a large number were released from custody on taking the oath of allegiance. During the succeeding Winter, while Congress was in session, public sentiment was comparatively quiet on the subject. Congress, during the session, legalized all acts of the President, and gave him full authority to check and punish attempts to defeat the efforts of the adminstration in the prosecution of the war.

After the adjournment of Congress the party agitation was revived, and public meetings were again held to denounce the Government and to protest against the further prosecution of the war. One of the most active and pestilent of these sympathizers with treason was C. C. Valandigham of Ohio, who as a member of Congress, stump politician and private citizen, had opposed the Government in its efforts to subdue the rebellion from its very inception. He had the effrontery to offer in the House resolutions of censure for those early acts of the President in calling out troops by which the National capital alone was saved from capture.

His language in Congress had been so bitter and disloyal that the patriotic feelings of every Union citizen were outraged and insulted. Going home from Congress, he entered upon a canvass of his district, denouncing the Government and villifying its motive. The object and tendency of his malicious utterances were to discourage enlisting or volunteering for the military army in the field, to embarrass and weaken the efforts of the President in his great work of subduing the rebellion, and to give aid and succor to the enemies of the Union.

General Burnside, a Union Democrat, then in command of the departof Ohio, issued an order (No. 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 Vallandigham publicly denounced, and called upon the people to resist its execution. General Burnside arrested him at once, and ordered him to be tried by a court martial at Cincinnati. On the 5th day 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, Senator Pugh, and the reading of a letter from General Burnside giving his reasons for his arrest, Judge Leavitt, a life-time Democrat, decided against his application, giving his opinion that "The legality of the arrest depends on the necessity for making it, and that was to be determined by the military commander." And he further said, "Men should know and learn, and lay the truth to heart, that there is a course of conduct not involving overt treason, and not, therefore, subject to punishment as such, which, nevertheless, implies moral guilt and a gross offense against the country. Those who

live under the protection and enjoy the blessings of our benignant Government must learn that they cannot stab its vitals with impunity. If they cherish hatred and hostility to it and desire its subversion, let them withdraw from its jurisdiction and seek the fellowship and protection of those with whom they are in sympathy. 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. And let them not complain if the stringent law of military necessity should find them to be the legitimate subjects of its action. I have no fear that the recognition of this doctrine will lead to an arbitrary invasion of the personal security or personal liberty of the citizen. It is rare, indeed, that a charge of disloyalty will be made on insufficient grounds. But if there should be an occasional mistake, such an occurrrence is not to be put in competition with the preservation of the Nation; and I confess I am but little moved by the eloquent appeals of those who, while they indignantly denounce violations of personal liberty, look with no horror upon a despotism as unmitigated as the world has ever witnessed."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

VALLANDIGHAM SENT TO HIS FRIENDS-ALBANY MEETING-PRESIDENT'S REPLY.

The man

Immediately after the decision of Judge Leavitt, refusing Vallandigham his application, he was tried and convicted, and was sentenced to confinement in some fortress of the United States, to be designated by General Burnside, who designated Fort Warren as his place of confinement. The President modified the sentence and directed that the convict should be sent within the rebel lines, among the people whom he held in such cordial sympathy, and that he should not return until after the termination of the war. sent to his own did not seem to meet with a very cordial reception. The Southern people seemed to manifest that sentiment so notably marked in the case of a notorious personage in the early history of our country, in which it was said of his friends when they received him: "They loved the treason, but despised the traitor." So Vallandigham passed on through the rebellious States, and made his way to Canada. He subsequently returned to Ohio without asking permission of the President.

