CHAPTER XXIII.

DEPRESSION AMONG THE PEOPLE IN 1863.-MILITARY SITUATION. HOSTILITY TO THE ADMINISTRATION. - DETERMINATION TO BREAK IT DOWN. -VALLANDIGHAM'S DISLOYAL SPEECH. - Two REBELLIONS THREATENED. GENERAL BURNSIDE TAKES COMAND OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE OHIO.- ARRESTS VALLANDIGHAM.- TRIES HIM BY MILITARY COMMISSION. HIS SENTENCE COMMUTED BY MR. LINCOLN. HABEAS CORPUS REFUSED. - DEMOCRATIC PARTY PROTESTS. MEETING IN ALBANY. - LETTER OF GOVERNOR SEYMOUR. - OHIO DEMOCRATS SEND A COMMITTEE TO WASHINGTON. MR. LINCOLN'S REPLIES TO ALBANY MEETING AND TO THE OHIO COMMITTEE. - EFFECT OF HIS WORDS UPON THE COUNTRY. ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.-GENERAL HOOKER'S DEFEAT AT CHANCELLORSVILLE. -GLOOM IN THE COUNTRY. THE PRESIDENT'S LETTERS TO GENERAL HOOKER. GENERAL MEADE SUCCEEDS HOOKER IN COMMAND OF THE ARMY. BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. IMPORTANT VICTORY FOR THE UNION. RELIEF TO THE COUNTRY. - GENERAL GRANT'S VICTORY AT VICKSBURG. FOURTH OF JULY. NOTABLE COINCIDENCE. — STATE ELECTIONS FAVORABLE TO THE ADMINISTRATION. — MEETING OF THIRTYEIGHTH CONGRESS. SCHUYLER COLFAX ELECTED SPEAKER. - PROMINENT NEW MEMBERS IN EACH BRANCH.-E. D. MORGAN, ALEXANDER RAMSEY, JOHN CONNESS, REVERDY JOHNSON, THOMAS A. HENDRICKS, HENRY WINTER DAVIS, ROBERT C. SCHENCK, JAMES A. GARFIELD, WILLIAM B. ALLISON. - PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE. -THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION. - FIRST PROPOSED BY JAMES M. ASHLEY. JOHN B. HENDERSON PROPOSES AMENDMENT WHICH PASSES THE SENATE. - DEBATE IN BOTH BRANCHES. AID TO THE PACIFIC RAILROAD. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL GRANT.

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T no time during the war was the depression among the people of the North so great as in the spring of 1863. When the Thirty-seventh Congress came to its close on the 3d of March, partisan feeling was so bitter that a contest of most dangerous character was foreshadowed in the Loyal States. The anti-slavery policy of the President was to be attacked as tending to a fatal division among the people; the conduct of the war was to be arraigned as impotent, and leading only to disaster. Circumstances favored an assault upon the Administration. The project of freeing the slaves had encountered many bitter prejudices among the masses in the Loyal States, and reverses in the field had created a dread of impending conscriptions which would send additional thousands to be wasted in fruitless assaults upon impregnable

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fortifications.

General Hooker had succeeded to the command of the Army of the Potomac, still sore under the cruel sacrifice of its brave men in the previous December. General Grant was besieging Vicksburg, which had been fortified with all the strength that military science could impart, and was defended by a very strong force under the command of J. C. Pemberton, a graduate of West Point, and a lieutenant-general in the Confederate army.

The opponents of the Administration intended to press the attack, to destroy the prestige of Mr. Lincoln, to bring hostilities in the field to an end, to force a compromise which should give humiliating guaranties for the protection of Slavery, to bring the South back in triumph, and to re-instate the Democratic party in the Presidential election of the ensuing year for a long and peaceful rule over a Union in which radicalism had been stamped out and Abolitionists placed under the ban. Such was the flattering prospect which opened to the view of the party that had so determinedly resisted and so completely defeated the Administration in the great States of the Union the preceding year. The new crusade against the President was begun by Mr. Vallandigham, who if not the ablest was the frankest and boldest member of his party. He took the stump soon after the adjournment of the Thirty-seventh Congress. It was an unusual time of the year to begin a political contest; but the ends sought were extraordinary, and the means adopted might well be of the same character. On the first day of May Mr. Vallandigham made a peculiarly offensive, mischievous, disloyal speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio, which was published throughout the State and widely copied elsewhere. It was perfectly apparent that the bold agitator was to have many followers and imitators, and that in the rapidly developing sentiment which he represented, the Administration would have as bitter an enemy in the rear as it was encountering at the front. The case was therefore critical. Mr. Lincoln saw plainly that the Administration was not equal to the task of subduing two rebellions. While confronting the power of a solid South he must continue to wield the power of a solid North.

