mony of Douglas and Pugh, and to Mr. Bigler's Bucks County speech, Sept. 17, 1863. The latter then said: "When the struggle was at its height in Georgia between Robert Toombs for secession, and Alexander H. Stephens against it, had those men in the Committee of Thirteen, who are now so blameless in their own estimation, given us their votes, or even three of them, Stephens would have defeated Toombs, and secession would have been prostrated. I heard Mr. Toombs say to Mr. Douglas that the result in Georgia was staked on the action of the Committee of Thirteen. If it accepted the Crittenden proposition, Stephens would defeat him; if not, he would carry the state out by 40,000 majority. The three votes from the Republican side would have carried it at any time; but union and peace in the balance against the Chicago platform were sure to be found wanting." Many facts were brought to light during the war, and subsequently, showing that, while President Buchanan was working for the Peace Conference, while Virginia had been gained to its side with her ablest men, there were even then in the Cabinet those who not only encouraged revolt, but foiled by letter and speech the efforts of the Unionists at Washington and Richmond. Those who sought to counteract the schemes of secession were themselves checkmated by extreme men of the Republican party. Whether, therefore, the public records are consulted or the inquirer goes within the veil and consults those who know the elements then at work in the committees and in social life, one leading fact will always stand stark and bold, namely, that with the aid of a handful of secessionists per se, the whole body of the Republicans were— as Andrew Johnson described Senator Clark, when the latter defeated the Crittenden resolution by his amendment -"acting out their policy." In the light of subsequent events, that policy was developed. It was the destruction of slavery at the peril of war and disunion; or, as Senator Douglas expressed it, "a disruption of the Union, believing it would draw after it, as an inevitable consequence, civil war, servile insurrections, and finally the utter extermination of slavery in all the Southern States." Whether a great war, with its infinite and harmful consequences, was the proper means to such an end, is not for the writer, but the reader, to determine for himself. The general belief at this time is, that the war has given us in a new order, full compensation for its cost in means and life. Whether this be a correct estimate or not, the historians and philosophers of the future can better judge.

VALLANDIGHAM.

Before closing this chapter the writer will indulge in a few remarks on a brave colleague who suffered as much for his patriotism and love of liberty as any member of that Congress. No man has been more thoroughly misunderstood and abused than Clement L. Vallandigham, of Ohio. There never was a man in public life who had a greater devotion to the Constitution and institutions of his country than he. His motto was to do right, to

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trust in God, in truth, and the people. Amid the harsh criticisms upon his course in 1863, he appealed to time and right. Well might he have said: "Nobly hath the avenger answered me."

Negrophilistic fanaticism produced and encouraged an intense hatred. of this statesman; for his whole public life was a protest against the extremists and a clear and uniform expression of a true love of country. He warned against the sectionalism which brought on the deadly national conflict. When it came, he differed from many in whom the people had reposed confidence; but he stood by his principles, and he held his position immovably against a terrific current of raving prejudice. For this he was denounced as a traitor and disunionist. But the immense circle of his friends who observed his inflexible firmness, even in his last terrible trial, stood by him to the last. He was born in New Lisbon, Ohio, July 29, 1820. His father was a Presbyterian clergyman from Virginia. He was descended from a family which came from the French Flanders of the old Frisian stock. Like Calhoun he was educated under Presbyterian influences, and had the inflexible character that they developed. He began public life very early as a teacher, lawyer, and editor. When he was twenty-five years of age, he was elected to the Ohio Legislature. He opposed the Wilmot proviso, with tongue and pen, in the legislature and upon the stump. He opposed those who denounced the annexation of Texas, and who declared that the Union was dissolved thereby. He held that the Mexican War was a constitutional war, that it should be sustained, and that nothing but an honorable peace should be its end. The compromise measures of 1850 found in him a rare and eloquent defender. As a friend of peace and concord and a lover of the Union, he held that every law upon the statute-book of the United States which was constitutional should be vindicated. he ran for Congress and thrice was beaten. At last, in 1856, along with George H. Pendleton, John A. Bingham, Benjamin Stanton, and others who made a name in the Thirty-fifth Congress, he was elected; but was not admitted to his seat until after a contest upon the floor of the House. That contest was settled on the 25th of May, 1858. It turned upon certain negro votes, but it fixed Vallandigham as one of the most conspicuous of our public men in the national councils. Few will fail to remember what was known as "The Ohio Rebellion" in 1857. Vallandigham led the Union force in that contest. It grew out of the fugitive-slave act, in connection with habeas corpus, and excited almost as much agitation in the state, as if war had been flagrant. In 1859, the John Brown raid took place in Virginia. Mr. Vallandigham's presence at Harper's Ferry a few hours after the capture of Brown, enabled him to witness the first shedding of blood between the sections. In the campaign of 1860, he rose to the full height of the great argument for the Union. He feared that the inevitable fruit of abolition sentiment, which had culminated in the Republican organization,

