our
lines into the lines of their friends."

Vallandigham denounced this order as a base usurpation of arbitrary
power; said that he despised it, and spat upon it, and trampled it
under his foot. He denounced the President, and advised the people
to come up together at the ballot box and hurl the tyrant from his
throne. Many of his hearers wore the distinctive badges of
"copperheads" and "butternuts," and, amid cheers which Vallandigham's
speech elicited, was heard a shout that Jeff. Davis was a gentleman,
which was more than Lincoln was.

This speech was reported to General Burnside. Early on the 4th of
May a company of soldiers was sent to arrest Vallandigham, and the
arrest was made. Arriving at Cincinnati, he was consigned to the
military prison and kept in close confinement. This event caused
great excitement, not only in Cincinnati, but throughout the State
of Ohio. On the evening of that day a great crowd assembled at
Dayton, and several hundred men moved, hooting and yelling, to the
office of the Republican newspaper, and sacked and then destroyed
it by fire. Vallandigham was tried by a military commission, which
promptly sentenced him to be placed in close confinement in some
fortress of the United States, to be designated by the commanding
officer of the department, there to be kept during the continuance
of the war. Such an order was made by General Burnside, but it
was subsequently modified by Mr. Lincoln, who commuted the sentence
of Vallandigham, and directed that he be sent within the Confederate
lines. This was done within a fortnight after the court-martial.
Vallandigham was sent to Tennessee, and, on the 25th of May, was
escorted by a small cavalry force to the Confederate lines near
Murfreesboro, and delivered to an Alabama regiment.

Vallandigham made a formal protest that he was within the Confederate
lines by force, and against his will, and that he surrendered as
a prisoner of war. His arrest for words spoken, and not for acts
done, created great excitement throughout Ohio and the country.
A public meeting was held in New York on May 16, which denounced
this action as illegal--as a step towards revolution. The Democratic
leaders of Ohio assumed the same attitude, and made a vigorous
protest to the President. It is not necessary to state this incident
more fully. Nicolay and Hay, in their history of Lincoln, narrate
fully the incidents connected with this arrest, and the dispositi