damaged the military service by discouraging
enlistments, encouraging desertions, or otherwise; and that if he had,
he should have been turned over to the civil authorities under the recent
acts of Congress. I certainly do not know that Mr. Vallandigham has
specifically and by direct language advised against enlistments and in
favor of desertion and resistance to drafting.

We all know that combinations, armed in some instances, to resist the
arrest of deserters began several months ago; that more recently the like
has appeared in resistance to the enrolment preparatory to a draft; and
that quite a number of assassinations have occurred from the same animus.
These had to be met by military force, and this again has led to bloodshed
and death. And now, under a sense of responsibility more weighty and
enduring than any which is merely official, I solemnly declare my belief
that this hindrance of the military, including maiming and murder, is
due to the course in which Mr. Vallandigham has been engaged in a greater
degree than to any other cause; and it is due to him personally in a
greater degree than to any other one man.

These things have been notorious, known to all, and of course known to Mr.
Vallandigham. Perhaps I would not be wrong to say they originated with
his special friends and adherents. With perfect knowledge of them, he has
frequently if not constantly made speeches in Congress and before popular
assemblies; and if it can be shown that, with these things staring him in
the face he has ever uttered a word of rebuke or counsel against them, it
will be a fact greatly in his favor with me, and one of which as yet I am
totally ignorant. When it is known that the whole burden of his speeches
has been to stir up men against the prosecution of the war, and that in
the midst of resistance to it he has not been known in any instance to
counsel against such resistance, it is next to impossible to repel the
inference that he has counseled directly in favor of it.

With all this before their eyes, the convention you represent have
nominated Mr. Vallandigham for governor of Ohio, and both they and
you have declared the purpose to sustain the national Union by all
constitutional means. But of course they and you in common reserve to
yourselves to decide what are constitutional means; and, unlike the Albany
meeting, you omit to state or intimate that in your opinion an army is a
constitutional means of saving the Union a