certain laws by Congress. While these occurrences do not
constitute an exigency calling for any positive proceeding either by the
Executive Government of the United States or by Congress, yet they
justly awaken attention, and admonish those in whose hands the
administration of the government is placed, not to be found either
unadvised, surprised, or unprepared, should a crisis arrive. The
Constitution of the United States is founded on the idea of a division
of power between the general government and the respective State
governments; and this division is marked out and defined by the
Constitution of the United States with as much distinctness and accuracy
as the nature of the subject and the imperfection of language will
admit. The powers of Congress are specifically enumerated, and all other
powers necessary to carry these specified powers into effect are also
expressly granted. The Constitution was adopted by the people in the
several States, acting through the agency of conventions chosen by
themselves; the Legislatures of the States had nothing to do with this
proceeding, but to regulate the time and manner in which these
conventions thus chosen by the people, the true source of all power,
should assemble. The Constitution of the United States purports to be a
perpetual form of government; it contains no limits for its duration,
and suggests no means and no form of proceeding by which it can be
dissolved, or its obligations dispensed with; it requires the personal
allegiance of every citizen of the United States, and demands a solemn
oath for its support from every man employed in any public trust,
whether under the Government of the United States, or any State
government. This obligation and this oath are enjoined in broad and
general terms without qualification or modification, and with reference
to no supposed possible change of circumstances or events.

"No man can sit in a State Legislature, or on the bench of a State
court, or execute the process of such court, or hold a commission in the
militia, or fill any other office in a State government, without having
first taken and subscribed an oath to support the Constitution of the
United States. Without looking, therefore, to what might be the result
of forcible revolution, since such cases can, of course, be governed by
no previously established rule, it is certainly the manifest duty of all
those who are entrusted with the Government of the United States in it