Our limits will not permit an extended exposition of the numerous and most noted cases of arrest by the civil and military authorities for treason and disloyalty. The public were but little acquainted and informed, at the time, of the magnitude and effect of the disloyal influences that were at work in the loyal States. This seditious and secession sentiment paralyzed and weakened the efforts and exertions of the Government for the suppression of the rebellion, and the baneful influences became so potent that stern necessity required the President to interpose his constitutional authority and stay the nefarious influences that were at work for the subversion of the national authority. In the discharge of this duty, forbearance and clemency were the distinguished characteristics of his action, and at this day, when the extent and effects of this disloyal and secession sentiment and action of the guilty parties on the public mind, and on the policy of the Government, appear more clear, we can see that mercy and forbearance, rather than justice and merited punishment, were the rule and not the exception, and can hardly

realize how the President under cases so unnatural and malignant, and which called for severe and exemplary punishment, could be so lenient and merciful. The case of Vallandigham called for severe and condign punishment, and yet the President treated his case with the utmost lenity. His disloyalty was the most effective and offensive because of his eminence as a member of Congress, notorious because of his pestilential and malicious utterances against the Government and its policy for sustaining the unity of the Nation, but in this case, as in many others, the President had views of his own, and it is most likely that of his own volition he would have left from the first the arch conspirator alone, believing that his fulminations, as events afterwards proved, rather strengthened the Union cause than otherwise. The arrest, the remarks of Judge Leavitt and the excitement growing out of the case had their salutary effects. In the loyal States a spirit of inquiry was awakened which resulted in drawing the line of distinction between the loyal and disloyal, and showing forth the enormity and audacity of those that were engaged in giving aid and encouragement to the rebellion. Prominent secessionists in the loyal States became alarmed. If military officers could arrest offenders and be sustained by the United States courts, and the criminals sent within the rebel lines, the inquiry naturally arose, who is safe, or who will be the next victim, and to meet the difficulties that surrounded them and shift the responsibilities from themselves, they began to call public meetings and to pass resolutions denouncing the Government, and requesting the President to reconsider his action in Vallandigham's case. A meeting of this kind, where the notables opposed to the administration and the prosecution of the war for the preservation of the Union assembled in large numbers, met at Albany, May 16th. Governor Seymour sent a letter fully in spirit and harmony with the sentiments of the meeting. It would be difficult to point out or to distinguish any difference in the principle or spirit of the treasonable language used by the arch agitator of Ohio or the peace Governor of New York.

"The

Governor Seymour said in his letter to the Albany meeting: sanction of the act by which Vallandigham was sent South by the President and the people was not only despotism, but revolution." Vallandigham had said that the administration 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 half of the people of the loyal States whether this war is waged to put down rebellion in the South or destroy free institutions at the North."

The Albany meeting was in perfect harmony and concord with Governor Seymour's letter, and its spirit was embodied in the resolutions which were adopted pledging the Democratic party of the State to the preservation of the Union, but condemning in strong terms the whole system of military arrests,

and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The leaders of this meeting had placed themselves in an attitude by their resolutions which the President coveted. They gave him the desired opportunity to give to the people of the Union an exhaustive and full statement of his policy on the subjects which were so strongly condemned by the meeting. It was a vindication worthy of the President of a people striving to save the Union, and sustain their nationality, and it was so regarded by the American people. It was so full, so conclusive, that it was unanswerable, that no earnest or candid attempt was made to answer it.

Our limits preclude even a review of the argument, but some extracts and illustrations may be given of its force and argument. In alleging the necessity and propriety of arresting those known to be traitors, but who were not guilty of an overt act of treason, the President said: Many of the prominent leaders of the rebellion, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnson, J. C. Breckenridge and many others, now occupying prominent official positions under the rebel Government, were well known to be traitors, and were all within the power of the Government since the war began. Without doubt, if we had seized and held them, the insurgent cause would have been much weaker; but no one of them had committed any crime defined by 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 will come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many. Mr. Vallandigham was not arrested because he was damaging the political prospects of the administration or the personal interests of the commanding officer; but because he was damaging the army, upon the existence and vigor of which the life of the Nation depends. Must I shoot a simple-minded boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the 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."

This Albany meeting, in their resolutions and proceedings, had styled themselves Democrats. The President said: "I would have preferred to have met you on the higher platform of American citizens. Nor can I, with full respect for your known intelligence and the fairly presumed deliberations with which you prepared your resolutions, be permitted to suppose that this occurred by accident, or in any other way than that they preferred to designate themselves Democrats rather than American citizens. In this time of National peril, I would have preferred to have met you on a level-one step higher than any party platform-because I am sure that from such a more elevated position we could do better battle for the country we all love, than we can possibly from these lower ones, where, from the force of habit-the