rily; but, at the close of the session of Congress, in March, the more malicious of the malcontents began their foul work again. Undoubtedly the country was tired of the war; and many of the weaker and more unreasoning classes, finding themselves more than ever in the hands of the government by the legislation of the winter, lent willing ears to disloyal politicians. Agitation against the war was revived. The people were called upon to mark the great sacrifices they had already uselessly made; the war was declared to be a failure, and peace as far off as ever; and the country was adjured to demand a cessation of the coercive policy.

Among the most pestilent of these sympathizers with traitors, was Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio-a person who, as member of Congress, stump politician and private citizen, had opposed the war from the start. In Congress, he had steadily voted against every measure instituted by the government for maintaining the integrity of the nation and putting down the rebellion. Not a step did the President take, in the execution of his purpose, that Vallandigham did not dispute. Indeed, he offered in the House resolutions of censure for those early acts of the President in calling out a military force, by which alone Washington was saved from capture. His language in the House had been so bitter and disloyal that the feelings of every friend of the government had been outraged. Going home from Congress, where he had been engaged in his foul work, he entered upon a canvass of his district, denouncing the government, and maligning its motives. The tendency of his malicious utterances was to weaken the hands of the Executive in its great work of subduing the insurrection, and to give aid and comfort to the

national enemies.

General Burnside, then in command of the Department of the Ohio, issued an order (Number 38,) announcing that thereafter all persons found within the federal lines who should commit acts for the benefit of the enemy would be tried as spies or traitors; and, if convicted, would suffer death. This order, the demagogue publicly denounced; and then he

called upon the people to resist its execution. General Burnside arrested him at once, and ordered him to be tried by courtmartial at Cincinnati. On the fifth of May, the day following his arrest, he applied to the United States Circuit Court for a writ of habeas corpus; and, after an elaborate argument from his counsel, and the reading of a long letter from General Burnside giving the reasons for his arrest, Judge Leavitt decided against his application, giving his opinion that “The legality of the arrest depends upon the extent of the necessity for making it; and that was to be determined by the military commander." Judge Leavitt dealt with the case nobly. "Those who live under the protection and enjoy the blessings of our benignant government," said he, "must learn that they cannot stab its vitals with impunity. If they remain with us, while they are not of us, they must be subject to such a course of dealing as the great law of self-preservation prescribes and will enforce." Further, he said: "I confess I am but little moved by the eloquent appeals of those who, while they indignantly denounce violation of personal liberty, look with no horror upon a despotism as unmitigated as the world has ever witnessed."

On the following day, Vallandigham had his trial, was convicted, and was sentenced to confinement in some fortress of the United States, to be designated by General Burnside, who approved the finding of the court, and designated Fort Warren as his prison. The President, however, modified the sentence, and directed that the convict should be sent within the rebel lines, among the people which he held in such cordial sympathy, with the direction that he should not return until after the termination of the war. The man thus sent to his own found safe conduct through the rebel states, and managed to reach Canada, from whose territory he subsequently emerged, without waiting for the termination of the war, and without saying to the President, "By your leave."

There were numbers of men in the loyal states who were quite as guilty as Mr. Vallandigham, even if less bold than he. These took alarm. If Mr. Vallandigham could be ar

rested and sent within the rebel lines for abusing the motives and acts of the government, who, that sympathized with Mr. Vallandigham, was safe? It was a natural and pertinent inquiry. So they began to hold public meetings, to denounce the government, and to call upon the President to reconsider his act in Vallandigham's case. Governor Seymour of New York was powerfully exercised in the matter, and wrote a very spirited letter to one of these meetings held in Albany, on the sixteenth of May. If the Ohio demagogue used treasonable language, it is hard to see why the New York governor did not. The sanction of the act by which Vallandigham was sent among his friends, by President and people, was, in his opinion, not only despotism but revolution. He almost copied the language of the convict himself. Mr. Vallandigham had said that the government was aiming not to restore the Union, but to crush out liberty. Governor Seymour said: "The action of the administration will determine, in the minds of more than one half of the people in the loyal states, whether this war is waged to put down rebellion in the South, or destroy free institutions at the North."

