iberties, the _habeas corpus_, suspended throughout
the length and breadth of the land. The power of the government was also
strengthened by an act defining and punishing certain conspiracies,
passed on July 31, 1861--a measure which imposed heavy penalties on
those who by force, intimidation, or threat interfered with the
execution of the law.

Thus doubly armed, the military authorities spared no one suspected of
active sympathy with the Southern cause. Editors were arrested and
imprisoned, their papers suspended, and their newsboys locked up. Those
who organized "peace meetings" soon found themselves in the toils of the
law. Members of the Maryland legislature, the mayor of Baltimore, and
local editors suspected of entertaining secessionist opinions, were
imprisoned on military orders although charged with no offense, and were
denied the privilege of examination before a civil magistrate. A Vermont
farmer, too outspoken in his criticism of the government, found himself
behind the bars until the government, in its good pleasure, saw fit to
release him. These measures were not confined to the theater of war nor
to the border states where the spirit of secession was strong enough to
endanger the cause of union. They were applied all through the Northern
states up to the very boundaries of Canada. Zeal for the national cause,
too often supplemented by a zeal for persecution, spread terror among
those who wavered in the singleness of their devotion to the union.

These drastic operations on the part of military authorities, so foreign
to the normal course of civilized life, naturally aroused intense and
bitter hostility. Meetings of protest were held throughout the country.
Thirty-six members of the House of Representatives sought to put on
record their condemnation of the suspension of the _habeas corpus_ act,
only to meet a firm denial by the supporters of the act. Chief Justice
Taney, before whom the case of a man arrested under the President's
military authority was brought, emphatically declared, in a long and
learned opinion bristling with historical examples, that the President
had no power to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_. In Congress and
out, Democrats, abolitionists, and champions of civil liberty denounced
Lincoln and his Cabinet in unsparing terms. Vallandigham, a Democratic
leader of Ohio, afterward banished to the South for his opposition to
the war, constantly applied to Lincoln the epithet of "Caesar