Coup d'état

“ A coup d’état is a practical confession that the regular and orderly methods of Government have failed in the hands of the Governor, and that he is driven to have recourse to irregular and lawless methods to compass his ends and vindicate his sovereignty. ”

“ A mad conflict on the part of the coup d'état, a struggle of despair on the side of the Republic. On the side of the soldiers an appalling and cold blooded resolution, a passive and ferocious obedience, numbers, good arms, absolute chiefs, pouches filled with cartridges. On the side of the People no ammunition, disorder, weariness, exhaustion, no discipline, indignation serving for a leader. ”

“ Even before the collapse of the dictatorship, members of the old regime may attempt to cut short the defiance struggle for democracy by staging a coup d'état designed to preempt victory by the popular resistance. ”

“ The dominant power thus resisted and baffled by Constitutional means, resorts to a coup d'état; the popular mind advances at once to the logical conclusion, that the further existence of that dominant power is incompatible with free institutions, and decrees its annihilation. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the project of a coup d'état has become dangerously familiar to the "conservative" mind, and that the eminent legal gentlemen of the North who are publishing opinions affirming the right of the excluded Southern representatives to their seats are playing into the hands of the desperate gang of unscrupulous politicians who are determined to have the right established by force. ”

“ Some twenty-five thousand people had been killed or transported within a few weeks after the coup d'état, and fear seized the minds of those who were active in opposition, or suspected even of being hostile to the new government. ”

“ Such a scenario is not likely to install a working democracy, for (as we have discussed) a coup d'état does little to redress the imbalance of power relations between the populace and the rulers. Therefore, it will be necessary to plan how sympathetic military officers can be brought to understand that neither a military coup nor a civil war against the dictatorship is required or desirable. ”

“ Yesterday at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement you said to us, 'There is no longer Left or Right; we are the Assembly.' You believed in the victory of the People, and you sheltered yourself behind us Republicans. Today you believe in the victory of the coup d'état, and you would again become Royalists, to deliver us up, us Democrats! Truly excellent. Very well! Pray do so."
A universal shout arose.
"No! No! No more Right or Left! All are the Assembly. ”

“ ARTICLE I. The Governments of the High Contracting Parties shall not recognize any other Government which may come into power in any of the five Republics as a consequence of a coup d’Etat, or of a revolution against the recognized Government, so long as the representatives of the people, freely elected, have not constitutionally reorganized the country. ”

“ The coup d’état seemed to have failed. In reality matters now rested with the troops outside. Stung to action by some words of Sieyès, Bonaparte appealed to the troops of the line in terms which provoked a ready response. Imprecations uttered by Lucien against the brigands and traitors in the pay of England decided the grenadiers of the Council to march against the deputies whom it was their special duty to protect. Drums beat the charge, Murat led the way through the corridors of the palace to the Orangerie, and levelled bayonets ended the existence of the Council. ”

“ What is important is the political survival of the United Commonwealth, and the sparing of further bloodshed.
Please, I'm asking you, DON'T DO ANYTHING RASH. Think the matter through. You have made veiled threats to me, which if realized, could result in civil war, or worse. Do you really want to stage this coup? Do you really want to denounce me, your President, and see how much of government and the military will stand behind you? It goes against all the principles of democracy that you profess so loudly. ”

“ We note, therefore, in the very body which framed the constitution, the rise of the contest out of which have come the most momentous changes which our polity has since undergone. Happily for us, we have had to witness no sudden and startling alterations in the form or spirit of our institutions. What changes have occurred—and some have occurred of very high and grave importance—have come gradually, have been foreseen. The victories of parties in this country have never been by coups d'état. ”

“ Of what importance to the people is the contemptible person of the last of the kings? Representatives, what is important to them, what is important to yourselves, is that you fulfil the duties which their confidence has imposed upon you. You have proclaimed the Republic, but have you given it to us? We have not yet made a single law which justifies that name; we have not yet reformed a single abuse of despotism. Away with names; we have still tyranny complete, and in addition, factions more vile and charlatans more immoral, with new ferments of troubles, and of civil war. ”

“ With the same mind to dictate a secession message to a Legislature and a non-coercion message to Congress--to assemble insurrectionary troops to seize Federal forts and withhold Government troops from their protection--to incite governors to rebellion and overawe a weak President to a virtual abdication of his rightful authority, history need not wonder at the surprising unity and early success of the conspiracy against the Union. ”

“ You have a bill of rights to defend you against the state government—which is bereaved of all power, and yet you have none against Congress—though in full and exclusive possession of all power. You arm yourselves against the weak and defenceless, and expose yourselves naked to the armed and powerful. ”

“ Where would be the navy of the seceders? where their army? where their security at home? Sir, the very moment that a State places herself out of the Union, that moment she assumes the attitude of revolution; she has revolted. Certain duties are enjoined on her by the Constitution; if she resists the operation of the Constitution, she becomes a rebel per se. ”

“ The government of your chief city has been usurped by armed strangers; your Legislature has been dissolved by the unlawful arrest of its members; freedom of the press and of speech has been suppressed; words have been declared offenses by an arbitrary decree of the Federal Executive; and citizens ordered to be tried by military commissions for what they may dare to speak. ”

