the liberty of speech and of the press, the trial by jury, the law of evidence, and the habeas corpus suffered no detriment whatever by the conduct of General Jackson, or its subsequent approval by the American Congress. to the Presidents's communication, which reply is now "To His Fxcellency the President of the United States: And yet, let me say that in my own discretion I do not know whether I would have ordered the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham. While I cannot shift the responsibility from myself, I hold that, as a general rule, the commander in the field is the better judge of the necessity in any particular case. Of course, I must prac-ogy, if any be needed, for saying that we fully concur in tice a general directory and revisory power in the matter. this reply, and believe it to be in entire harmony with the "ERASTUS CORNING, President. To His Excellency ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United Statės: SIR-Your answer, which has appeared in the public prints, to the resolutions adopted at a recent meeting in the city of Albany, affirming the personal rights and liberties of the citizens of this country, has been referred to the undersigned-the committee who prepared and reported those resolutions. The subject will now receive from us further attention, which your answer seems to justify, if not to invite. invite. We hope not to appear wanting in the respect due to your high position, if we reply with a freedom and earnestness suggested by the infinite gravity and importance of the ques One of the resolutions expresses the opinion of the meeting that arbitrary arrests will have the effect to divide and distract those who should be united in suppressing the rebellion, and I am specifically called on to discharge Mr. Vallandigham. I regard this as, at least, a fair appeal to me on the expediency of exercising a constitutional power which I think exists. In response to such appeal I have to say it gave me pain when I learned that Mr. Vallandigham had been arrested-that is, I was pained that there should have seemed to be a necessity for arresting him and that it will afford me great pleasure to discharge him as soon as I can by any means, be lieve the public safety will not suffer by it. I farther say that, as the war progresses, it appears to me, opinion and action, which were in great confusion at first, take shape and fall into tion upon which you have thought proper to more regular channels, so that the necessity for strong dealing with them gradually decreases. I have every reason to desire that it should cease altogether, and far from the least is my regard for the opinions and wishes of those who, like the meeting at Albany, declare their purpose to sustain the government in every constitutional and lawful measure to suppress the rebellion. Still I must continue to do so much as may seem to be required by the public safety. A. LINCOLN. take issue at the bar of public opinion. You seem to be aware that the constitution of the United States, which you have sworn to protect and defend, contains the following guarantees, to which we again ask your attention. (1) Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. (2.) The right of the people to be secure in their persons against unreasonable seizures shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath. (3.) No persons except soldiers and To which the committee replied in the fol- marines in the service of the government shall lowing Scathing and Conclusive Rejoinder. STATEMENT. At a public meeting held at the Capitol, in the city of Albany, on the 16th of May, 1863, to consider the arbitrary arrest of Mr. Vallandigham, certain resolutions were adopted, copies of which were by the direction of the meeting, transmitted by its officers to President Lincoln, who, in a communication dated the 12th of June, 1863, addressed to the gentlemen referred to, which has appeared very generally in the public prints, discussed the resolutions and controverted certain positions which they maintained in regard to personal rights and constitutional obligations. On the receipt of this communication, the Hon. Erastus Corning, chairman of the meeting referred to, addressed the President, informing him, in substance, that the special duty assigned to the officers of the meeting had been fulfilled by sending the resolutions to his Excellency; but adding that, in view of the importance of the principles involved, and the public interest which the matter had assumed, he had deemed it proper to submit the President's letter to the committee who reported the resolutions, for such action as in their judgment it might demand. The committee, having considered the subject, and the questions at issue as of the gravest importance, replied be held to answer for a capital or infamous crime, unless on presentment or indictment of a grand jury, nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law. (4.) In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right of a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the State or district in which the crime shall have been committed, and to be confronted with the witnesses against him. You are also, no doubt, aware that, on the adoption of the constitution, these invaluable provisions were proposed by the jealous caution of the states, and were inserted as amendments for a perpetual assurance of liberty From against the encroachments of power your earliest reading of history, you also know which underlie these provisions were derived that the great principles of liberty and law to us from the British constitution. In that country they were secured by Magna Charta more than six hundred years ago, and they have been confirmed by many and repeated statutes of the realm. A single palpable violation of them in England would not only arouse the public indignation, but would endanger the throne itself. For a persistent disregard of them Charles the First was dethroned and beheaded by his rebellious subjects. or lost