WASHINGTON, June 29, 1863.
Messrs. M. BIRCHARD [and others]:*
GENTLEMEN: The resolutions of the Ohio Democratic State convention
which you present me together with your introductory and closing remarks, being
in position and argument mainly the same as the resolutions of the Democratic
meeting at Albany, N.Y., I refer you to my response† to the latter as
meeting most of the points in the former.
This response you evidently used in preparing your remarks and I desire
no more than that it be used with accuracy. In a single reading of your remarks
I only discovered one inaccuracy in matter which I suppose you took from that
paper. It is where you say the undersigned are unable to agree with you in the
opinion you have expressed that the Constitution is different in time of
insurrection or invasion from what it is in time of peace and public security.
A recurrence to the paper will show you that I have not expressed the
opinion you suppose. I expressed the opinion that the Constitution is different
in its application in cases of rebellion or invasion involving the public
safety from what it is in times of profound peace and public security; and this
opinion I adhere to simply because by the Constitution itself things may be
done in the one case which may not be done in the other.
I dislike to waste a word on a mere personal point, but I must
respectfully assure you that you will find yourselves at fault should you ever
seek for evidence to prove your assumption that I “opposed in discussions
before the people the policy of the Mexican war.”
You say, “Expunge from the Constitution this limitation upon the power
of Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and yet the other guarantees
of personal liberty would remain unchanged.” Doubt less if this clause of the
Constitution, improperly called, as I think, a limitation upon the power of
Congress, were expunged, the other guarantees would remain the same; but the
question is not how those guarantees would stand with that clause out of the
Constitution, but how they stand with that clause remaining in it in case of
rebellion or invasion involving the public safety. If the liberty could be
indulged of expunging that clause, letter and spirit, I really think the
constitutional argument would be with you.
My general view of this question was stated in the Albany response, and
hence I do not state it now. I only add that, it seems to me, the benefit of
the writ of habeas corpus is the great means through which the guarantees of
personal liberty are conserved and made available in the last resort; and
corroborative of this view is the fact that Mr. Vallandigham, in the very case
in question, under the advice of able lawyers, saw not where else to go but to
the habeas corpus. But by the Constitution the benefit of the writ of habeas
corpus itself may be suspended when, in case 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; I think the man whom for the time the people have
under the Constitution made the Commander-in. Chief of the 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.
The earnestness with which you insist that persons can only in times of
rebellion be lawfully dealt with in accordance with the rules for criminal
trials and punishments in times of peace induces me to add a word to what I
said on that point in the Albany response. You claim that men may, if they
choose, embarrass those whose duty it is to combat a gigantic rebellion, and
then be dealt with only in turn as if there were no rebellion. The Constitution
itself rejects this view. The military arrests and detentions which have been
made, including those of Mr. Vallandigham, which are not different in principle
from the other, have been for prevention and not for punishment as injunction
to stay injury, as proceedings to keep the peace; and hence like proceedings in
such cases, and for like reasons, they have not been accompanied with
indictments or trials by juries, nor in a single case by any punishment
whatever beyond what is purely incidental to the prevention. The original
sentence of imprisonment in Mr. Vallandigham's case was to prevent injury to
the military service only, and the modification of it was made as a less
disagreeable mode to him of securing the same prevention.
I am unable to perceive an insult to Ohio in the case of Mr. Vallandigham.
Quite surely nothing of this sort was or is intended. I was wholly unaware that
Mr. Vallandigham was at the time of his arrest a candidate for the Democratic
nomination for governor until so informed by your reading to me the resolutions
of the convention. I am grateful to the State of Ohio for many things,
especially for the brave soldiers and officers she has given in the present
national trial to the armies of the Union.