“ So long as there is a general acquiescence in the exercise of executive power against insurrectionists, one or more, we have a general government; but when States depart, we are a house divided against itself. We find that we have been living, as it were, not so much under paternal authority, as under fraternal rule. ”

“ Calculate, that one rebellion in thirteen states, in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state, in a century and a half. No country should he so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections. ”

“ With most of us, the gloomy thought that civil war had begun in our own land overshadowed everything, and seemed too great a price to pay for any good; a scourge to be borne only in preference to yielding the very groundwork of our republicanism,--the right to enforce a fair interpretation of the Constitution through the election of President and Congress. ”

“ The conspirators in the Cabinet had done their work. By the official declarations of the President of the United States, the Government had tied its own hands--had resolved and proclaimed the duty and policy of non-resistance to organized rebellion. Henceforth disunionists, secessionists, nullifiers, and conspirators of every kind had but to combine under alleged State action, and through the instrumentalities of State Legislatures and State conventions cast off without let or hinderance their Federal obligations by resolves and ordinances. ”

“ But the strongest argument in the eyes of those who are for introducing a consolidated republic, and the weakest in the eyes of those who are for maintaining a federal republic, is, that the first policy will preserve, and the second destroy the Union. ”

“ I am one of the Council of Five Hundred, and strongly resolved, like the majority of my colleagues, to defend the Republic and the Constitution against all factions. But the defenders of the best cause may be defeated. In that case, your general, who seems to side with the conspirators, is capable, in the event of his triumph, of transporting the republican deputies to Cayenne, or having them shot on the plain of Grenelle. ”

“ When the spirit of the people shall be gradually broken; when the general government shall be firmly established; and when a numerous standing army shall render opposition vain, the congress may complete the system of despotism in renouncing ail dependence on the people, by continuing themselves and their children in the government. ”

“ If you insist upon counting a rebel State, having no Legislature, you make a concession to rebellion. You concede to a mutinous State the power to arrest, it may be, the organization of Congress, or, it may be, amendments to the Constitution important to the general welfare. ”

“ Such is the unholy and gigantic power that, leaving its territorial domain, has usurped the seat of freedom—that has established at our capitol a central despotism, and bends to its will with iron hand the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of our Federal Government. ”

“ It were a curious, but an idle speculation, to inquire, what effect these dictators of sedition expect from the dispersion of their letter among us. If they believe their own complaints of hardship, and really dread the danger which they describe, they will naturally hope to communicate the same perceptions to their fellow-subjects. But, probably, in America, as in other places, the chiefs are incendiaries, that hope to rob in the tumults of a conflagration, and toss brands among a rabble passively combustible. ”

“ And, finally, by implicitly advocating a policy of concession to armed rebellion, they propose to set aside the fundamental obligation of submission to the Constitutional will of the majority, to remove the only guarantee of order in democratic life, to pay a premium to revolt, and thus to open the flood-gates of civil disorder, and a turbulent and endless war of factions. ”

“ Such was the situation which the Governmental coup transformed to tragedy unrelieved, giving us in the place of ordered lawlessness and responsible leadership a guerrilla warfare against society by irresponsive individuals, more or less unbalanced. ”

“ The Rebellion, in a word, kills the whole State and everything dependent on it. Whether the State be revived and permitted to return to the Union depends entirely on the good pleasure of the Federal authority. ”

“ War followed insurrection, but all know that as soon as the military forces of the United States wrested any portion of the national territory from the rebellious authorities, and acquired full and complete control of it, the normal condition of affairs became restored, as indicated in the first act of Congress upon the subject, and the proclamation of the President, which soon followed the passage of that act. ”

“ Only and imperial and despotic Government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State. * * * The President, on the one hand, will not suffer the Federal authority to fall into abeyance, nor will he, on the other hand, aggravate existing evils by attempts at coercion, which must assume the direct form of war against any of the revolutionary States. ”

“ It was through this system that the leading conspirators have sought to fasten upon the people an aristocracy or a despotism; and it is not sufficient that they should be merely defeated in their object, and the country be rid of their rebellion; for by our constitution we are imperatively obliged to sustain the State against the ambition of unprincipled leaders, and secure to them the republican form of government. We have positive duties to perform, and should hence adopt and pursue a positive, decided policy. ”

“ And while this Congress, this Senate, and this House of Representatives are debating the constitutionality and the expediency of seceding from the Union, and while the perfidious authors of this mischief are showering down denunciations upon a large portion of the patriotic men of this country, those brave men are coolly and calmly voting what you call revolution—aye, sir, doing better than that: arming to defend it. ”

“ With so effectual a weapon in their hands, as the exclusive power of regulating elections for the national government, the combination of a few men in some of the large states might, by seizing the opportunity of some casual disaffection among the people, accomplish the destruction of the Union. ”

“ In submission to the laws which may have been or which may be duly enacted, and to the lawful orders of the President, cooperating always in our own spheres with the National Government, we mean to continue in the most rigorous exercise of all our lawful and proper powers, contending against Treason, Rebellion, and the public Enemies, and, whether in public life or in private station, supporting the arms of the Union, until its Cause shall conquer, until final victory shall perch upon its standard, or the Rebel foe will yield a dutiful, rightful, and unconditional submission. ”

“ How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practise the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak, towards a great and powerful nation, dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter. ”