of the nature of a practical joke, perhaps
justified by its success. Vallandigham was indeed released; he was taken
to the front and handed over to the Confederates as if he had been an
exchanged prisoner of war. In reply to demands from the Democratic
organisation in Ohio that Vallandigham might be allowed to return home,
Lincoln offered to consent if their leaders would sign a pledge to
support the war and promote the efficiency of the army. This they called
an evasion. Vallandigham made his way to Canada and conducted intrigues
from thence. In his absence he was put up for the governorship of Ohio
in November, but defeated by a huge majority, doubtless the larger
because of Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The next year he suddenly returned
home, braving the chance of arrest, and, probably to his disappointment,
Lincoln let him be. In reply to protests against Vallandigham's arrest
which had been sent by meetings in Ohio and New York, Lincoln had written
clear defences of his action, from which the foregoing account of his
views on martial law has been taken. In one of them was a sentence which
probably went further with the people of the North than any other: "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?" There may or may not
be some fallacy lurking here, but it must not be supposed that this
sentence came from a pleader's ingenuity. It was the expression of a man
really agonised by his weekly task of confirming sentences on deserters
from the army.

Governor Seymour was a more presentable antagonist than Vallandigham. He
did not propose to stop the war. On the contrary, his case was that the
war could only be effectively carried on by a law-abiding Government,
which would unite the people by maintaining the Constitution, not, as the
Radicals argued, by the flagitious policy of freeing the slaves. It
should be added that he was really concerned at the corruption which was
becoming rife, for which war contracts gave some scope, and which, with a
critic's obliviousness to the limitations of a human force, he thought
the most heavily-burdened Administration of its time could easily have
put down. With a little imagination it is easy to understand the
difficult position of the orthodox Democrats, who two years before had
voted against restricting the extension of slavery, and were now asked
for the sake of the Union to support a G