ed to
call him, was not of the stuff of which despots were made and was among
the least blood-thirsty men living. The civil Courts made no attempt to
interfere; they said that, whatever the law, they could not in fact
resist generals commanding armies. British Courts would in many cases
have declined to interfere, not on the ground that the general had the
might, but on the ground that he had the right; yet, it seems, they would
not quite have relinquished their hold on the matter, but would have held
themselves free to consider whether the district in which martial law was
exercised was materially affected by the state of war or not. The legal
controversy ended in a manner hardly edifying to the layman; in the
course of 1865 the Supreme Court solemnly tried out the question of the
right of one Milligan to a writ of _habeas corpus_. At that time the
war, the only ground on which the right could have been refused him, had
for some months been ended; and nobody in court knew or cared whether
Milligan was then living to enjoy his right or had been shot long before.

Save in a few cases of special public interest, Lincoln took no personal
part in the actual administration of these coercive measures. So great a
tax was put upon his time, and indeed his strength, by the personal
consideration of cases of discipline in the army, that he could not
possibly have undertaken a further labour of the sort. Moreover, he
thought it more necessary for the public good to give steady support to
his ministers and generals than to check their action in detail. He
contended that no great injustice was likely to arise. Very likely he
was wrong; not only Democrats, but men like Senator John Sherman, a
strong and sensible Republican, thought him wrong. There are evil
stories about the secret police under Stanton, and some records of the
proceedings of the courts-martial, composed sometimes of the officers
least useful at the front, are not creditable. Very likely, as John
Sherman thought, the ordinary law would have met the needs of the case in
many districts. The mere number of the political prisoners, who counted
by thousands, proves nothing, for the least consideration of the
circumstances will show that the active supporters of the Confederacy in
the North must have been very numerous. Nor does it matter much that, to
the horror of some people, there were persons of station, culture, and
respectability among the sufferers; perso