But enough for your verbal distinctions--a great deal too much, indeed, were it not that if you can put forth such things in good faith, it is to be presumed that there may be others of easy faith enough, through disloyal predisposition of feeling, to take them as sound and valid, and so find comfort in error and an evil course. To come now to the real merits of the case. You denounce the Administration, and seek to stir up popular disaffection to it, not for heartlessness, hesitation, and feebleness in prosecuting the war, but precisely for whatever of earnestness, promptitude, and energy it displays--not, in short, for what it does not do, but for what it does do, in striking down the rebellion. It is vain for you to justify your conduct by professions of allegiance to the sovereign people and loyalty to the Government. Why, it is the great will of the sovereign people (to whom you profess such faithful allegiance) that the Government (to which you profess such devoted loyalty) should be saved from destruction by crushing to utter extinction the armed rebellion that seeks its overthrow. And the Administration--and I may include Congress, since the action of that body is also the object of your denunciation--is the organ of the sovereign people, carrying out its sovereign will in all the acts you denounce. I do not say that the conduct of affairs has been in all respects satisfactory to the people. There have been too many things that looked to them like want of heart, want of earnestness, want of energy, want of wisdom, particularly in the earlier conduct of the war--too many indications of a disposition, if not to protract the struggle, yet to make this terrible crisis of the nation a time for political combinations and contractors' gains. They have seen these things with grief and stern displeasure. But the acts you denounce meet their sovereign approval. They are in favor of all earnest and vigorous measures for subduing the rebels, and for repressing and punishing traitorous sympathy with them, and treasonable aid and comfort to them. But you denounce these acts as unconstitutional. To a bare, unsupported assumption it might be enough to say that the constitutionality of all these acts has been again and again affirmed by authorities of far greater weight than yours or mine--by scores of statesmen and judges of the highest eminence in the land. But I will go a little into the question.