cases of rebellion or invasion.

"The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to 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."

Lincoln virtually appealed to the Northern people to secure efficiency
by setting him momentarily above all civil authority. He asked them
in substance, to interpret their Constitution by a show of hands. No
thoughtful person can doubt the risks of such a method; yet in Ohio,
in 1863, the great majority--perhaps everyone who believed in the
war--accepted Lincoln's position. Between their traditional system of
legal juries and the new system of military tribunals the Ohio voters
made their choice without hesitation. They rejected Vallandigham
and sustained the Lincoln candidate by a majority of over a hundred
thousand. That same year in New York the anti-Lincoln candidate for
Secretary of State was defeated by twenty-nine thousand votes.

Though these elections in 1863 can hardly be called the turning-point in
the history of the Lincoln Government, yet it was clear that the tide
of popularity which had ebbed so far away from Lincoln in the autumn of
1862 was again in the flood. Another phase of his stormy course may be
thought of as having ended. And in accounting for this turn of the tide
it must not be forgotten that between the nomination and the defeat of
a Vallandigham the bloody rebellion in New York had taken place,
Gettysburg had been fought, and Grant had captured Vicksburg. The autumn
of 1863 formed a breathing space for the war party of the North.

CHAPTER IX. THE CRUCIAL MATTER

It is the custom of historians to measure the relative strength of North
and South chiefly in terms of population. The North numbered 23,000,000
inhabitants; the South, about 9,000,000, of which the slave population
amounted to 3,500,000. But these obvious statistics only partially
indicate the real situation. Not what one has, but what one is capable
of using