occur for
decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By
necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is
to be made from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time, the
people have, under the Constitution, made the commander-in-chief of their
army and navy, is the man who holds the power and bears the responsibility
of making it. If he uses the power justly, the same people will probably
justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands to be dealt with by all
the modes they have reserved to themselves in the Constitution.

The earnestness with which you insist that persons can only, in times
of rebellion, be lawfully dealt with in accordance with the rules for
criminal trials and punishments in times of peace, induces me to add a
word to what I said on that point in the Albany response.

You claim that men may, if they choose, embarrass those whose duty it is
to combat a giant rebellion, and then be dealt with in turn only as if
there were no rebellion. The Constitution itself rejects this view. The
military arrests and detentions which have been made, including those of
Mr. Vallandigham, which are not different in principle from the others,
have been for prevention, and not for punishment--as injunctions to stay
injury, as proceedings to keep the peace; and hence, like proceedings
in such cases and for like reasons, they have not been accompanied with
indictments, or trials by juries, nor in a single case by any punishment
whatever, beyond what is purely incidental to the prevention. The original
sentence of imprisonment in Mr. Vallandigham's case was to prevent injury
to the military service only, and the modification of it was made as a
less disagreeable mode to him of securing the same prevention.

I am unable to perceive an insult to Ohio in the case of Mr. Vallandigham.
Quite surely nothing of the sort was or is intended. I was wholly unaware
that Mr. Vallandigham was, at the time of his arrest, a candidate for the
Democratic nomination for governor until so informed by your reading to me
the resolutions of the convention. I am grateful to the State of Ohio for
many things, especially for the brave soldiers and officers she has given
in the present national trial to the armies of the Union.

You claim, as I understand, that according to my own position in the
Albany response, Mr. Vallandigham should be released; and this because,
as you claim, he has not