question with such force of emphasis as clearly indicated that this consideration should decide the whole matter. The peace ambassadors sent to Washington by the Virginia convention immediately upon Baldwin's return found the same difficulty. "They saw Mr. Lincoln. The tariff was still the burden of his complaint. They left the next day; and the same train which carried them to Virginia carried Lincoln's proclamation also for the seventy-five thousand troops." See _North Carolina in the War Between the States_, by Sloan, pp. 27, 28, 29, 30, quoting R. L. Dabney, in the _Southern Historical Papers_. There was a subtle influence at Washington strong enough to veer Lincoln round from Seward, whose constituents dreaded war, to Thad. Stevens, who represented in Congress the Pennsylvania iron interest, and, in his character and person, the worst element of the worst politics that America ever saw. Lincoln had no warrant in the Constitution for calling out the militia against the seceded States. "The Congress shall have power to declare war" (Article I, section 8, clause 11); and "The Congress shall have power to raise and support armies" (Article I, section 8, clause 12); and if, in violation of standard definition and contrary to the fact, it be said that what he inaugurated was not war, but was only an armed effort to put down insurrection, the Constitution, Article I, section 8, clause 15, replies: "The Congress shall have power to provide for the calling out of the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions." So the only warrant the President had was an old act of Congress, passed February 28, 1795, shortly after the Whiskey Insurrection. This act provided: "That whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed in any State by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or the power vested in the marshals by this act, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such State or of any other State or States, as may be necessary to suppress such combinations and cause the laws to be duly executed." No pretense of authority was given when a State or a combination of States opposed the United States. His construction forestalled Congress and robbed it of its exclusive right and power to "declare war," and made him the sole arbiter to dictate the nation's weal or woe.