Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/60

54 the characters of some of them will stand high. But in truth they must have had bad hearts to conspire against the liberties of their country: so rich is the reward of gratitude and affection bestowed by the American people on all who have served or tried to serve them well.

The President, during the struggle, necessarily exercised great power. He became by the tacit consent of the nation almost the Dictator of the imperilled Republic. At all times indeed the power of a President is greater than is commonly supposed; and if the constitutions of England and America are compared with regard not to their forms but to their substance, that of America will be found to approach more nearly to a popular and elective monarchy, that of England to an aristocratic republic. With invasion on the frontier and treason swarming within it, a few arrests of doubtful legality and doubtful expediency were made; but they were made without any unconstitutional design, and with a merely preventive object, to restrain the persons arrested from courses which might have led to the penalty of treason. Arbitrary things were done in some places by military subordinates unaccustomed to the exercise of power. But on the whole it may truly be said that in no country engaged in civil war, or even in imminent danger of invasion, have law and liberty been so little disturbed as they were, during this civil war, in the loyal states. At the South, meantime, Unionists, or men suspected of being Unionists, were being hunted down like wild beasts. After the murder of Mr. Lincoln, a disposition was shown by the Government to employ secret tribunals for the trial of his murderers; but the nation, excited as it was against the authors of a great crime, declared at once for publicity as the safeguard of justice; and