resolutions of the
Democratic meeting at Albany, New York, I refer you to my response to the
latter as meeting most of the points in the former.

This response you evidently used in preparing your remarks, and I desire
no more than that it be used with accuracy. In a single reading of your
remarks, I only discovered one inaccuracy in matter, which I suppose you
took from that paper. It is where you say: "The undersigned are unable to
agree with you in the opinion you have expressed that the Constitution is
different in time of insurrection or invasion from what it is in time of
peace and public security."

A recurrence to the paper will show you that I have not expressed the
opinion you suppose. I expressed the opinion that the Constitution is
different in its application in cases of rebellion or invasion, involving
the public safety, from what it is in times of profound peace and
public security; and this opinion I adhere to, simply because, by the
Constitution itself, things may be done in the one case which may not be
done in the other.

I dislike to waste a word on a merely personal point, but I must
respectfully assure you that you will find yourselves at fault should
you ever seek for evidence to prove your assumption that I "opposed in
discussions before the people the policy of the Mexican war."

You say: "Expunge from the Constitution this limitation upon the power
of Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and yet the other
guarantees of personal liberty would remain unchanged." Doubtless, if this
clause of the Constitution, improperly called, as I think, a limitation
upon the power of Congress, were expunged, the other guarantees would
remain the same; but the question is not how those guarantees would stand
with that clause out of the Constitution, but how they stand with that
clause remaining in it, in case of rebellion or invasion involving the
public safety. If the liberty could be indulged of expunging that clause,
letter and spirit, I really think the constitutional argument would be
with you.

My general view on this question was stated in the Albany response, and
hence I do not state it now. I only add that, as seems to me, the
benefit of the writ of habeas corpus is the great means through which the
guarantees of personal liberty are conserved and made available in
the last resort; and corroborative of this view is the fact that Mr.
Vallandigham, in the very case in question, under the