ering prospect
which opened to the view of the party that had so determinedly
resisted and so completely defeated the Administration in the great
States of the Union the preceding year. The new crusade against
the President was begun by Mr. Vallandigham, who if not the ablest
was the frankest and boldest member of his party. He took the
stump soon after the adjournment of the Thirty-seventh Congress.
It was an unusual time of the year to begin a political contest;
but the ends sought were extraordinary, and the means adopted might
well be of the same character. On the first day of May Mr.
Vallandigham made a peculiarly offensive, mischievous, disloyal
speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio, which was published throughout the
State and widely copied elsewhere. It was perfectly apparent that
the bold agitator was to have many followers and imitators, and
that in the rapidly developing sentiment which he represented, the
Administration would have as bitter an enemy in the rear as it was
encountering at the front. The case was therefore critical. Mr.
Lincoln saw plainly that the Administration was not equal to the
task of subduing two rebellions. While confronting the power of
a solid South he must continue to wield the power of a solid North.

After General Burnside had been relieved from the command of the
Army of the Potomac he was sent to command the Department of Ohio.
He established his headquarters at Cincinnati in April (1863). He
undoubtedly had confidential instructions in regard to the mode of
dealing with the rising tide of disloyalty which, beginning in
Ohio, was sweeping over the West. The Mount-Vernon speech of Mr.
Vallandigham would inevitably lead to similar demonstrations
elsewhere, and General Burnside determined to deal with its author.
On Monday evening the 4th of May he sent a detachment of soldiers
to Mr. Vallandigham's residence in Dayton, arrested him, carried
him to Cincinnati, and tried him by a military commission of which
a distinguished officer, General Robert B. Potter, was president.
Mr. Vallandigham resisted the whole proceeding as a violation of
his rights as a citizen of the United States, and entered a protest
declaring that he was arrested without due process of law and
without warrant from any judicial officer, that he was not in either
the land or naval forces of the United States nor in the militia
in actual service, and therefore was not triable by a court-martial
or military commis