understand them, are resolvable into two
propositions--first, the expression of a purpose to sustain the cause
of the Union, to secure peace through victory, and to support the
administration in every constitutional and lawful measure to suppress the
rebellion; and, secondly, a declaration of censure upon the administration
for supposed unconstitutional action, such as the making of military
arrests. And from the two propositions a third is deduced, which is that
the gentlemen composing the meeting are resolved on doing their part
to maintain our common government and country, despite the folly or
wickedness, as they may conceive, of any administration. This position is
eminently patriotic, and as such I thank the meeting, and congratulate the
nation for it. My own purpose is the same; so that the meeting and myself
have a common object, and can have no difference, except in the choice of
means or measures for effecting that object.

And here I ought to close this paper, and would close it, if there were no
apprehension that more injurious consequences than any merely personal
to myself might follow the censures systematically cast upon me for doing
what, in my view of duty, I could not forbear. The resolutions promise
to support me in every constitutional and lawful measure to suppress the
rebellion; and I have not knowingly employed, nor shall knowingly employ,
any other. But the meeting, by their resolutions, assert and argue that
certain military arrests, and proceedings following them, for which I am
ultimately responsible, are unconstitutional. I think they are not. The
resolutions quote from the Constitution the definition of treason, and
also the limiting safeguards and guarantees therein provided for the
citizen on trial for treason, and on his being held to answer for capital
or otherwise infamous crimes, and in criminal prosecutions his right to
a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury. They proceed to
resolve "that these safeguards of the rights of the citizen against the
pretensions of arbitrary power were intended more especially for his
protection in times of civil commotion." And, apparently to demonstrate
the proposition, the resolutions proceed: "They were secured substantially
to the English people after years of protracted civil war, and were
adopted into our Constitution at the close of the Revolution." Would not
the demonstration have been better if it could have been truly said that
these saf