and confirmed them, and ordered the prisoner to be confined in Fort Warren, Boston Harbor.

In the meantime, Mr. Vallandigham, through Hon. George E. Pugh, made application to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio, for the allowance of a writ of habeas corpus. The Court met and received the application on the 9th of May. The case was argued on the 11th, before Hon. Humphrey H. Leavitt, Judge of the Court, an old, experienced and able lawyer, who had held the office which he adorned for nearly thirty years. General Burnside submitted a brief statement of his case, basing the authority of his action upon the fact of the existence of a civil war, and the necessity in times of public peril, for "the operation of some power that moves more quickly than the civil," and affirming that his duty to the government required him to "stop license and intemperate discussion which tends to weaken the authority of the government and the army." He deprecated the violence of the public addresses to which the people in their assemblies were accustomed to listen. He fixed upon the public orators the responsibility of attempting to undermine the authority of the government by passionate and inconsiderate appeals. "They must not use license," he says with emphasis, "and plead that they are exercising liberty. In this Department, it cannot be done. I shall use all the power I have to, break down such license, and I am sure I will be sustained in this course by all honest men. At all events, I will have the consciousness, before God, of having done my duty to my, country; and when I am swerved from the performance of that duty by any pressure, public or private, or by any prejudice, I will no longer be a man or a patriot."* Mr. Pugh ap

*It is a curious fact, when viewed in the light of recent events, that, at the time General Burnside prepared this paper, Mr. Andrew Johnson, now President of the United States, was in Cincinnati, and heard this statement read by General Burnside before it was submitted to the Court. He not only approved the language and spirit of the paper, but he also condemned Mr. Vallandigham's course, without mercy. The only objection that he expressed in regard to General Burnside's action was that it was too lenient.

peared for the petitioner, and made an able argument in his behalf, based upon the allegation of his being a citizen and not under the authority of martial law, and therefore not liable to be tried and condemned for "offences alike unknown to the articles of war and to the ordinary laws of the land." If Mr. Vallandigham was to be tried, it must be before a jury of his peers, and not by courts or commissions composed of military officers.

The District Attorney, Flamen Ball, Esq., assisted by Hon. Aaron F. Perry, appeared for General Burnside. Mr. Perry replied to Mr. Pugh, and based his reasoning, as an advocate for the legitimacy of Mr. Vallandigham's trial, upon "the obligations, duties and responsibilities of General Burnside as a Major General in command of an army of the United States in the field of military operations, for the purposes of war and in the presence of the enemy." Under the laws of war, arrests of a certain kind, by military officers, are certainly justifiable. The arrest of Mr. Vallandigham was a legal and justifiable act. In a state of civil war, all persons take sides. Those who favor the government are the supporters of the means required for carrying on the war. Those who oppose the government and embarrass its operations, intended to save the nation from utter destruction, are enemies to the country, for they aid the public enemy. Mr. Vallandigham came within this category, and consequently his arrest was imperative. Being lawfully held by the authority of the United States, there was no occasion for the exercise of the power contained in the writ of habeas corpus. Individual rights may, in such cases, be sometimes abridged. But the public safety requires such abridgement, and, according to the laws of war, when the country itself is in peril, "everything may be done which the necessities of war require."

The District Attorney followed on the same side, giving a very clear and compact statement of the legislation of Congress respecting the writ of habeas corpus from the beginning. He argued that, under such legislation, Mr. Vallandigham was ex

cluded from the privilege which it conferred, and that General Burnside not only had the right to make the arrest, but that he would also be obliged, in case the writ should issue, to make return that he was acting under the authority of the President of the United States, who, in a state of civil war, was the judge of the necessity which required an extraordinary exercise of power.

Mr. Pugh replied to the arguments of the counsel appearing for General Burnside, quoting authorities both foreign and domestic, to make good the points which he had before argued, and to show that "a military officer has no right to arrest and detain a person not subject to the Rules and Articles of War, for an offence against the laws of the United States, except in aid of the judicial authority, and subject to its control; and if the party is arrested by the military, it is the duty of the officer to deliver him over immediately to the civil authority, to be dealt with according to law."

