Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/606

 574 Lincoln and Vallandigham. [ises Assuming the attitude of a Confederate prisoner of war, Vallandigham went to Richmond, where he held a conference with the Confederate authorities, and about a month afterwards made his way from Wil- mington to Bermuda on a blockade-runner, and from there to Canada, whence he issued an address to the people of Ohio. Meanwhile the Democratic Convention of that State had met at Columbus on June 11, and, by way of party protest, unanimously nominated Vallandigham as their candidate for the governorship of Ohio. The arrest, trial, banishment, and nomination created a profound sensation throughout the country, and became a subject of legal and political discussion that for the time being almost excluded other topics. The resolutions of the Ohio Democratic State Convention were presented to the President by a large committee of Vallandigham's supporters, together with an address arguing the questions involved, with all the heat and earnestness the incident engendered. A similar address and resolutions had already been brought to the President by an influential committee of New York Democrats representing a meeting held at Albany. Lincoln made written replies to both committees setting forth with clearness and logic the differing views that animated the two parties to the controversy. Only so much of his replies need be quoted here as gives the substance of his interpretation of the Constitution on the power of the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, " when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." " You ask in substance, whether I really claim that I may override all the guaranteed rights of individuals on the plea of conserving the public safety when I may choose to say the public safety requires it. This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply a question who shall decide, or an affirmation that nobody shall decide, what the public safety does require in cases of rebellion or invasion. The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is to be made, from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time, the people have, under the Constitution, made the Commander-in-Chief of their army and navy is the man who holds the power, and bears the responsibility of making it. If he uses the power justly, the same people will probably justify him ; if he abuses it, he is in their hands to be dealt with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves in the Constitution." Of far greater popular effect, however, than this convincing legal analysis, was the sympathetic question which the President asked in his reply to the Albany committee, "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 ? " That pointed query touched the heart of