Laying aside the question of taxes, Congress took up two other subjects of pressing importance. Every one doubted the possibility of raising a regular army, and those persons who knew best the character of the people were convinced that the war must be waged by militia on land, and by privateers on the ocean. The House began with the militia. December 26 Porter brought in a bill authorizing the President “to accept of any company or companies of volunteers, either of artillery, cavalry, or infantry, who may associate and offer themselves for the service, not exceeding fifty thousand,” officered according to the law of the State to which the companies belonged, and liable to service for one year, with the pay of regular troops. Evidently these volunteers were State militia, and were subject to be used only for purposes defined in the Constitution. In 1798 the attempt to raise such a corps had been denounced as unconstitutional, a device to separate a part of the State militia in order to put it under the President’s power in a manner expressly forbidden by the Constitution and peculiarly dangerous to the public liberties; and although the device of 1798 was made more evident, as its efficiency was made more certain, by the provision that these corps should be officered by the President, the device of 1812 was not less offensive to men who held that Congress had no power to call out the State militia except “to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions,” of course only within the limits of the United States. The chief service desired from these volunteer corps was the conquest of Canada and the occupation of Florida; but every principle of the Republican party would be outraged by placing the militia at the President’s orders, to serve on foreign soil. Porter, who wanted express legislation to overcome this difficulty, stated his dilemma to the House; and the debate began quietly on the assumption that these volunteers were not to serve in Canada or Florida without their own consent, when, January 11, Langdon Cheves, with much seriousness and even solemnity of manner and language, informed the House that the Republican party had hitherto taken a wrong view of the subject. The distinguished South Carolinian affirmed doctrines that had never before been heard from Republican lips:-- “The power of declaring and making war is a great sovereign power, whose limits and extent have long been understood and well established. It has its attributes and incidental powers, which are in the same degree less equivocal than those of other powers as it excels those powers in its importance. Do you ask then for the right of Congress to employ the militia in war? It is found among the attributes of the sovereign power which Congress has to make war. Do you ask for the limits to which this employment may extend? They are coextensive with the objects of the war.”