in time of war, when invasion or rebelion exists. You do not, like many others in whose minds reason and the love of regulated liberty seem to be overthrown by the excitements of the hour, attempt to base this conclusion upon a supposed military necessity existing outside of and transcending the constituThe fact has already passed into history that tion,-a military necessity behind which the the sacred rights and immunities which were constitution itself disappears in a total eclipse. designed to be protected by these constitution- We do not find this gigantic and monstrous al guarantees have not been preserved to the heresy put forth in your plea for absolute people during your administration. In viola- | power, but we do find another equally subvertion of the first of them, the freedom of the sive of liberty and law, and quite as certainly press has been denied. In repeated instances tending to the establishment of despotism.newspapers have been suppressed in the loyal You claim to have found, not outside, but withstates, because they criticised, as constitution- in the constitution, a principle or germ of arally they might, those fatal errors of policy bitrary power, which, in time of war, expands which have characterized the conduct of public at once into an absolute sovereignty, wielded affairs since your advent to power. In vioia- by one man; so that liberty perishes, or is detion of the second of them, hundreds, and we pendent on his will, his discretion, or his capbelieve thousands, of men have been seized rice. This extraordinary doctrine you claim and immured in prisons and bastiles, not only to derive wholly from the clause of the constiwithout warrant upon probable cause, but with- tution which, in case of invasion or rebellion, out any warrant, and for no other cause than a permits the writ of habeas corpus to be susconstitutional exercise of freedom of speech pended. Upon this ground your whole arguIn violation of all these guarantees, a distin- ment is based. guished citizen of a peaceful and loyal state has been torn from his home at midnight by a band of soldiers, acting under the order of one of your Generals, tried before a military commission, without judge or jury, convicted, and sentenced without the suggestion of any offence known to the constitution or laws of this country. For all these acts you avow yourself ultimately responsible. In the special case of Mr. Vallandigham, the injustice commenced by your subordinate was consummated by a sentence of exile from home pronounced by you. That great wrong more than any other which preceded it, asserts the principles of a supreme despotism. These repeated and continued invasions of constitutional liberty and private right have occasioned profound anxiety in the public mind The apprehension and alarm which they are calculated to produce have been greatly enhanced by your attempt to justify them, because in that attempt you assume to yourself a rightful authority possessed by no constitutional monarch on earth. We accept the declaration that you prefer to exercise this authority with a moderation not hitherto exhibited. But, believing as we do, that your forbearance is not the tenure by which liberty is enjoyed in this country, we propose to challenge the grounds on which your claim of supreme power is based. While yielding to you as a constitutional magistrate the deference to which you are entitled, we cannot accord to you the despotic power you claim, however indulgent and gracious you may promise to be in wielding it. We have carefully considered the grounds on which your pretensions to more than legal authority are claimed to rest; and, if we do not misinterpret the misty and clouded forms of expression in which those pretensions are set forth, your meaning is, that, while the rights of the citizens are protected by the constitution in time of peace, they are suspended You must permit us to say to you, with all due respect, but with the earnestness demanded by the occasion, that the American people will never acquiesce in this doctrine. In their opinion, the guarantees of the Constitution, which secure to them freedom of speech and of the press, immunities from arrest for offences unknown to the laws of the land, and the right of trial by jury before the tribunals provided by those laws, instead of military commissions and drum-head courts martial, are living and vital principles IN PEACE AND IN WAR, at all times and under all circumstances. No sophistry or argument can shake this conviction, nor will the people require its confirmation by logical sequences and deductions. It is a conviction deeply interwoven with the instincts, the habits, aud the education of our countrymen. The right to form opinions upon public measures and men, and to declare those opinions by speech or writing, with the utmost latitude of expression; the right of personal liberty unless forfeited according to established laws, and for offences previously defined by law, the right, when accused of crime, to be tried where law is administered and punishment is pronounced only when the crime is legally ascertained; all these are rights instantly perceived, without argument or proof. No refinement of logic can unsettle them in the minds of freemen; no power can annihilate them, and no force at the command of any Chief Magistrate can compel their surrender. So far as it is possible for us to understand from your language the mental process which has led you to the alarming conclusions indicated by your communication, it is this: The habeas corpus is a remedial writ, issued by courts and magistrates to inquire into the cause of any imprisonment or restraint of liberty; on the return of which and upon due examination the person imprisoned is discharged if the re straint is unlawful, or admitted to bail if he ap pears to have been lawfully arrested and held | President to suspend it during the present reto answer a criminal accusation. Inasmuch as this process may be suspended in time of war, you seem