"Mr. Vallandigham avows his hostility to the war on the part of the Union; and his arrest was made because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the raising of troops, to encourage desertion from the army, and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to suppress it. He was not arrested because he was damaging the political prospects of the administration or the personal interests of the commanding general, but because he was damaging the army, upon the existence and vigor of which the life of the Nation depends....
"I understand the meeting whose resolutions I am considering to be in favor of suppressing the rebellion by military force, by armies. Long experience has shown that armies cannot be maintained unless desertion shall be punished by the severe penalty of death.
"The case requires, and the law and the Constitution sanction, this punishment. Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or brother, or friend, into a public meeting, and there working upon his feelings until he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked administration of a contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that, in such a case, to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but withal a great mercy."
The Ohio Democrats found themselves confronted with this:—
"Your nominee for governor ... is known to you and to the world to declare against the use of an army to suppress the rebellion. Your own attitude therefore encourages desertion, resistance to the draft, and the like, because it teaches those who incline to desert and to escape the draft to believe it is your purpose to protect them, and to hope that you will become strong enough to do so."
The arguments of the President called out retort
rather than reply, for in fact they really could not be answered, and they were too accurately put to be twisted by sophistry; that they reached the minds of the people was soon made evident. The Democratic managers had made a fatal blunder in arraying the party in a position of extreme hostility to the war. Though there were at the North hosts of grumblers who were maliciously pleased at all embarrassments of the administration, and who were willing to make the prosecution of the war very difficult, there were not hosts who were ready to push difficulty to the point of impossibility. On the other hand the fight was made very shrewdly by the Union men of Ohio, who nominated John Brough, a "war Democrat," as their candidate. Then the scales fell from the eyes of the people; they saw that in real fact votes for Brough or for Vallandigham were, respectively, votes for or against the Union. The campaign became a direct trial of strength on this point. Freedom of speech, habeas corpus, and the kindred incidents of the Vallandigham case were laid aside as not being the genuine and fundamental questions. It was one of those instances in which the common sense of the multitude suddenly takes control, brushes away confusing details, and gets at the great and true issue. The result was that Vallandigham was defeated by a majority of over 100,000 votes; and thus a perilous crisis was well passed. This incident had put the Republican ascendency in extreme peril, but when the administration
emerged from the trial with a success so brilliant, it was thereafter much stronger than if the test had never been made. The strain was one of that kind to which the war was subjecting the whole nation, a strain which strengthens rather than weakens the body which triumphantly encounters it. The credit for the result was generally admitted to be chiefly due to Mr. Lincoln's effective presentation of the Republican position.
As the second year of the war drew towards its close, the administration had to face a new and grave difficulty in the recruitment of the army. Serious errors which had been made in calling and enlisting troops now began to bear fruit. Under the influence of the first enthusiasm a large proportion of the adult male population at the North would readily have enlisted "for the war;" but unfortunately that opportunity had not been seized by the government, and it soon passed, never to return. That the President and his advisers had been blameworthy can hardly be said; but whether they had been blameworthy or excusable became an immaterial issue, when they found that the terms of enlistment were soon to expire, and also that just when the war was at its hottest, the patriotism of the people seemed at its coldest. Defeats in the field and Copperheadism at home combined in their dispiriting and deadly work. Voluntary enlistment almost ceased. Thereupon Congress passed an act "for enrolling and calling out the