This meeting and others of the same kind, held in the leading cities of the Union, denounced arbitrary arrests and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, protested against Vallandigham's sentence, and called upon the President to recall their injured friend and protégé. A month after Vallandigham was banished, the Democratic State Convention of Ohio met, and, by almost a unanimous vote, nominated him as their candidate for governor, and Senator Pugh, his legal counsel, as their candidate for lieutenant governor. They also sent a committee to Washington to demand of the President the recall of their candidate. The letter which they bore was answered at length by the President; and he gave the supporters of Mr. Vallandigham a very plain talk. He told them what he believed to be the facts touching Mr. Vallandigham's words and influence, in opposition to those means which the government deemed indispensable to its own preservation, and then said: "Your own attitude, therefore, encourages desertion, re

sistance to the draft, and the like, because it teaches those who incline to desert and to escape the draft, to believe it is your purpose to protect them." He told them, however, that the proceedings in Mr. Vallandigham's case were "for prevention, not for punishment-an injunction to stay an injury;”— and that the modification of General Burnside's order was made as a less disagreeable mode to Mr. Vallandigham himself of securing the desired prevention.

It is hardly to be doubted that Mr. Lincoln would never, of his own motion, have arrested the greatly over-rated subject of these discussions. He had talked as badly in Washington as he had in Ohio, and lost no opportunity to abuse the President himself; but Mr. Lincoln very severely let him alone. When, therefore, he clandestinely returned, a year afterwards, and fulminated his threats against the government, in case he should be arrested in any way except by officers of the civil tribunals, he was permitted to say what he pleased. The people of Ohio had already decided against him by a majority of one hundred thousand votes; and he had lost his power for harm, except where he might choose to bestow his friendship.

To the resolutions passed by the Albany meeting of which Hon. Erastus Corning was president, Mr. Lincoln made an elaborate reply. This was his favorite field. He had got hold of a case to argue; and its importance, in his apprehension, may be judged by the fact that he spent more time and exhausted more pains upon this paper than upon any other written during his administration, messages included. It was intended to be the full and exhaustive vindication of his policy, upon the subjects it covered, before the American people; and the American people so regarded it. No headway could be made against it, and no serious and candid attempt was made to answer it.

These pages will not give space to the entire document, or even a review of the argument; but some of its illustrations may be cited as giving its drift and style. In arguing the necessity of the arrest of those who were known to be traitors,

but who had committed no overt act of treason, he said: "General John C. Breckinridge, General Robert E. Lee, General Joseph E. Johnston, General John B. Magruder, General William B. Preston, General Simon B. Buckner, and Commodore Franklin Buchanan, now occupying the very highest of places in the rebel war service, were all within the power the government since the war began, and were nearly as well known to be traitors then as now. Unquestionably, if we had seized and held them, the insurgent cause would be much weaker. But no one of them had committed any crime defined in the law. Every one of them, if arrested, would have been discharged on habeas corpus, were the writ allowed to operate. In view of these and similar cases, I think the time not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests, rather than too many."

Certainly here was a case in point; and it is hard to see why reasoning that applies so well to those men would not apply as well to those still in the power of the government, who had notoriously so opposed the war as to hinder that government from conquering the traitors named. Mr. Vallandigham "was not arrested," he said, "because he was damaging the political prospects of the administration, or the personal interests of the commanding general; but because he was damaging the army, upon the existence and vigor of which the life of the nation depends." Furthermore: "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy, who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that, in such a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but withal a great mercy."

The Albany meeting had spoken to Mr. Lincoln as “democrats." To this aspect of the matter he paid his addresses. He would have preferred to meet them on the higher platform of "American citizens," at such a time; but, since he was denied this privilege, he comforted himself with the reflection that all democrats did not. believe with them. General Burnside, who arrested Mr. Vallandigham, was a democrat. Judge Leavitt, who refused to release him on the writ of habeas corpus,