the moment you place a military commander
in a district which is the theatre of war, the laws of war apply to
that district.

I might furnish a thousand proofs to show that the pretensions of
gentlemen to the sanctity of their municipal institutions under a
state of actual invasion and of actual war, whether servile, civil
or foreign, is wholly unfounded, and that the laws of war do, in all
such cases, take the precedence. I lay this down as the law of
nations. I say that military authority takes, for the time, the
place of all municipal institutions, and slavery among the rest; and
that, under that state of things, so far from its being true that the
States where slavery exists have the exclusive management of the
subject, not only the President of the United States, but the
Commander of the Army, has power to order the universal emancipation
of the slaves. I have given here more in detail a principle which I
have asserted on this floor before now, and of which I have no more
doubt than that you, sir, occupy that chair. I give it in its
development, in order that any gentleman from any part of the Union
may, if he thinks proper, deny the truth of the position, and may
maintain his denial; not by indignation, not by passion and fury, but
by sound and sober reasoning from the laws of nations and the laws of
war. And if my position can be answered and refuted, I shall receive
the refutation with pleasure; I shall be glad to listen to reason,
aside, as I say, from indignation and passion. And if, by the force
of reasoning, my understanding can be convinced, I here pledge myself
to recant what I have asserted.

Let my position be answered; let me be told, let my constituents be
told, the people of my State be told--a State whose soil tolerates
not the foot of a slave--that they are bound by the Constitution to
a long and toilsome march under burning summer suns and a deadly
Southern clime for the suppression of a servile war; that they are
bound to leave their bodies to rot upon the sands of Carolina, to
leave their wives widows and their children orphans; that those who
cannot march are bound to pour out their treasures while their sons
or brothers are pouring out their blood to suppress a servile,
combined with a civil or a foreign war, and yet that there exists no
power beyond the limits of the slave State where such war is raging
to emancipate the slaves. I say, let this be proved--I am open to
conviction; but till