· WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1862
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proclamation assumes unlimited power in the military; therefore, any exercise of civil functions by the Governor of the State must be ignored if they are in conflict with it. Summary punishments are to be visited for supposed offences. Citizens are to be dragged before a military tribunal condemned and sentenced without a trial by jury; thus trampling under foot every principle of the Constitution and the laws. Upon information by malignant in- dividuals, men are handcuffed, dragged from their homes, leaving their families unprotected, their property confiscated, ·and then imprisoned without one charge being established against them by their accusers-all this having been done on inforrncition. These are some of the consequences growing out of martial law. School children returning to their parents from within a hundred miles of their homes, must either ha.ve a passport with certain conditions upon the face of it from a Provost Marshal, or they cannot pass in a public conveyance. What benefits are these things to our cause? Are they calculated to advance the cause of Southern independence? If so, we ought to be willing to make any necessary sacrifices; but if not, such annoyances and usurpa- tions ought to be revoked, and the Constitution and law resume their supremacy. The inviolability of the Constitution is the only safeguard to liberty, and when it is disregarded, and the Bill of Rights also, there is no limit to the power of one man's will. These summary punishments can be substituted in the place of law, and a man may be sentenced and executed without an impartial trial by a jury of his country. The framers of our Constitution thought that they had thrown every safeguard around the rights of the people. Their action gave us the charter of our liberty in the sixteenth section of the Bill of Rights: "No citizen of this state shall be deprived of life, liberty, property, or privileges, outlawed, exiled, or in any manner punished, except by due course of the law of the land." Are not these provisions disregarded by General Hebert's proclamation of the 30th of May last? I need not say yes, for the spirit and the letter of the proclamation, both have set at naught the provisions in behalf of the citizens, and declare them nullities. In the 17th section it is also declared, "that the military shall, at all times, be sub- ordinate to the civil authority." The General at one fell swoop deposes the civil authority of the State, and if any portion of it is exercised, it must be by his authority, and must act in concert with his proclamation, thereby placing himself above all State authority, and supreme in government, suspending all 13:ws at
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