to think that every remedy for a false and unlawful imprisonment is abrogated; and from this postulate you reach at a single bound the conclusion that there is no liberty under the constitution which does not depend on the gracious indulgence of the Executive only. This great heresy once established, and by this mode of induction, there springs at once into existence a brood of crimes or offences undefined by any rule, and hitherto unknown to the laws of this country; and this is followed by indiscriminate arrests, midnight seizures, military commissions, unheard of modes of trial, and punishment, and all the machinery of terror and despotism. Your language does not permit us to doubt as to your essential meaning, for you tell us that "arrests are not made so much for what has been done, as for what probably would be done." And again: bellion. That the suspension is a legislative, and not an executive act, has been held in every judicial decision ever made in this country, and we think it cannot be delegated to any other branch of the government. But, passing over that consideration, you have not exercised the power which Congress attempted to confer upon you, and the writ is not suspended in any part of the country where the civil laws are in force. Now, inasmuch as your doctrine of the arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of innocent men, in admitted violation of express constitutional guarantees, is wholly derived from a suspension of the habeas corpus, the first step to be taken in the ascent to absolute power ought to be to make it known to the people that the writ is in fact suspended, to the end that they may know what is their condition. You have not yet exercised this power, and, therefore, according to your own constitutional thesis, your conclusion falls to the ground. It is one of the provisions of the constitution and of the very highest value, that no ex post facto law shall be passed, the meaning of which is, that no act which is not against the law when committed can be criminal by subsequent legislation. But your claim is, that when the writ of habeas corpus is suspended, you may lawfully imprison and punish for the crime of silence, of speech and opinion. But, as these are not offences against the known and established law of the land, the constitutional principal to which we now refer plainly requires that you should, before taking cognisance of such offences, make known the rule of action, in order that the people may be advised in season, so as not to become liable to its penalties. Let us turn your attention to the most glaring and indefensible of all the assaults upon constitutional liberty, which have marked the history of your administration. No one has ever pretended that the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in the state of Ohio, where the arrest of a citizen at midnight, already re "The man who stands by and says nothing when the peril of his, government is discussed cannot be misunderstood. If not hindered [of course by arrest,] he is sure to help the enemy, and much more if he talks ambiguously talks for his country with 'buts,' and 'ifs,' and ands. You also tell us that the arrests complained of have not been made "for the treason defined in the constitution," nor "for any capital or otherwise infamous crimes, nor were the proceedings following in any constitution or legal sense criminal prosecutions." The very ground, then, of your justification is, that the victims of arbitrary arrest were obedient to every law, were guiltless of any known and defined offense, and therefore were without the protection of the constitution. The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, instead of being intended to prevent the enlargement of arrested criminals until a legal trial and conviction can be had, is designed, according to your doctrine, to subject innocent men to your supreme will and pleasure. Silence itself is punishable according to this extraordinary theory, and still more so the expression of opinions, how-ferred to, was made, and he placed before a ever loyal, if attended with criticisms upon the policy of the government. We must respectfulWe must respectfully refuse our assent to this theory of cons-itutional law. We think that men may be rightfully silent if they so choose, while clamorous and needy patriots proclaim the praises of those who wield power; and as to the "buts," the "ifs," and the "ands," these are Saxon words and belong to the vocabulary of freemen. We have already said that the intuition of a free people instantly rejects these dangerous and unheard of doctrines. It is not our purpose to enter upon an elaborate and extended refutation of them. We submit to you, how ever, one or two considerations, in the hope that you will review the subject with the earnest attention which its supreme importance demands. We say, then, are you not aware that the writ of habeas corpus is now suspended in any of the peaceful and loyal states of the Union. An act of Congress approved by you on the 3d of March, 1863, authorized the court martial for trial and sentence, upon charges and specifications which admitted his innocence according to the existing laws of this country. Upon your own doctrine, then, can you hesitate to redress that monstrous wrong? But, sir, we cannot acquiesce in your dogmas that arrests and imprisonment, without warrant or criminal accusation, in their nature lawless and arbitrary, opposed to the very letter of constitutional guarrantees, can become in any sense rightful by reason of a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. We deny that the suspension of a single and peculiar remedy for such wrongs brings into existence new and unknown classes of offences, or new causes for depriving men of their liberty. It is one of the most material purposes of that writ to enlarge upon bail persons who, upon probable cause, are duly and legally charged with some known crime, and a suspension of the writ was never asked for in England