are constitutionally made to
give way to the operation of the extraordinary powers demanded by the
necessities of the state. It has always been so in all Governments; and
every Government--unless it suicidally abnegate its highest function and
supremest duty, that of maintaining itself and securing the national
safety--must, in time of rebellion and civil war, possess such powers,
powers to repress and prevent, in the first moment of necessity, what,
if let go on, it might be too late to cure by judicial or any other
process.

The rebels arrest, imprison, or banish those who are disaffected to
their cause. They have a right to do so, provided their rebellion itself
be justifiable; although they have made themselves objects of just
execration and abhorrence by the abominable atrocities of cruelty and
murder they have in thousands of instances perpetrated upon those whom
they knew or suspected to be faithful to the Union. Your sensibilities,
however, are excited only in behalf of the traitors among us, who have
done more, and are doing more, to aid and comfort the public enemy, and
to weaken the military power of the Government, than whole divisions of
rebels in arms. While millions of good patriots stand amazed at the
extraordinary and unparalleled leniency with which the Government has
for the most part dealt with these traitors--that is, _done nothing_
with them--you and your associates are fierce in your denunciations of
its action in the few cases in which it has temporarily arrested them;
and even the requiring of them to take the oath of allegiance as a
condition of release, has been made matter of bitter invective. What but
disloyalty to the national cause, what but sympathy with the rebels, can
prompt such denunciations--made, too, with a view to stir up popular
disaffection to the Government?

To sum up: I have shown that all the acts you denounce are as perfectly
constitutional as they are just and necessary in principle, and
sanctioned by the practice of all Governments.

But even if it were otherwise; even if the framers of the
Constitution--never contemplating the possibility of such a crisis as
the present--had embodied in that instrument no provision of
extraordinary powers for such an exigency--none the less would it be the
duty and the right of Congress and of the Executive to adopt whatever
measures they should judge the public safety to require. What the
Constitution had not granted they would be b