After General Burnside had been relieved from the command of the Army of the Potomac he was sent to command the Department of Ohio. He established his headquarters in Cincinnati in April (1863). He undoubtedly had confidential instructions in regard to the mode of dealing with the rising tide of disloyalty which, beginning in Ohio, was sweeping over the West. The Mount-Vernon

speech of Mr. Vallandigham would inevitably lead to similar demonstrations elsewhere, and General Burnside determined to deal with its author. On Monday evening the 4th of May he sent a detachment of soldiers to Mr. Vallandigham's residence in Dayton, arrested him, carried him to Cincinnati, and tried him by a military commission of which a distinguished officer, General Robert B. Potter, was president. Mr. Vallandigham resisted the whole proceeding as a violation of his rights as a citizen of the United States, and entered a protest declaring that he was arrested without due process of law and without warrant from any judicial officer, that he was not in either the land or naval forces of the United States nor in the militia in actual service, and therefore was not triable by a court-martial or military commission, but was subject only, by the express terms of the Constitution, to be tried on an indictment or presentment of a grand jury. Of the offense charged against him there was no doubt, and scarcely a denial; and the commission, brushing aside his pleas, convicted him, and sentenced him to be placed in close confinement, during the continuance of the war, in some fortress of the United States - the fortress to be designated by the commanding officer of the department. General Burnside approved the proceeding, and designated Fort Warren in the harbor of Boston as the place of Mr. Vallandigham's detention.

The President, with that sagacity which was intuitive and unfailing in all matters of moment, disapproved the sentence, and commuted it to one sending Mr. Vallandigham beyond our military lines to his friends of the Southern Confederacy. The estimable and venerable Judge Leavett of the United-States District Court was applied to for a writ of habeas corpus, but he refused to issue it. The judge declared that the power of the President undoubtedly implies the right to arrest persons who by their mischievous acts of disloyalty impede or hinder the military operations of the government. The Democratic party throughout the United States took up the case with intemperate and ill-tempered zeal. Meetings were held in various places to denounce it, and to demand the right of Vallandigham to return from the rebel lines within which he had been sent. Governor Seymour of New York in a public letter denounced the arrest as "an act which has brought dishonor upon our country, and is full of danger to our persons and our homes. If this proceeding is approved by the government and sanctioned by the people it is not merely a step toward revolution, it is revolution; it will not only

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lead to military despotism, it establishes military despotism. In this respect it must be accepted, or in this respect it must be rejected. If it is upheld our liberties are overthrown." Waxing still bolder Governor Seymour said "the people of this country now wait with the deepest anxiety the decision of the Administration upon these acts. Having given it a generous support in the conduct of the war, we now pause to see what kind of government it is for which we are asked to pour out our blood and our treasure. The action of the Administration will determine, in the minds of more than one-half of the people of the Loyal States, whether this war is waged to put down rebellion in the South or to destroy free institutions at the North."

The evil effect upon the public opinion of the North of such language from a man of Governor Seymour's high personal character and commanding influence with his party can hardly be exaggerated. It came at a time when the Administration was sorely pressed and when it could not stand an exasperating division in the North. The governor's letter was publicly read at a large meeting of the Democratic party in Albany, presided over by Erastus Corning, and called to consider the act of the Administration. A long series of resolutions denouncing Vallandigham's arrest were adopted and forwarded to the President. But Mr. Lincoln rose to the occasion as if inspired, and his letter of June 12 to the Albany Committee turned the popular tide powerfully in favor of the Administration. One of the points presented made a deep impression upon the understanding and profoundly stirred the hearts of the people. "Mr. Vallandigham was not arrested," said the President, "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 this Nation depends. If Mr. Vallandigham was not damaging the military power of the country, then his arrest was made on mistake of facts, which I would be glad to correct on reasonable, satisfactory evidence. I understand the meeting whose resolutions I am considering, to be in favor of suppressing the Rebellion by military force-by armies. Long experience has shown that armies cannot be maintained unless desertion shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. The case requires, and the law and the Constitution sanction, this punishment. Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting

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father or brother or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his feelings until he is persuaded to write the soldier-boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked Administration of a contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that in such a case to silence the agitator and to save the boy is not only constitutional, but is withal a great mercy." No other man in our history has so fully possessed the power of presenting an argument in concrete form, overthrowing all the logic of assailants, and touching the chords of public feeling with a tenderness which becomes an irresistible force.

The Democrats of Ohio took up the arrest of Vallandigham with especial earnestness, and were guilty of the unspeakable folly of nominating him as their candidate for governor. They appointed an imposing committee - one from each Congressional district of the State-to communicate with the President in regard to the sentence of banishment. They arrived in Washington about the last of June, and addressed a long communication to Mr. Lincoln, demanding the release and return of Mr. Vallandigham. They argued the case with ability. No less than eleven of the committee were or had been members of Congress, with George H. Pendleton at their head. Mr. Lincoln's reply under date of June 29 to their communication was as felicitous, as conclusive, as his reply to the Albany Committee. He expressed his willingness in answer to their request, to release Mr. Vallandigham without asking pledge, promise, or retraction from him, and with only one simple condition. That condition was that "the gentlemen of the committee themselves, representing as they do the character and power of the Ohio Democracy, will subscribe to three propositions: First, That there is now a rebellion in the United States, the object and tendency of which are to destroy the National Union, and that in your opinion an army and navy are constitutional means for suppressing that rebellion. Second, That no one of you will do any thing which in his own judgment will tend to hinder the increase or favor the decrease or lessen the efficiency of the army and navy while engaged in the effort to suppress that rebellion. And Third, That each of you will in his sphere do all he can to have the officers, soldiers, and seamen of the army and navy, while engaged in the effort to suppress the Rebellion, paid, fed, clad, and otherwise well provided for and supported."

Mr. Lincoln sent duplicates of these three conditions to the committee, one of which was to be returned to him indorsed with their