Thrice

would be disunion. To the Democrats of Detroit he then said: "Human nature has been misread from the time of Cain to this day, if blood, blood, human blood, is not the result."

It is true that when secession came, he was opposed to coercion and favored compromise. In this course he was a companion of Senator Pugh and John J. Crittenden. During the winter of 1860-'61, when a committee of one from each state was selected to consider the condition of the country, Mr. Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, was selected as the member from that state. When Judge Hawkins, the elegant and sole representative of the State of Florida, arose in his seat and declined to serve on that committee, the vexed question became still more vexatious. It was then, on the tenth day of December of the year 1860, that Mr. Vallandigham made one of his stirring speeches in the House. "We are all ready," he exclaimed, "and, sir, all in the cause of our yet, thank God! common country; and by no vote or act or speech of ours, here or elsewhere, shall anything be done to defile or impair or overthrow this, the grandest temple of human liberty ever erected in any age. But we demand to worship at the very foot of the altar, and not, as servants and inferiors, at the outer courts of the edifice. Sir, we of the Northwest have a deeper interest in the preservation of this government in its present form than any other section of the Union. We have an empire equal in area to the third of all Europe, and we do not mean to be a dependency or a province either of the East or of the South. A nation of warriors we may be; a tribe of shepherds, never."

While Mr. Vallandigham held that war was disunion, final and eternal separation, and exclaimed with Chatham, "You cannot conquer America," he was not unwilling, when he found the South succumbing before the attacks of the Union armies, to make what he called a New Departure. But before that time, and during the war, he had offered peace resolutions declaring the object of the war, holding that no state could be extinguished by Federal authority, and that to declare any state extinguished, or to establish territorial governments or permanent military governments within it, should deserve the censure of the House and the country. Mr. Vallandigham, together with many of the Democratic members of Congress of that day, and even such Republican members as Judge Benjamin Thomas, of Massachusetts, had a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors. They could not, in thought or action, allow the supremacy of the national government without its own sphere, or within the reserved rights of the states. They held that between the national and state powers there was no necessary conflict; that each jurisdiction was the complement of the other; and that both were vital parts of that political system under whose admirable distribution and adjustment of powers the people of the United States had enjoyed for so many years the most beneficent government that ever existed. They did not believe that there was any inherent defect or want of wisdom or foresight in its founders,

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If

nor that we had outgrown its provisions, nor that it was behind the age. trouble came, it would be because the age was not worthy of a government which had failed to be appreciated in the spirit of wisdom, prudence, and moderation in which it was founded.