nor in this country except to prevent such enlargement when the supposed offence was against the safety of the government. In the year 1807, at the time of Burr's alleged conspiracy, a bill was passed in the Senate of the United States, suspending the writ of habeas corpus for a limited time, in all cases where persons were charged on oath with treason or other high crime or misdemeanor endangering the peace or safety of the government. But your doctrine undisguisedly is, that a suspension of this writ justifies arrests' without warrant, without oath, and even without suspicion of treason or other crime. Your doctrine denies the freedom of speech and of the press. It invades the sacred domain of opinion and discussion. It denounces the 'ifs" and "buts" of the English language, and even the refuge of silence is insecure. We repeat, a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus merely dispenses with a single and peculiar remedy against an unlawful imprisonment; but, if that remedy had never existed, the right to liberty would be the same, and every invasion of that right would be condemned not only by the constitution, but by principles of far greater antiquity than the writ itself. Our common law is not at all indebted to this writ for its action of false imprisonment, and the action would remain to the citizens if the writ were abolished forever. Again: every man, when his life or liberty is threatened without the warrant of law, may lawfully resist, and, if necessary in self-defence, may take the life of the aggressor. Moreover, the people of this country may demand the impeachment of the President himself for the exercise of arbitrary power. And, when all these remedies shall prove inadequate for the protection of free institutions, there remains, in the last resort, the supreme right of revolution. You once announced this right with a latitude of expression which may well be considered dangerous in the present crisis of our national history. You said: "Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to saise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. Nor is this right confined to cases where the people of an existing government may choose to exercise it.... Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority intermingled with or near about them, who may oppose their movements."...(Volume 19, Congressional Globe,. p. 94.) Such were your opinions, and you had a constitutional right to declare them. If a citizen now should utter sentiments far less dangerous in their tendency, your nearest military commander would consign him to a dungeon, or to the tender mercies of a court martial, and you would approve the proceeding. In our deliberate judgment, the constitution is not open to the new interpretation suggested by your communication now before us. We think every part of that instrument is harmonious and consistent. The possible suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is consistent with freedom of speech and of the press. The suspension of the remedial process may prevent the enlargement of the accused traitor or conspirator, until he shall be legally tried and convicted or acquitted; but in this we find no justification for arrest and imprisonment with out warrant, without cause, without the accusation or suspicion of crime. It seems to us, that the sacred right of trial by jury, and in courts where the law of the land is the rule of decision, is a right which is never dormant, never suspended, in peaceful and loyal communities and states. Will you, Mr. President, maintain that, because the writ of habeas corpus may be in suspense, you can substitute soldiers and bayonets for the peaceful operation of the laws, military commissions and inquisitorial modes of trial, for the courts and juries prescribed by the constitution itself? And, if you cannot maintain this, then let us ask where the justification is for the monstrous proceeding in the case of a citizen of Ohio, to which we have called your attention? We know that a recreant Judge, whose name has descended to merited contempt, found the apology on the outside of the supreme and fundamental law of the constitution. But this is not the foundation on which your superstructure of power is built. We have mentioned the act of the last Congress professing to authorize a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. This act now demands your especial attention, because, if we are not greatly in error, its terms and plain intention are directly opposed to all the arguments and conclusions of your communication. That act, besides providing that the habeas corpus may be suspended, expressly commands that the names of all persons theretofore or thereafter arrested by authority of the President, or his cabinet ministers, being citizens of states in which the administration of the laws has continued unimpaired, shall be turned over to the courts of the United States for the district in which such persons reside, or in which their supposed offenses were committed; and such return being made, if the next grand jury attending the court does not indict the alleged offenders, then the Judges are commanded to issue an order for their immediate discharge from imprisonment. Now, we cannot help asking wheather you have overlooked this law, which most assuredly you are bound to observe, or whether it be your intention to disregard it? regard it? Its meaning certainly cannot be mistaken. By it the national legislature has said that the President may suspend the accustomed writ of habeas corpus, but at the same time it has commanded that all arrests under his authority shall be promptly made known to the courts of justice, and that the accused parties shall be liberated, unless presented by a grand jury according to the constitution, and tried by a jury in the ancient and accustomed mode. The President may, possibly, so far as Congress can give the right, arrest without legal cause or warrant. We certainly deny that Congress can confer this right, because