Year: 1863




made, through it's editorial columns, a
personal address to you under the proper
signature OF its editor, and you honored
it by respectful, nrgumentative reply,
the dignity that hedges around the First
Magistrate of the country were so far re-
laxed, by your gratuitous condescension,
as to relieve a similar address by another
public Journal from the imputation of
presumptuous impertinence which might
otherwise attach to it. Our purpose in
taking recourse to this unusual form Of
comment on public transaction is not
to make an insolent claim TO address you
on an assumed level of equality, unmind.
ful Of the respect due to your high office,
but simply to avail ourselves of sort OF
conventional support in the difficult OBJ
servance of the decorum which BELTS a
discussion of the public acts of the Presi-
dent OF the United States. The form Of
a direct address brings us, as it were, in
to the executive presence, and puts us, by
not very difficult effort Of the imagina-
ton, under the restraints which good
breeding would impose on a citizen re-
monstrating with you to your face against
proceedings Of which it is difficult for a
FREEMAN to speak with becoming COM
mand Of temper.


Your revision Of the proceedings Of the
military commission by which Mr.. VAL
landigham was tried and sentenced has
resulted in an act which amounts to an
expression Of your full approval of the
whole course Of these proceedings from
their inception in setting disguised Off
eers as spies on his track, through the
dragging him from his bed in the night
time, the trial with bout indictment or jury,
and the protest against the issue of writ
of haJeas corpus, down to the declaration
of heavy penalty for m act which is not
only no violation of any existing law, but
is right sacredly guaranteed by the Con-
stitution, which, at your Inauguration,
with a becoming appearance of sensibili-
ty to its obligations, you took solemn
oath to preserve, protect and defend
The fact that you have changed the SEN
tence, changes no essential aspect of the
case. Ii is merely the difference between
confinement and transportation. To draw
an illustration from English history, it
is substitution Of Botany Bay for the
Tower. The essential fact remains un-
changed, that citizen IS punished for
the exercise Of a right; that the law has
been violated not by him who suffers the
penalty, but by him who declares it.
Your approval of the proceedings i'm
piled in your fixing the penalty, absolves
all the lesser agents and brings home the
whole responsibility to you. Their acts
thus become you, acts their spies, your
spies; their soldiers, skulking in darkness
to perpetrate a deed which shuns the
light Of day, your instruments; their mil
itary commission your Star Chamber /;
General Burnside's silly protest, yoor ex-
position of the nullity, under your ad-
ministration, Of the most sacred guaran-
tees of the Constitution. By making the
sentence and its execution your sole act,
you indorse, and give the sanction of your
high office to all the extraordinary pro-
ceedings which terminated in Mr.. Vallan.
dighsm's conviction.


You have read, Mr.. Lincoln, in the
quiet shades of Springfield, where you
passed SO large portion of your life in
the unostentatious practice of the private
virtues which gained you the esteem of
your neighbors, and in the honest per-
formance ofusefnl duties which gave .hem
a favorable opinion of your abilities-in
that tranquil retreat, sir, with the horror
natural to an ingenious mind, you lave
read of the Roman Emperor who placed
his edicts so high in the air that they
could not be deciphered by the keenest
eye, and yet severely punished any breach
of them. Why was it, sir, that by sure
moral instinct, producing an instant con-
viction which no resources Of logic could
either shake or confirm why was it that
your sense of Justice revoltcd, with the
whole strength Of your honest nature, a.
gaiust so execrable an instance of tyran-
ny? Pray, sir, do not be startled but,
with the steadiness ofperception of which
we know you to be capable, analyze the
judgement you spontaneously pronoun
ced against the Roman tyrant, and define
to yourself What ii is in this &C: of his that
made it so abhorrent to your moral sense.
When the Roman ruler fixed his code on
the height of column there was still a
possibility that, by extraordinary pains.
men might come to know what it con-
tanned. But how are men, in this free
country, and under your well-meaning
administration, to know what actions are
consistent with their personal safety,
when the laws which they are punished
for violating are no longer written in
the statute books, but lie buried in the
inscrutable discretion or unaccountable
caprice of your military agents? 1t is of
the essence, not of liberty, but ofjustice,
that the laws shall be made by one body
of men and executed by another. In the
institutions of the great Anglican race,
to which we are proud to belong, the leg
islative and judicial departments of gov
ernment are carefully separated; the par
lament, congress or Legislature ordaining
the law, without knowing whom it may
affect, and the courts applying it to indi-
vidual cases without any power to bend
or warp it, by conscious or unconscious
bias, for or against the particular prison
er before them. The offense is defined,
the penalty declared, the mode of trial
ordained, by men who, knowing nothing
of the persons to be affected by them, are
governed by strict sense of abstract
Justice The citizen has a perfect knowl-
edge of his rights, remedies and liabili-
49,, .bo Ian, 20 in tho statute honk nai l.