Vallandigham was no champion of the gospel of anarchy or the philosophy of dissolution. He would stand by the Constitution, whoever else might falter. He believed in the system of many states in one polity, working in their respective spheres as if the Divine hand had moulded and set them in motion. For preaching this gospel, for asserting the right to keep and bear arms in a state where war was not flagrant, for his opposition to coercion, and for his attempt to restore the Union through peace, the men of that time know what happened to him in 1862 and 1863. From the platform at Mount Vernon, Ohio, in the month of May, 1863, the writer and Mr. Vallandigham addressed the people of Knox County, Ohio. Certain military orders had been issued before that time which restricted the right of the people freely to discuss the condition of public affairs. In fact, confiscation had been threatened in case of their violation. These orders were then properly denounced as military insolence. It was a time when every case at law could have been determined in the open courts of Ohio, and every question of politics, at the ballot-box. Vallandigham counseled no resistance to law, but he would meet and repel all mob violence by force and arms on the spot. During the meeting at Mount Vernon the conscription law was discussed, in fact, mostly discussed by the writer of this book. By some mistake the provost-marshal, or some other reporter, gave his words as the words of Vallandigham. This was testified to before the court martial which convened in Cincinnati on the sixth day of May, whereat the author was a witness and swore to the facts. The result was that a military commander arrested Mr. Vallandigham, at his house in Dayton, by a strategic movement, with the aid of 150 soldiers. A special train was on hand. Houses were guarded near Vallandigham's residence and along the street to the railway station. The doors of his house were broken open, his bed-room was entered, the prisoner was captured, placed in the railway car, all within thirty minutes. He was consigned to a prison. The author was summoned as a witness the next day, and went through the burning depot at Hamilton to Cincinnati. The indignation of the people was deep and terrible. From his prison, on the 5th of May, 1863, Vallandigham issued a letter to the Democracy of Ohio. He declared that he was in a military Bastile for no other offense than political opinions, and the defense of the rights of the people and of constitutional liberty. The writer arrived at Cincinnati at daybreak on the morning of the 6th. He was informed by General Burnside that Mr. Vallandigham would not be convicted. He was requested to so advise Mrs. Vallandigham, who was in great distress. But some counter movement took place afterwards. The whole thing was changed. Vallandigham was convicted by the military court. He refused to acknowledge its jurisdiction, but this plea was treated

with contempt. He was charged with publicly expressing-in violation of General Order No. 38, from headquarters of the Department of Ohio-sympathy for those in arms against the government of the United States, and with declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions for the purpose of weakening the power of the government in its efforts to suppress an unlawful rebellion. The president of the court had directed a plea of not guilty to be entered, and the case was opened. With clear and deliberate speech and unexcited demeanor he, a private citizen of Ohio, addressed the court martial. He claimed that he was arrested without due process of law; that as he was not either in the land or naval forces of the United States, nor in the militia in the actual service of the United States, he was not triable for any cause by any such tribunal as a court martial or military commission. He insisted that if triable at all, he should be tried in a civil court under the Constitution, on an indictment or presentment by a grand jury, there to be confronted with witnesses, to have compulsory process, the assistance of counsel and evidence and argument, according to the common law and the ways of judicial courts. An attempt was made to obtain a writ of habeas corpus. This failed. The court reserved the application from May 12, when the arguments concluded, until the 16th, and then refused it. Having been found guilty on the 16th of May, he was sentenced to close confinement as a prisoner at Fort Warren, Boston Harbor. He remained in his place of confinement at the Burnet House, Cincinnati, for six days longer, and then by some whim of tyranny, he was, on the order of the President, transported beyond the lines. He was banished from his native state for no crime, by the compulsion of an arbitrary and tyrannical power. The purpose of the order by which he was sent to the South was malicious. It was intended to give party color to calumny. In his farewell to the people of Ohio, he said that no order of banishment executed by superior force could release him from his obligations or deprive him of his rights as a citizen of Ohio and of the United States. At noon on the 29th of May, 1863, he left his military prison and embarked on a steamer for the South. When the boat reached Elizabeth, a journal of that city gave it a salute, as it said, for the heaviest gun that the Administration had ever put on a boat. On Sunday evening, May 24, he arrived at Murfreesboro, and was taken to the office of the provost-marshal-general, where he met General Rosecrans and other officers. He was kept under guard until after midnight, and then moved southward in charge of a mounted escort. Daylight found him upon the Federal outpost. A flag of truce was sent forward. The Confederate colonel reluctantly consented to receive the exile. Vallandigham was delivered to the guards, asking them to mark his words: "I am a citizen of the State of Ohio, of the United States of America. I am sent within your lines contrary to my will and wish. I ask that you receive me as your prisoner."

These facts reveal one of the darkest chapters connected with the war. It was a gross outrage of liberty in the person of one of the truest patriots