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 headquarters, 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 rear. 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,

that, as martial law had not been proclaimed in Ohio, whatever offences might have been committed by civilians should have been brought under the examination of the civil authorities, and the civil courts; that the principles of freedom of speech and of the press were too precious, and too firmly established by the struggles and sacrifices which they had cost, to become the object of a military commission, which, in such case, would be mere despotism; and that the loyal cause was too strong and too just to be placed permanently in danger by the frenzied utterances of a demoralized press, or the insane appeals of inflamed public orators. On the other hand, it was replied, that if civilians committed offences against public order, which were detrimental to the success of our armies in the field, by attempting to create a public sentiment hostile to the prosecution of the war, by the discouragement of enlistments, and by actual hindrance of military operations, such civilians were giving aid and comfort to the public enemy, and were justly answerable to the swift process of military tribunals; that when freedom of speech and the press degenerated into licentiousness, it was an abuse of the principle which could not be too speedily corrected, a nuisance in a loyal community which could not be too soon abated, a crime even in a season of civil war, which could not be too promptly and severely punished; and that no cause was so strong as not to be liable to be undermined and defeated by that meanest kind of craft which is the characteristic of traitors in disguise. General Burnside thought that the time had arrived when the military necessity required that the lines should be strictly drawn between those who were faithful to the national cause and those who were disposed to betray it. He determined to affix the stigma of treason upon the disloyal opponents of the government. He acted not as a politician. He had no personal feelings to gratify. He had no ill will against his prisoner, or the friends or partizans of the culprit. But he conceived that it was his duty, as commander of a Department in which an offence against good taste, good order, good morals and good

government had been committed, to take cognizance of it, and to provide against its recurrence. He judged it to be his duty, as a loyal servant of the government, to see that the Republic should receive no injury from the action of its internal enemies, or from his own negligence. Especially he believed that it was necessary for him, as a sincere patriot, to strip off the speciousness of the disguise with which such men as those whom he proscribed cloaked their nefarious designs, and to hold them up, in all their ugliness and deformity, to the scorn of his countrymen and of mankind, as TRAITORS. The brand of treason-basest of all crimes-was to be forever fixed upon these offenders. When this was once done, and the practice of speaking and acting against the government was made infamous in public estimation, the hour of danger to the Republic would have passed.

Certainly if success is allowed to justify a measure of the kind which General Burnside adopted, he has been amply rewarded. The change of affairs and character in the Department of the Ohio was decidedly marked for the better. The treason that on his arrival was ripening into notoriety-expressing itself both in private and public, in the drinking of sentiments and toasts to the success of the rebel cause, in the loud proclamation of sympathy with the rebels, on the street corners, in the shops, in the hotels, in social intercourse, in public assemblies, in the columns of the press-suddenly felt that a master hand was laid upon it. The fate of Mr. Vallandigham was a significant and serious warning not to be overlooked or despised. There was a healthier public sentiment at once, loyal men breathed more freely, treason sank back abashed and was remanded into silence, and the authority of the Government was established more firmly than ever throughout the entire North West.

A few public journals, however, were indisposed to let the subject drop, and discussed the matter in the most acrimonious terms. Foremost among these were the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Chicago Times, and the New York World-all of which

had long pursued a course which was aiding the cause of the rebels. The editor of the first, after being warned, proposed to General Burnside to submit his articles to inspection before they were printed. But General Burnside declined this, with the understanding on both sides, that for the future the tone of the paper was to be loyal. The second was suppressed and a military guard placed in possession of the office. The circulation of the third within the limits of the Department was prohibited. These acts of justice were performed in the latter part of May, but early in June the President disapproved them, and the papers in question were once more allowed to distil their venom. But a salutary warning had been given, and a more moderate tone was perceptible in their criticisms. The stigma of treason could not be removed. The line had been drawn. The President, the Cabinet, the public sentiment of the country pronounced its approval of General Burnside's course.

While General Burnside was thus engaged in securing his rear, he was by no means negligent in pushing forward his preparations for a movement in front. The enemy was somewhat disposed to alarm, and if possible, break through our attenuated lines. The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky was too fertile a country and too tempting in its abundance of supplies to be left in complete security from disturbance by the rebel forces. Predatory bands issued from the fastnesses of East Tennessee and South Western Virginia, and crossing the mountains, sought to harass and plunder the neighboring section. The lines of communication, upon which General Rosecrans relied for his means of offensive warfare, ran through General Burnside's department, and it became an object of some importance, on the part of the enemy to disturb them, and on the part of our own forces to prevent such disturbance. At different times during the months of April and May, the rebel partizans, Morgan, Wheeler, Pegram, and Clute, attempted to ravage central Kentucky, and to interfere with the lines of General Rosecrans. The affairs were not of much consequence in themselves, being scarcely more than skirmishes. But they