compromised it. As far as war could be made by the President alone, the President actually had made war. Who will deny it? It was an accident out of his control that a bloody collision did not take place. I therefore repeat that these orders, in themselves, constitute a usurpation of the war powers of Congress, under the fundamental law of this Republic.
Now let us see what Senators have to say to controvert this argument or to weaken its force. It is claimed that when the President had agreed upon a treaty of annexation with the Government of a foreign country, an inchoate right of the United States in that foreign country had been created, and that then the President had under the Constitution the power to protect by force of arms that inchoate right against all interference, just as he would have the power to protect the territory of the United States against invasion. Let us see what logical results will follow from such a doctrine as that.
From whom does the President claim to obtain the power to protect by acts of war the inchoate right in a foreign country assumed to have been created by a treaty not perfected by the consent of the Senate? He certainly does not claim to have obtained that power from Congress, from the only branch of the Government in which by the Constitution the war-making power is lodged, for Congress had not been consulted on the subject and Congress had not spoken. By virtue of what, then, does the President claim such power to enforce an inchoate right? By virtue of the mere project of a treaty, which, although concluded between himself and a foreign power, had not become the law of the land by the sanction of the Senate; and who made that project of a treaty? The President made it himself, of his own motion and pleasure, in conjunction with a foreign Government.
Thus, then, gentlemen claim that the President, of
