“I dislike to waste a word on a merely 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 guaranties of personal liberty would remain unchanged.’ Doubtless, if this clause of the Constitution, improperly called, as I think, a limitation upon the power of Congress, were expunged, the other guaranties would remain the same; but the question is, not how those guaranties 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 in expunging that clause, letter and spirit, I really think the constitutional argument would be with you. “My general view on this question was stated in the Albany response, and hence I do not state it now. I only add that, as seems to me, the benefit of the writ of _habeas corpus_ is the great means through which the guaranties 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; and I think the man whom, for the time, the people have, under the Constitution, made their 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.