Judge Leavitt, after a most patient hearing of the case, gave his decision, refusing the writ. Besides considering the necessity of the case and the exigency which demanded the action of General Burnside, the Court referred to a decision which had already been given by the Circuit Judge, Mr. Justice Swayne, in a similar case. Judge Swayne "distinctly held that this Court would not grant the writ of habeas corpus, when it appeared that the detention or imprisonment was under military authority." "It is clearly not a time," says Judge Leavitt, "when any one connected with the judicial department of the government should allow himself, except from the most stringent obligations of duty, to embarrass or thwart the Executive in his efforts to deliver the country from the dangers which press so heavily upon it." It was not necessary that martial law should have been in force to justify General Burnside in making the arrest. "The power vested by virtue of the authority conferred by the appointment of the President," under which General Burnside became the commander of the Department of the Ohio. Occupying such a position, General

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Burnside made the arrest. "It was virtually the act of the executive department under the power vested in the President by the Constitution; and I am unable to perceive," adds the judge, " on what principle a judicial tribunal can be invoked to annul or reverse it." The judge also took occasion to animadvert, with some severity, upon what he called " the pestilential leaven of disloyalty in the community," and concluded his able and patriotic opinion by the gratifying words: "For these reasons I am constrained to refuse the writ."

General Burnside made all necessary provisions for removing his prisoner secretly and swiftly from Cincinnati to Boston, and only awaited the order of the President confirming the sentence of the Military Commission. But the President deemed it best to commute the sentence of the commission, and on the 19th of May, General Canby, in behalf of Mr. Lincoln, despatched to General Burnside the following order: "The President directs that, without delay, you send C. L. Vallandigham, under secure guard, to the headquarters of General Rosecrans, to be put by him beyond our military lines, and that, in case of his return within our lines, he be arrested and kept in close custody for the term specified in his sentence." Under this order, Mr. Vallandigham was transferred into the hands of General Rosecrans, and was by him delivered, on the 25th, into the custody of the rebel authorities. General Bragg transferred him to Richmond. But the enemy's government evidently considered him an unwelcome guest. No great amount of cordiality was expended upon him, and he was finally sent, or betook himself out of the country. He found an asylum in Canada, and remained there in comparative retirement through the following autumn and winter, when, in the waning days of the rebellion, he returned home and was permitted to remain unmolested.

The arrest and trial of Mr. Vallandigham naturally excited the public mind. Threats of rescue were freely made at Dayton, Cincinnati and other places. Dayton and its neighborhood were immediately placed under martial law. The dis

loyal people of that section soon ascertained that resistance to the authority of the government was useless, and the loyal people of the State rejoiced to feel that their security was assured. Mr. Vallandigham's friends in Cincinnati endeavored to make arrangements, under cover of a complimentary serenade, for an attempt to rescue the prisoner. But General Burnside had taken the precaution to lodge him at headquar ters, in a room immediately above his own, to place him under the most strict and vigilant guard, and to give his friends to understand that he would not be delivered alive into their hands. The ferment in the city subsided, and Mr. Vallandigham's partizans relinquished their unwise and ineffectual schemes. They were subsequently determined to bring his name more prominently before the country, and accordingly procured his nomination, as the candidate of the democratic party, for Governor of Ohio. The people of that State indignantly rejected him, and he was ignominiously defeated, in a spirited canvass, by a majority of over one hundred thousand votes. The vote of the soldiers was very decided, as a very bitter feeling existed in the army against this enemy in the

He was thus bereft of the last consolation of politicians -the sympathy of the members of his own party. He has since been more signally rebuked by the miscarriage of all his schemes to embarrass the government, has even been compelled to withdraw from a convention of his friends, and is now buried so deeply beneath the obloquy which his countrymen have heaped upon him, that no one cares to exhume his dishonored name. Deprived of honor, both North and South, he has met the doom which such a character must always be exposed to, and his career and end furnish a profitable lesson to all who may contemplate a similar course.

The arrest, trial and conviction of Mr. Vallandigham have given rise to much discussion throughout the country, and the policy and justice of General Burnside in the premises have been commended or condemned, according to the differing opinions of his critics. On the one hand it has been argued,