You claim, as I understand, that according to my own position in the
Albany response, Mr. Vallandigham should be released, and this because, as you
claim, he has not damaged the military service by discouraging enlistments,
encouraging desertions, or otherwise, and that if he had he should be turned
over to the civil authorities under the recent acts of Congress. I certainly do
not know that Mr. Vallandigham has specifically and by direct language advised
against enlistments and in favor of desertion and resistance to drafting. We
all know that combinations (armed in some instances) to resist the arrest of
deserters began several months ago; that more recently the like has appeared in
resistance to the enrollment preparatory to a draft, and that quite a number of
assassinations have occurred from the same animus. These had to be met by
military force, and this again has led to bloodshed and death. And now, under a
sense of responsibility more weighty and enduring than any which is merely
official, I solemnly declare my belief that this hindrance of the military,
including maiming and murder, is due to the course in which Mr. Vallandigham
has been engaged in a greater degree than to any other cause, and it is due to
him personally in a greater degree than to any other man.
These things have been notorious, known to all, and of course known to
Mr. Vallandigham. Perhaps I would not be wrong to say that they originated with
his especial friends and adherents. With perfect knowledge of them he has
frequently, if not constantly, made speeches in Congress and before popular
assemblies, and if it can be shown that, with these things staring him in the
face, he has ever uttered a word of rebuke or counsel against them, it will be
a fact greatly in his favor with me, and one of which as yet I am totally
ignorant. When it is known that the whole burden of his speeches has been to
stir up men against the prosecution of the war, and that in the midst of
resistance to it he has not been known in any instance to counsel against such
resistance, it is next to impossible to repel the inference that he has
counseled directly in favor of it.
With all this before their eyes, the convention you represent have
nominated Mr. Vallandigham for governor of Ohio, and both they and you have
declared the purpose to sustain the National Union by all constitutional means.
But of course they and you in common reserve to yourselves to decide what are
constitutional means, and, unlike the Albany meeting, you omit to state or
intimate that in your opinion an army is a constitutional means of saving the
Union against a rebellion, or even to intimate that you are conscious of an
existing rebellion being in progress with the avowed object of destroying that
very Union. At the same time your nominee for governor, in whose behalf you
appeal, is known to you and to the world to declare against the use of an army
to suppress the rebellion. Your own attitude, therefore, encourages desertion,
resistance to the draft, and the like, because it teaches those who are
inclined to desert and to escape the draft to believe it is your purpose to
protect them and to hope you will become strong enough to do so.
After a short personal intercourse with you, gentlemen of the
committee, I cannot think you desire this effect to follow your attitude, but I
assure you that both friends and enemies of the Union look upon it in this
light. It is a substantial hope, and by consequence a real strength to the
enemy. It is a false hope, and one which you would willingly dispel. I will
make the way exceedingly easy. I send you duplicates of this letter, in order
that you or a majority may if you choose indorse your names upon one of them
and return it thus indorsed to me, with the understanding that those signing
are hereby committed to the following propositions and to nothing else:
1. That there is now a rebellion in the United States, the object and
tendency of which is to destroy the National Union, and that in your opinion an
army and navy are a constitutional means for suppressing the rebellion.
2. That no one of you will do anything 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 the rebellion; and
3. 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, and clad and otherwise well
provided for and supported.
And with the further understanding that upon receiving the letter and
names thus indorsed I will cause them to be published, which publication shall
be within itself a revocation of the order in relation to Mr. Vallandigham.
It will not escape observation that I consent to the release of Mr.
Vallandigham upon terms not embracing any pledge from him or from others as to
what he will or will not do. I do this because he is not present to speak for
himself or to authorize others to speak for him; and hence I shall expect that
on returning he will not put himself practically in antagonism with his
friends. But I do it chiefly because I thereby prevail on other influential
gentlemen of Ohio to so define their position as to be of immense value to the
Army — thus more than compensating for the consequences of any mistake in
allowing Mr. Vallandigham to return, so that on the whole the public safety
will not have suffered by it. Still, in regard to Mr. Vallandigham and all
others, I must hereafter as heretofore do so much as the public service may
seem to require.
I have the honor
to be, respectfully, yours, &c.,
A. LINCOLN.
_______________
* See signatures to the letter of the 26th to the President,
p. 48. Those names were all included in
this address.
† For
Lincoln to Corning and the others see p. 4
SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series II, Volume
6 (Serial No. 119), p. 56-9
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