Far otherwise is it with the speech of Vallandigham, January 14, in the House of Representatives. "I learned my judgment from Chatham," he said: "My lords, you cannot conquer America.' And you have not conquered the South. You never will. . The war for the Union is, in your hands, a most bloody and costly failure. The President confessed it on the 22d of September. . . . War for the Union was abandoned; war for the negro openly begun, and with stronger battalions than before. With what success? Let the dead at Fredericksburg and Vicksburg answer. And now, sir, can this war continue? Whence the money to carry it on? Where the men? Can you borrow? From whom? Can you tax more? Will the people bear it? .... Will men enlist now at any price? Ah, sir, it is easier to die at home. I beg pardon; but I trust I am not discouraging enlistments.' If I am, then first arrest Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck, and some of your other generals; and I will retract; yes, I will recant. But can you draft again? Ask New England, New York. Ask Massachusetts. . . . Ask not Ohio -the Northwest. She thought you were in earnest, and gave you all, all-more than you demanded. Sir, in blood she has atoned for her credulity, and now there is mourning in every house, and distress and sadness in every heart. Shall she give you any more? But ought this war to continue? I answer, no - not a day, not an hour. What then? Shall we separate? Again, I answer, no, no, no! What then? .. Stop fighting. Make an armistice." Accept at once friendly foreign mediation,1 "the kindly offer of an impartial power to stand as a daysman between - and patriotic defence of the Constitution, the laws and liberties of the American citizen." The feeling of the Democrats is well described by August Belmont, himself a Democrat who had confidential relations with the New York leaders, in his letters of Nov. 25, 1862, to Lionel de Rothschild, London, and of Dec. 6, 1862, to E. G. W. Butler, New Orleans. Letters privately printed, pp. 73, 75. 1 Although the communication from the Emperor of the French had not yet been received, rumors were now rife that he would offer mediation. CH. XIX.] THE DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION 227 the contending parties in this most bloody and exhausting strife. . . . If, to-day, we secure peace and begin the work of reunion, we shall yet escape; if not, I see nothing before us but universal political and social revolution, anarchy, and bloodshed, compared with which the Reign of Terror in France was a merciful visitation."1 Under a constitutional government, where speech and the press are free, we must grant the necessity of an opposition in time of war, even when the Ship of State is in distress. It is not difficult to define a correct policy for the Democrats during the civil conflict, when, as was conceded by every one, the republic was in great danger. In Congress they should have co-operated to the full extent of their power with the dominant party, in its effort to raise men and money to carry on the war; and in any opposition they ought to have taken the tone, not of party objection, but of friendly criticism, with the end in view of perfecting rather than defeating the necessary bills. While in the session of this Congress which ended March 4, 1863, they failed to rise to this height, they did not, on the other hand, pursue a policy of obstruction that would be troublesome if not pernicious. It is doubtful whether, under the able and despotic parliamentary leadership of the majority in the House by Thaddeus Stevens, they could by obstructive tactics have prevented the passage at this session of the two bills which gave the President control of the sword and the purse of the nation; but a serious attempt in that direction, with all that it involved, would have thrown the country into convulsions. There must therefore be set down 1 Globe Appendix, pp. 55, 59, 60. The opinion of Republicans is well expressed by Cutler in his diary: "We had in the House a full exhibition of treason in Vallandigham's speech, in which he counselled peace and submission to the rebels." Jan. 17, p. 297. 2 The Democrats had able men in the House. Vallandigham, George H. Pendleton, and Samuel S. Cox, of Ohio, and Daniel W. Voorhees, of Indiana, were ready debaters, possessing likewise the quality of leadership. The Democrats were not strong enough in the Senate (having 8 to the Republicans 31 and Unionists 10) to venture on obstruction, had they been so disposed. to the credit of the Democrats in Congress a measure of patriotism that almost always exists in an Anglo-Saxon minority sufficient to preserve the commonwealth from destruction. More severe criticism than is due for any positive action in the House or the Senate must be meted out to the leaders of the party for their speeches in and out of the legislative halls, and to the influential Democratic newspapers in their effort to form and guide a public sentiment which should dictate the policy of the government. One fact they ignored, that peace was impossible unless the Southern Confederacy were acknowledged and a boundary line agreed upon between what then would be two distinct nations. They pretended to a belief, for which there was absolutely no foundation, that if fighting ceased and a convention of the States were called, the Union might be restored.1 Hence proceeded their opposition to the emancipation policy of the President as being