t, weakens the Union cause as
much as he who kills a Union soldier in battle. Yet this dissuasion or
inducement may be so conducted as to be no defined crime of which any
civil court would take cognizance.

Ours is a case of rebellion--so called by the resolutions before me--in
fact, a clear, flagrant, and gigantic case of rebellion; and the provision
of the Constitution that "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus
shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the
public safety may require it," is the provision which specially applies
to our present case. This provision plainly attests the understanding
of those who made the Constitution that ordinary courts of justice are
inadequate to "cases of rebellion"--attests their purpose that, in such
cases, men may be held in custody whom the courts, acting on ordinary
rules, would discharge. Habeas corpus does not discharge men who are
proved to be guilty of defined crime, and its suspension is allowed by the
Constitution on purpose that men may be arrested and held who can not
be proved to be guilty of defined crime, "when, in cases of rebellion or
invasion, the public safety may require it."

This is precisely our present case--a case of rebellion wherein the public
safety does require the suspension--Indeed, arrests by process of courts
and arrests in cases of rebellion do not proceed altogether upon the same
basis. The former is directed at the small percentage of ordinary and
continuous perpetration of crime, while the latter is directed at sudden
and extensive uprisings against the government, which, at most, will
succeed or fail in no great length of time. In the latter case arrests
are made not so much for what has been done as for what probably would be
done. The latter is more for the preventive and less for the vindictive
than the former. In such cases the purposes of men are much more easily
understood than in cases of ordinary crime. The man who stands by and
says nothing when the peril of his government is discussed, cannot be
misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy; much more
if he talks ambiguously--talks for his country with "buts," and "ifs,"
and "ands." Of how little value the constitutional provision I have quoted
will be rendered if arrests shall never be made until defined crimes shall
have been committed, may be illustrated by a few notable examples: General
John C. Breckinridge, General Robert E. Lee,