the committee, accompanies the same, by authority of the committee, with a statement of his views in relation thereto, as follows: While fully concurring with the President in the opinion that no State possesses, under and by virtue of the federal Constitution, any right or authority to secede or withdraw, or seperate itself from the federal Union, I am equally convinced that, not having been prohibited, the justification of the exercise of such right is referable to the nature and extent of those rights reserved to the States or the people thereof, Therefore, all the acts and ordinances of secession which have been or may be enacted by any State or States, acting separately, in my opinion, are, in as far as the same may be carried into effect, to be considered as revolutionary infractions of the supreme law of the land, however they may be regarded as the proper exercise of an indefeasible right of "resisting acts which are plainly unconstitutional and too oppressive to be endured." I also concur with the President that the federal Constitution has abstained from conferring upon the federal government, or any department thereof, authority to declare and wage oppressive war against a seceding State, in order to coerce the repeal of any act or ordinance of secession which she may have passed, or the renunciation of any purpose of secession which she may entertain, or to compel her to remain nominally, as well as in fact, a member of the federal Union. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.