Canada--Candidate for Governor--Political results--Martial
law--Principles underlying it--Practical application--The intent to
aid the public enemy--The intent to defeat the draft--Armed
resistance to arrest of deserters, Noble County--To the enrolment in
Holmes County--A real insurrection--Connection of these with
Vallandigham's speeches--The Supreme Court refuses to
interfere--Action in the Milligan case after the war--Judge Davis's
personal views--Knights of the Golden Circle--The Holmes County
outbreak--Its suppression--Letter to Judge Welker.

Clement L. Vallandigham had been representative in Congress of the
Montgomery County district of Ohio, and lived at Dayton. He was a
man of intense and saturnine character, belligerent and denunciatory
in his political speeches, and extreme in his views. He was the
leader in Ohio of the ultra element of opposition to the
administration of Mr. Lincoln, and a bitter opponent of the war. He
would have prevented the secession of the Southern States by
yielding all they demanded, for he agreed with them in thinking that
their demands for the recognition of the constitutional
inviolability of the slave system were just. After the war began he
still advocated peace at any price, and vehemently opposed every
effort to subdue the rebellion. To his mind the war was absolutely
unconstitutional on the part of the national government, and he
denounced it as tyranny and usurpation. His theory seemed to be that
if the South were "let alone," a reconstruction of the Union could
be satisfactorily effected by squelching the anti-slavery agitation,
and that the Western States, at any rate, would find their true
interest in uniting with the South, even if the other Northern
States should refuse to do so. Beyond all question he answered to
the old description of a "Northern man with Southern principles,"
and his violence of temper made it all a matter of personal hatred
with him in his opposition to the leaders of the party in power at
the North. His denunciations were the most extreme, and his
expressions of contempt and ill-will were wholly unbridled. He
claimed, of course, that he kept within the limits of a
"constitutional opposition," because he did not, in terms, advise
his hearers to combine in armed opposition to the government.

About the first of May he addressed a public meeting at Mount Vernon
in central Ohio, where, in addition to his diatribes against the
Lincoln administratio