There is a higher agency that may be invoked, which is at the same time under the Constitution and above the Constitution: I mean Martial Law in its plenitude, and declared by solemn Proclamation. It is under the Constitution, because the War Power to which it belongs is positively recognized by the Constitution. It is above the Constitution, because, when set in motion, like necessity, it knows no other law. For the time it is Law and Constitution. The civil power, in mass and detail, is superseded, and all rights are subordinate to this military magistracy. Other agencies, small and great, executive, legislative, and even judicial, are absorbed in a transcendent triune power, which, for the time, declares its absolute will, while holding alike the scales of justice and the sword of the executioner. The existence of this power nobody questions. If rarely exercised in our country, and never largely, the power is none the less fixed in our political system. As well strike out the kindred law of self-defence, belonging to states as to individuals. Martial Law is only a form of self-defence. That this law might be employed against Slavery, without impediment from State Rights, was first proclaimed in the House of Representatives by a Massachusetts statesman, who was a champion of Freedom, John Quincy Adams. [_Applause._] His authority is such that I content myself with the sanction of his name, which becomes more commanding when we consider the circumstances under which he first put forth this great rule, then repeated it, and then again most defiantly vindicated it. Student of history, and of Public Law in all its forms, from earliest youth, under the teaching of his father, counsellor-at-law, Senator of the United States, Minister at foreign courts, including Holland, Prussia, Russia, England, negotiator of Peace at Ghent, then Secretary of State and President, this illustrious citizen, after such varied experience, entered the House of Representatives, where it became his duty to expound the War Power in our government, especially with regard to Slavery. On such a question, his whole life was the open book from which he spoke with magistral authority. No well-worn, dog-eared volume was needed. Himself was enough. And the circumstances of the debate, with the sensitiveness of the hour, gave new force to the principle which he announced.