Constitution, made the Commander-in-chief
of their army and navy, is the man who holds the power and bears the
responsibility of making it. If he uses the power justly, the same
people will probably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands
to be dealt with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves in
the Constitution."(17)

Browning's argument over again-the President can be brought to book by
a plebiscite, while Congress can not. But Lincoln did not rest, as
Browning did, on mere argument. The old-time jury lawyer revived. He was
doing more than arguing a theorem of political science. He was on trial
before the people, the great mass, which he understood so well. He must
reach their imaginations and touch their hearts.

"Mr. Vallandigham avows his hostility to the war on the part of the
Union, and his arrest was made because he was laboring with some effect,
to prevent the raising of troops, to encourage desertions from the
army, and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to
sup-press it. He was not arrested because he was damaging the political
prospects of the Administration or the personal interests of the
Commanding General, but because he was damaging the army, upon the
existence and vigor of which the life of the nation depends. He was
warring upon the military, and this gave the military constitutional
jurisdiction to lay hands upon him.

"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 can not 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 soldier boy who deserts while I must not touch a hair of a
wily agitator who induces him to desert?"(18)

Again, the ironical situation of the previous December; the wrathful
Jacobins, the most dangerous because the most sincere enemies of the
presidential dictatorship, silent, trapped, biding their time. But the
situation had for them a distinct consolation. A hundred to one it had
killed the hope of a Lincoln-Democratic alliance.

However, the President would not give up the Democrats without one last
attempt to get round the Little Men. Again, he could think of no mode
of negotiation except the one he had vainly attempted with Seymour.
As earnest of his own good faith, he