could be pointed out. It was his pride to be somewhat more of a Rebel than if he had been in command of a Confederate regiment. Up to the spring of 1863, he had been permitted to talk as he would, for the good reason that he had no following worth mentioning, and that he served admirably as a perpetual witness that the Government did not interfere with the freedom of speech. He was now to serve an equally important use of another kind. After doing his best for the Rebellion all the winter, upon the floor of Congress, he went home to Ohio and began a series of public addresses in which he surpassed all previous exhibitions of partisan malice and vituperative capacity.

General Burnside was then in command of the Department of the Ohio, and his patriotism was of the most sterling quality. He had issued an order setting forth that all persons found within the Union army lines who should commit acts for the benefit of the enemy would be tried as spies or as traitors, and, if convicted, would be put to death.

This order plainly included such traitors as Vallandigham; and he not only publicly denounced it on the stump, but urged the people to forcibly resist its execution. The military "order of arrest," which he in this manner courted and asked for, was issued by General Burnside as a matter of course, and the orator was locked up. The next day, May 5, 1863, an application for a writ of habeas corpus, in his case, was made to the United States Circuit Court. It was a fine opportunity to test the Constitutionality and effect of the President's suspension of the writ, as well as the authority of the Commander-in-Chief to protect the rear of his army.

The presiding judge, himself a lifelong Democrat, politically, listened to a long argument from the prisoner's counsel; but he sternly refused the writ, stating the law of the matter in a form which made his decision invaluable to the Government. He said: "The legality of the arrest depends upon the necessity for making it, and that is to be determined by the military

commander." He added a good deal of outspoken patriotism and common-sense to his "law," and the subject of arbitrary arrests was cleared of a great part of the rubbish which had been heaped around it. Vallandigham was tried at once by court-martial, and was sentenced to be confined in some fortress. General Burnside approved the finding of the court and named Fort Warren as the place of punishment. But Mr. Lincoln was not disposed to throw away his opportune "example" in that manner. He could express, through him, his hearty contempt for the class of demagogues Vallandigham so perfectly represented. A broad smile swept across the face of the North, and a subdued chuckle went through the people and the army and was heard even at the South, when the sentence of the culprit was read in the newspapers.

The President modified the imprisonment in Fort Warren to an imprisonment within the Rebel lines, and sent the convict down South, with a warning not to return until after the war.

There was a touch of humor in it, but it was the most biting sarcasm ever penned by Abraham Lincoln. Well might the South grumble that it was no sort of "Botany Bay," and had no use for that kind of immigration. The sentence worked a world of good at the North. A host of mere talking men felt that the blow was aimed at them. Quarters in Federal prisons could be given to but few. From such places there might be means of possible escape. There would, at least, be food and raiment there, and safe shelter; but who could guess what horrors might await a poor Northern traitor "beyond the army lines"? The people of the South, themselves, were suspected of having strong notions, here and there, of a man's duty to 66 go with his State, side with his section, and stand by his own people,” and Southern hospitality might curl its haughty lip a little at the Northern renegade sent down to help eat the scanty rations of its soldiery.

Vallandigham got around into Ohio again, before the end of the war; but he had served all the uses that could be made of

him, and no further notoriety was forced upon him by the Government. Even after his expulsion, however, his remarkable usefulness continued for a season. His case and conviction, and the shiver of dread caused thereby to all similar offenders, drew the more virulent elements of the Opposition together, forced them to take public action, and so enabled Mr. Lincoln to answer them before the people, as he could not otherwise have done. Public meetings were at once held, in the larger cities, for general purposes of denunciation of the "Lincoln despotism." These meetings answered well as safety-valves, and also to convince the nation that there was really no interference with freedom of speech. Great men and small men, alike, expressed themselves from these platforms very much as the transported Ohio scapegoat had expressed himself from his platforms, and no hand of Executive tyranny was laid upon them. The meetings were largely and noisily attended, and their managers, without any such intention, afforded Mr. Lincoln the means of measuring, with fair accuracy, the extent, nature, and capacities of the disaffection.

A month after Vallandigham had been bundled across the army lines and received by "his own," the Democratic State Convention of Ohio, representing the disloyal elements of that State, nominated him for Governor of the State, and his lawcounsel for Lieutenant-Governor. They also did Mr. Lincoln the favor to send a delegation to him at Washington, to present their view of the case.

They did very rightly. They were by no means bad men. Their action, at that very hour, although they knew it not, was a marvellous expression of their personal confidence in the integrity of the President. They did not know, either, how glad he was of the opportunity they thus gave him to tell the whole country, in his answer to their address: "Your attitude, therefore, encourages desertion, resistance to the Draft, and the like, because it teaches those who incline to desert and to escape the draft to believe it is your purpose to protect them."

To the utterances of a great meeting held at Albany, New York, Mr. Lincoln made a more elaborate reply. It was a peculiarly representative assemblage, and gave him an opportunity to explain to the whole people why he had pursued so lenient a policy from the beginning, and why he had waited for the commission of actual crime, by any and every individual, before employing the strong hand of the law. It also enabled him to ask, of both friends and foes, the practical question:

"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? I think that, in such a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal a great mercy."

There was wind enough stirring to blow away a great deal of unwholesome fog. By the time all the speeches had been made and all the editorials had been printed, the people had read and digested the President's replies. They had also chuckled grimly over "Vallandigham in Dixie," and had enjoyed the panicky dismay of the demagogues. The beneficial effect was sure and rapid, and a great revulsion of popular feeling set strongly in.

The dark days were by no means shortened. There was more trouble to come. Nevertheless, the President discerned that he could safely employ the exceptional powers placed in his hands, and that all the people would sustain him. The great military events of the year, in due season, completed the work so well begun, and, when her next State election took place, Ohio declared, by the largest majority in her political history, that she preferred a patriot for her governor and had, like Mr. Lincoln, no further use for the kind of men represented by Vallandigham.

CHAPTER XLVII.

NIGHT.

Preparing for a Great Struggle-Popular Discontent-Murmurs of Sedition-European Hostilities-Chancellorsville-Bitter Hours for the President-Darkness at the South-Statesmen under a HallucinationThe Second Invasion of the North-Hooker Succeeded by Meade.

MR. LINCOLN did not retain the external equanimity of his earlier days under the galling pressure of the burdens laid upon him in 1863. The goading irritations were too many, and they gave him no rest whatever. The path he was forced to walk in was rugged with lacerating difficulties. To say that he now and then gave way to short-lived fits of petulance is but to admit that he was human. He was keenly conscious of every deficiency, in himself or in his human and other means for performing his vast undertaking, and he could not but worry when things went wrong. More than enough did go wrong, and the few admissions of harassed weariness which escaped him do not deserve especial record.

It was well understood, through many channels of information, that the Confederacy was now preparing to put forth its full and uttermost strength: and this was more than the North would or could be induced to do. There was, indeed, a sort of prophetic hope in the obvious fact that such an exhaustive effort could never be made more than once by the South; but the certainty that it was coming filled the outlook for the military year with promises of bloodshed, and these were speedily and terribly fulfilled. Mr. Lincoln read all these signs and promises, and knew their meaning perfectly. He saw and he felt that a large proportion of the men he was drawing into the