Life of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United StatesCrosby, Frank
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Life of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States
Crosby, Frank
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865
“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 giant 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 injunctions 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 trial 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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