to constitute
a court-martial could not be withdrawn from duty without serious
injury to the service, the President gave this public assurance:
"He will be allowed a trial without unnecessary delay: the charges
and specifications will be furnished him in due season, and every
facility for his defense will be afforded him by the War Department."
This message on its face bears evidence that it was prepared at
the War Department, and that Mr. Lincoln acted upon assurances
furnished by Mr. Stanton. The arrest was made upon his "general"
authority, and clearly not from any specific information he possessed.
But the effect of the message was to preclude any further attempt
at intervention by Congress. Indeed the assurance that General
Stone should be tried "without unnecessary delay" was all that
could be asked. But the promise made to the ear was broken to the
hope, and General Stone was left to languish without a word of
intelligence as to his alleged offense, and without the slightest
opportunity to meet the accusers who in the dark had convicted him
without trial, subjected him to cruel punishment, and exposed him
to the judgment of the world as a degraded criminal.

Release from imprisonment came at last by the action of Congress,
coercing the Executive Department to the trial or discharge of
General Stone. In the Act of July 17, 1862, "defining the pay and
emolument of certain officers," a section was inserted declaring
that "whenever an officer shall be put under arrest, except at
remote military posts, it shall be the duty of the officer by whose
orders he is arrested to see that a copy of the charges shall be
served upon him within eight days thereafter, and that he shall be
brought to trial within ten days thereafter unless the necessities
of the service prevent such trial; and then he shall be brought to
trial within thirty days after the expiration of said ten days, or
the arrest shall cease." The Act reserved the right to try the
officer at any time within twelve months after his discharge from
arrest, and by a _proviso_ it was made to apply "to all persons
now under arrest and waiting trial." The bill had been pending
several months, having been originally reported by Senator Wilson
before General Stone's arrest.

The provision of the Act applicable to the case of General Stone
was only a full enforcement by law of the seventy-ninth article of
war, which declared that "no officer or soldier who shall be