y constitutional
jurisdiction to lay hands upon him. If Mr. Vallandigham was not damaging
the military power of the country, then his arrest was made on mistake
of fact, which I would be glad to correct on reasonably satisfactory
evidence.

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 cannot 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 boy and not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induced him
to desert. This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a
father, or brother, or friend into a public meeting, and there working
upon his feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is
fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked administration of a contemptible
government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think
that, in such a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only
constitutional, but withal a great mercy.

If I be wrong on this question of constitutional power, my error lies in
believing that certain proceedings are constitutional when, in cases of
rebellion or invasion, the public safety requires them, which would not
be constitutional when, in absence of rebellion or invasion, the public
safety does not require them: in other words, that the Constitution is
not in its application in all respects the same in cases of rebellion or
invasion involving the public safety as it is in times of profound peace
and public security. The Constitution itself makes the distinction, and I
can no more be persuaded that the government can constitutionally take
no strong measures in time of rebellion, because it can be shown that
the same could not be lawfully taken in times of peace, than I can be
persuaded that a particular drug is not good medicine for a sick man
because it can be shown to not be good food for a well one. Nor am I able
to appreciate the danger apprehended by the meeting, that the American
people will by means of military arrests during the rebellion lose the
right of public discussion, the liberty of speech and the press, the law
of evidence, trial by jury, and habeas corpus throughout the indefinite
peaceful future which I trust lies before them, any more than I am able to
believe that a man