it is forbidden by the higher law of the constitution. But, waiving that consideration, this statute, by its very terms, promptly removes the pro ceedings in every case into the courts where the safeguards of liberty are observed, and where the persons detained are to be discharged, unless indicted for criminal offences against the established and ascertained laws of the country. Upon what foundation, then, permit us to ask, do you rest the pretension that men who are not accused of crime may be seized and imprisoned or banished at the will and pleasure of the President or any of his subordinates in civil and military positions? Where is the warrant for invading the freedom of speech and of the press? Where the justification for placing the citizen on trial without the presentment of a grand jury and before military commissions? THERE IS NO POWER IN THIS COUNTRY WHICH CAN DISPENSE WITH ITS LAWS. The President is as much bound by them as the humblest individual. We pray you to bear in mind, in order that you may duly estimate the feeling of the people on this subject, that, for the crime of dispensing with the laws and statutes of Great Britain, our ancestors brought one monarch to the scaffold and expelled another from his throne. have erected in theory This power which you have erected in theory is of vast and limitable proportions. If we may trust you to excrcise it mercifully and leniently, your successor, whether immediate or more remote, may wield it with the energy of a Cæsar or Napoleon, and with the will of a despot and a tyrant. It is a power without boundary or limit, because it procedes upon a total suspension of all the constitutional and legal safeguards which protect the rights of the citizen. It is a power not inaptly described in the language of one of your Secretaries. Said Mr. Seward to the British Minister in Washington: "I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch the bell again, and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York, and no power on earth but that of the President can release them, Can the Queen of England, in her dominions, do as much? This is the very language of a perfect despotism, and we learn from you, with profound emotion, that this is no idle boast It is a despotism unlimited in principle, because the same arbitrary and unrestrained will or discretion which can place men under illegal restraint or banish them can apply the rack or the thumbscrew, can put to torture or so death. Not thus have the people of this country hitherto understood their constitution. No argument can commend to their judgment such interpretations of the great charter of their liberties. Quick as the lightning's flash, the intuitive sense of freemen perceives the sophistry and rejects the conclusion. Some other matters which your Excellency has presented demand our notice. In justification of your course as to Mr. Vallandigham, you have referred to the arrest of Judge Hall at New Orleans by order of Gen. Jackson; but that case differs widely from the case of Mr. Vallandigham. New Orleans was then, as you truly state, under "martial or The military law." This was not so in Ohio, where Mr. Vallandigham was arrested. administration of the civil law had not been disturbed in that commonwealth. The courts were open, and justice was dispensed with its accustomed promptitude. In the case of Judge Hall, Gen. Jackson in a few days sent him outside of the line of his encampments and set him at liberty; but you have undertaken to banish Mr. Vallandigham from his home. You seem also to have forgotten that Gen. Jackson submitted implicitly to the judgment of the court which imposed the fine upon him; that he enjoined his friends to assent, "as he most freely did, to the decision which had just been pronounced against him." Unlike President More than this, you overlook the fact that well-known author) "mildly but decidedly rethe then administration (in the language of a buked the proceedings of Gen. Jackson," and that the President viewed the subject with Madison, you, in a case much more unwarran"surprise and solicitude." ted, approve the proceedings of your subordinate officer, and, in addition, justify your its support. course by a carefully considered argument in It is true that, after some thirty years, Congress, in consideration of the devoted and patriotic services of Gen Jackson, refunded the amount of the fine he had paid. But the long delay in doing this proved how reluctant the American people were to do anything which could be considered as in any way approving the disregard shown to the majesty of the law, even by one who so eminently enjoyed their confidence and regard. You expressed your regret that our meeting One object more, and we shall conclude.spoke as Democrats;" and you say that, "in this time of national peril, you would have preferred to meet us upon a level, one step higher than any party platform." You thus compel us to allude to matters which we should have preferred to pass by. But we cannot omit to notice your criticism, as it casts, at least an implied reproach upon our motives and our proceedings. We beg to remind you that when the hour of our country's peril had come, when it was evident that a most gigantic effort was to be made to subvert our institutions and to overthrow the government, when it was vitally important that party feeelings should be laid aside, and that all should be called upon to unite most cordially and vigorously to maintain the Union; at the time when you were sworn into office as President of the United States, when you should have urged your fellow citizens in the most emphatic manner to overlook all past differences and to rally in defence of their country and its institutions, when you should have enjoined respect for the laws and the constitution, so clearly disregarded by the South; you chose for the first time, under like circumstances, in the history of our country, to set up a party platform, called "the Chicago platform" as your creed, to advance |