"That while the learned gentleman [Mr. Johnson], as a volunteer, without pay, thus condemns as a usurpation the means employed so effectually to suppress this gigantic insurrection, the New York News, whose proprietor, Benjamin Wood, is shown by the testimony upon your record to have received from the agents of the rebellion $25,000, rushes into the lists to champion the cause of the rebellion, its aiders and abettors, by following to the letter his colleague [Mr. Johnson], and with greater plainness of speech, and a fervor intensified doubtless by the $25,000 received, and the hope of more, denounces the Court as a usurpation and threatens the members with the consequences." And he interrupts his tirade against one of the greatest men this country has produced to burst forth into the following grandiloquent apostrophe: "Youngest born of the Nations! Is she not immortal by all the dread memories of the past--by that sublime and voluntary sacrifice of the present, in which the bravest and noblest of her sons have laid down their lives that she might live, giving their serene brows to the dust of the grave, and lifting their hands for the last time amidst the consuming fires of battle!" After a brief defense of the secret sessions of the Commission, the learned advocate enters upon his circumstantial reply to the argument of Mr. Johnson, into which it is not worth while to follow him, as the main points of his contention have been rendered obsolete by the Supreme Court of the United States. Suffice it to say, he holds that the President of the United States has the power, of his own motion, to declare martial law in time of war, over the whole United States, whether the States are within the theatre of the war or not; and that President Lincoln exercised this power by his proclamation of September, 1862, by virtue of which martial law prevailed over the whole North, including, of course, the District of Columbia, on the day of the assassination; and, farther, that certain subsequent acts of Congress, though not in express terms yet by fair implication, had ratified the proclamation. He contends, in consequence, that "nothing can be clearer than that citizen and soldier alike, in time of civil or foreign war, are triable by military tribunals for all offences of which they may be guilty, in the interest of, or in concert with the enemy;" and that "these provisions, therefore, of your Constitution for indictment and trial by jury in civil courts of _all crimes_ are * * * silent and inoperative in time of war when the public safety requires it." Listen to this judicial expounder of constitutional law!