an obstacle to the two sections coming together. But men who loved their country better than their party ought to have perceived, for it was palpable at the time, that the Southern States had not the vaguest notion of consenting on even the most favorable conditions to the Union as it was, and that the President had been brought to his decree against slavery by the logic of events. Apologists for slavery as the Democrats had been for so many years on the ground that it was a necessary evil, they could not give hearty support to emancipation, but, influenced by the consideration that slavery was morally wrong, they could with patriotism and consistency adopt the position of Henderson, the Unionist senator from Missouri, that the proclamation was a military order, and, having been made, should be executed. Without the pur suit of an impossible attainment, without a factious opposition 1 "Ay crowd to council citizens,' Turnus cries, and sit praising peace While they rush armed on empire.'" — The Eneid, book xi. Globe, p. 356. CH. XIX.] THE DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION 229 to the acts of the President and Congress, there remained scope for a healthy opposition which would not have left the name Copperhead-Democrat a reproach for so many years; in truth, the Democrats might have deserved well of the muse of history. Indeed they did well in advocating economy and integrity in the disposition of the public money, and they might have gone further and applauded Chase in his efforts to secure the one and Stanton in his determination to have the other. Their criticisms of the Executive for suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, for arbitrary arrests, for the abridgment of the freedom of speech and of writing, were justly taken, and undoubtedly had an influence for the good on the legislation at this session. Had they concentrated their opposition on these points, their arguments would have carried greater force, and would have attracted men who were disturbed at the infractions of personal liberty, but who were repelled by the other parts of the Democratic programme. In consideration of our own practice, the decision of our courts, the opinions of our statesmen and jurists, and English precedents for two centuries, it may be affirmed that the right of suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus was vested by the Constitution in Congress and not in the executive. The President, in assuming that authority and applying the suspension to States beyond the sphere of hostile operations, arrogated power which became necessary to support the policy of arbitrary arrests so diligently pursued by Seward at first and afterwards by Stanton. Such pretensions that revolt the spirit born to freedom may be oppugned by arguments drawn from the storehouse of British and American liberty. The defence made was that these things were done under the pressure of necessity. Our own precedents were set aside because our State now stood in its greatest 1 See vol. iii. p. 439, note 1; James A. Garfield's argument in the Milligan case, Works, vol. i. p. 158 et seq.; contrariwise, Lieber to Sumner Jan. 8, 1863, Life and Letters, p. 328. peril since the adoption of the Constitution. Still, in England during the years of the war against the revolutionary government of France, when discontent at home and the sympathy of a band of reformers with the Democratic sentiment across the channel scared the statesmen and the bulk of the upper and middle classes, who were agitated by the terrors of the French Revolution, into a belief that the Constitution and the throne were in danger, neither the King nor the ministry claimed the right to suspend the habeas corpus act. It was done by Parliament, which limited in each of the acts passed the suspension to less than one year. When this time expired the ministry were obliged to bring in a new bill which was open to debate in both houses. Summing up the months covered by different measures, Parliament granted the withdrawal of the privilege for only five out of the nine years of the war. Besides, men, though arbitrarily detained, were arrested according to law. Acts were passed to suit the exigency of the time, and many of the suspects were brought to trial before a jury in the civil courts. From April to December, 1798, the period, as it appears, of the largest number of arrests, seventy or eighty persons had been apprehended but not brought to trial. At the time of the earnest discussion of such violations of personal liberty in the House of Commons in December, only a few still remained in prison; and the place of their confinement had become known as the Bastile. From May, 1799, to February, 1800, but three men had been arrested; yet it was a subject of indignant remonstrance by two lords in a session of their body that twenty-nine persons were still immured in jail without being brought to trial. In our own country during the civil war the number of arrests of political prisoners must be counted by thousands.2 In England lists of the prisoners had 1 Charles James Fox wrote, March 9, 1798: "What an engine of oppression this power of imprisonment is."- Fox's Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 277. 2 Bad as is our record in this particular, it has been exaggerated. In his article on Habeas Corpus in Lalor's Cyclopædia, Alexander Johnston wrote: "The records of the provost-marshal's office in Washington show 38,000 |