a strict control of the number which the Crown could at any
moment maintain; and this control had long been in England and had always
been in America completely effective. We may therefore treat the protest
which was raised against the law as unconstitutional, and the companion
argument that it tended towards military despotism, as having belonged to
the realm of political verbiage, and as neither founded in reason nor
addressed to living popular emotions.

This is the way in which the Northern people, of whom a large part were,
it must be remembered, Democrats, seem to have regarded these
contentions, and a real sense, apart from these contentions, that
conscription was unnecessary or produced avoidable hardship seems
scarcely to have existed. It was probably for this reason that Lincoln
never published the address to the people, or perhaps more particularly
to the Democratic opposition, to which several references have already
been made. In the course of it he said: "At the beginning of the war,
and ever since, a variety of motives, pressing, some in one direction and
some in the other, would be presented to the mind of each man physically
fit to be a soldier, upon the combined effect of which motives he would,
or would not, voluntarily enter the service. Among these motives would
be patriotism, political bias, ambition, personal courage, love of
adventure, want of employment, and convenience, or the opposite of some
of these. We already have and have had in the service, as it appears,
substantially all that can be obtained upon this voluntary weighing of
motives. And yet we must somehow obtain more or relinquish the original
object of the contest, together with all the blood and treasure already
expended in the effort to secure it. To meet this necessity the law for
the draft has been enacted. You who do not wish to be soldiers do not
like this law. This is natural; nor does it imply want of patriotism.
Nothing can be so just and necessary as to make us like it if it is
disagreeable to us. We are prone, too, to find false arguments with
which to excuse ourselves for opposing such disagreeable things." He
proceeded to meet some of these arguments upon the lines which have
already been indicated. After speaking of the precedents for
conscription in America, he continued: "Wherein is the peculiar hardship
now? Shall we shrink from the necessary means to maintain our free
government, which our grandfathers e