Burnside had effectually played the marplot.Very little chance now of an understanding between Lincoln and either wing of the Democrats.The opportunity to make capital out of the war powers was quite too good to be lost!Vallandigham was nominated for governor by the Ohio Democrats.In all parts of the country Democratic committees resolved in furious protest against the dictator.And yet,on the whole,perhaps,the incident played into Lincoln's hands.At least,it silenced the Jacobins.With the Democrats ringing the changes on the former doctrine of the supple politicians,how certain that their only course for the moment was to lie low.A time came,to be sure,when they thought it safe to resume their own creed;but that was not yet.
The hubbub over Vallandigham called forth two letters addressed to protesting committees,that have their place among Lincoln's most important statements of political science.His argument is based on the proposition which Browning developed a year before.The core of it is:
"You ask in substance whether I really claim that I may override all guaranteed rights of individuals on the plea of conserving the public safety,whenever 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 no one 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 the Commander-in-chief of their 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."[17]
Browning's argument over again-the President can be brought to book by a plebiscite,while Congress can not.But Lincoln did not rest,as Browning did,on mere argument.The old-time jury lawyer revived.He was doing more than arguing a theorem of political science.He was on trial before the people,the great mass,which he understood so well.He must reach their imaginations and touch their hearts.
"Mr.Vallandigham avows his hostility to the war on the part of the Union,and his arrest was made because he was laboring with some effect,to prevent the raising of troops,to encourage desertions from the army,and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to sup-press it.He was not arrested because he was damaging the political prospects of the Administration or the personal interests of the Commanding General,but because be was damaging the army,upon the existence and vigor of which the life of the nation depends.
He was warring upon the military,and this gave the military constitutional jurisdiction to lay hands upon him.
"I understand the meeting whose resolutions I am considering,to be in favor of suppressing the rebellion by military force-by armies.Long experience has shown that armies can not be maintained unless desertion shall be punished by the severe penalty of death.The case requires,and the Law and the Constitution sanction this punishment.Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?"[18]
Again,the ironical situation of the previous December;the wrathful Jacobins,the most dangerous because the most sincere enemies of the presidential dictatorship,silent,trapped,biding their time.But the situation had for them a distinct consolation.A hundred to one it had killed the hope of a Lincoln-Democratic alliance.
