How so. Even the Emancipation Proclamation was carefully constructed so it did not usurp the courts or the Constitution. It only applied to areas in rebellion which the Militia Act of 1797 gave him every constitutional right to do.
George Washington surly didn't think that when he put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Are you saying that a President today should be powerless to put down a rebellion?
I think Seward disagreed with you.
"We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
George Washington surly didn't think that when he put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Are you saying that a President today should be powerless to put down a rebellion?
No more so than a King confronting a Rebellion in his Colonies. Washington established the right of a people to break away from a government which they felt no longer served their interests, and Lincoln dis-established it.
Call it Rebellion, or secession, or whatever, it is still the same principle involved. The Nation was established by declaring it's right to self governance, but apparently it doesn't recognize that right as applying to anyone else.