een, the case against him was plain. But the
Administration's policy toward agitators had gradually changed. There
was not the same fear of them that had existed two years before. Now the
tendency of the Administration was to ignore them.

The Cabinet regretted what Burnside had done. Nevertheless, the
Ministers felt that it would not do to repudiate him. Lincoln took
that view. He wrote to Burnside deploring his action and sustaining his
authority.(16) And then, as a sort of grim practical joke, he commuted
Vallandigham's sentence from imprisonment to banishment. The agitator
was sent across the lines into the Confederacy.

Burnside had effectually played the marplot. Very little chance now of
an understanding between Lincoln and either wing of the Democrats. The
opportunity to make capital out of the war powers was quite too good to
be lost! Vallandigham was nominated for governor by the Ohio Democrats.
In all parts of the country Democratic committees resolved in furious
protest against the dictator. And yet, on the whole, perhaps, the
incident played into Lincoln's hands. At least, it silenced the
Jacobins. With the Democrats ringing the changes on the former doctrine
of the supple politicians, how certain that their only course for the
moment was to lie low. A time came, to be sure, when they thought it
safe to resume their own creed; but that was not yet.

The hubbub over Vallandigham called forth two letters addressed to
protesting committees, that have their place among Lincoln's most
important statements of political science. His argument is based on the
proposition which Browning developed a year before. The core of it is:

"You ask in substance whether I really claim that I may override all
guaranteed rights of individuals on the plea of conserving the public
safety, whenever I may choose to say the public safety requires it.
This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me
as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply a
question who shall decide, or an affirmation that no one shall decide,
what the public safety does require in cases of rebellion or invasion.

"The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for
decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By
necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision
is to be made from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time,
the people have, under the