ed; nor does any one question that they will stand the same test
much longer after the rebellion closes. But these provisions of the
Constitution have no application to the case we have in hand, because
the arrests complained of were not made for treason--that is, not for the
treason defined in the Constitution, and upon the conviction of which the
punishment is death--nor yet were they made to hold persons to answer
for any capital or otherwise infamous crimes; nor were the proceedings
following, in any constitutional or legal sense, "criminal prosecutions."
The arrests were made on totally different grounds, and the proceedings
following accorded with the grounds of the arrests. Let us consider the
real case with which we are dealing, and apply to it the parts of the
Constitution plainly made for such cases.

Prior to my installation here it had been inculcated that any State had
a lawful right to secede from the national Union, and that it would be
expedient to exercise the right whenever the devotees of the doctrine
should fail to elect a president to their own liking. I was elected
contrary to their liking; and accordingly, so far as it was legally
possible, they had taken seven States out of the Union, had seized many
of the United States forts, and had fired upon the United States flag, all
before I was inaugurated, and, of course, before I had done any official
act whatever. The rebellion thus begun soon ran into the present civil
war; and, in certain respects, it began on very unequal terms between the
parties. The insurgents had been preparing for it more than thirty years,
while the government had taken no steps to resist them. The former had
carefully considered all the means which could be turned to their account.
It undoubtedly was a well-pondered reliance with them that in their own
unrestricted effort to destroy Union, Constitution and law, all together,
the government would, in great degree, be restrained by the same
Constitution and law from arresting their progress. Their sympathizers
invaded all departments of the government and nearly all communities
of the people. From this material, under cover of "liberty of speech,"
"liberty of the press," and "habeas corpus," they hoped to keep on foot
amongst us a most efficient corps of spies, informers, suppliers, and
aiders and abettors of their cause in a thousand ways. They knew that
in times such as they were inaugurating, by the Constitution itself the
"