ess information of the state of the Union.

Congress has power by the Constitution to provide for calling forth
the militia to execute the laws of the Union, and suitable and
appropriate acts of Congress have been passed as well for providing
for calling forth the militia as for placing other suitable and
efficient means in the hands of the President to enable him to
discharge the constitutional functions of his office.

The second section of the act of the 28th of February, 1795, declares
that whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or their
execution obstructed in any State by combinations too powerful to be
suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or the power
vested in the marshals, the President may call forth the militia, as
far as may be necessary, to suppress such combinations and to cause
the laws to be duly executed.

By the act of March 3, 1807, it is provided that in all cases of
obstruction to the laws either of the United States or any individual
State or Territory, where it is lawful for the President to call forth
the militia for the purpose of causing the laws to be duly executed,
it shall be lawful for him to employ for the same purposes such part
of the land or naval force of the United States as shall be judged
necessary.

These several enactments are now in full force, so that if the laws of
the United States are opposed or obstructed in any State or Territory
by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the judicial or civil
authorities it becomes a case in which it is the duty of the President
either to call out the militia or to employ the military and naval
force of the United States, or to do both if in his judgment the
exigency of the occasion shall so require, for the purpose of
suppressing such combinations. The constitutional duty of the
President is plain and peremptory and the authority vested in him by
law for its performance clear and ample.

Texas is a State, authorized to maintain her own laws so far as they
are not repugnant to the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the
United States; to suppress insurrections against her authority, and to
punish those who may commit treason against the State according to the
forms provided by her own constitution and her own laws.

But all this power is local and confined entirely within the limits
of Texas herself. She can possibly confer no authority which can be
lawfully exercised beyond her own bounda