On May 3rd, 1861, President Lincoln had, in an order addressed to the Commander of the Forces on the Florida coast, suspended the writ of _habeas corpus_. The right to do so was given him by the Constitution; and in time of war, when the very foundations of society and life itself are threatened, common sense dictates that spies, traitors, and enemies may be imprisoned by military power. _Inter arma silent leges_--law must yield in war. But that large party in the North, which did not believe that anything was legal which coerced the Confederacy, was furious. On the 27th May, 1861, General Cadwalader, by the authority of the President, refused to obey a writ issued by Judge Taney--“the Judge who pronounced the Dred-Scott decision, the greatest crime in the judicial annals of the Republic”--for the release of a rebel prisoner in Fort M’Henry. The Chief Justice declared that the President could not suspend the writ, which was a virtual declaration that it was illegal to put a stop to the proceedings of the thousands of traitors in the North, many of whom, like the Mayor of New York, were in high office. In July, 1862, Attorney-General Black declared that the President had the right to arrest aiders of the rebellion, and to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ in such cases. It was by virtue of this suspension that the rebel legislators of Maryland had been arrested, and the secession of the state prevented (September 16th, 1862). The newspapers opposed to Mr. Lincoln attacked the suspension of the writ with great fierceness. But such attacks never ruffled the President. On one occasion, when the Copperhead press was more stormy than usual, he said it reminded him of two newly-arrived Irish emigrants who one night were terribly alarmed by a grand chorus of bull-frogs. They advanced to discover the “inimy,” but could not find him, until at last one exclaimed, “And sure, Jamie, I belave it’s just nothing but a _naise_” (noise). Arrests continued to be made; among them was that of Clement L. Vallandigham, a member of Congress from Ohio, who, in a political canvass of his district, bitterly abused the Administration, and called on his leaders to resist the execution of the law ordering the arrest of persons aiding the enemy. For this he was properly arrested by General Burnside (May 4th, 1863), and, having been tried, was sentenced to imprisonment; but President Lincoln modified his sentence by directing that he should be sent within the rebel lines, and not be allowed to return to the United States till after the close of the war. This trial and sentence created great excitement, and by many Vallandigham was regarded as a martyr. A large meeting of these rebel sympathisers was held in Albany, at which Seymour, the Governor of New York, presided, when the conduct of President Lincoln was denounced as establishing military _despotism_. At this meeting, the Democratic or Copperhead party of New York, while