twenty millions of the white race to assert the rightful authority of the Constitution and laws of their country over those who refuse to obey them.  But I do see that this proclamation” (emancipating the Southern slaves) “asserts the power of the Executive to make such a decree!  I do not perceive how it is that my neighbors and myself, residing remote from armies and their operations, and where all the laws of the land may be enforced by constitutional means, should be subjected to the possibility of arrest and imprisonment and trial before a military commission, and punishment at its discretion, for offences unknown to the law—­a possibility to be converted into a fact at the mere will of the President, or of some subordinate officer, clothed by him with this power.  But I do perceive that this Executive power is asserted....  It must be obvious to the meanest capacity that, if the President of the United States has an implied constitutional right, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, in time of war, to disregard any one positive prohibition of the Constitution, or to exercise any one power not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, because in his judgment he may thereby ‘best subdue the enemy,’ he has the same right, for the same reason, to disregard each and every provision of the Constitution, and to exercise all power needful in his opinion to enable him ‘best to subdue the enemy.’ ...  The time has certainly come when the people of the United States must understand and must apply those great rules of civil liberty which have been arrived at by the self-devoted efforts of thought and action of their ancestors during seven hundred years of struggle against arbitrary power.”

So far had reached the thunder of Lee’s guns at Chancellorsville.  Their roar seemed to have awakened throughout the entire North the great party hitherto lulled to slumber by the plea of “military necessity,” or paralyzed by the very extent of the Executive usurpation which they saw, but had not had heart to oppose.  On all sides the advocates of peace on the basis of separation were heard raising their importunate voices; and in the North the hearts of the people began to thrill with the anticipation of a speedy termination of the bloody and exhausting struggle.  The occasion was embraced by Mr. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederate States, to propose negotiations.  This able gentleman wrote from Georgia on the 12th of June to President Davis, offering to go to Washington and sound the authorities there on the subject of peace.  He believed that the moment was propitious, and wished to act before further military movements were undertaken—­especially before any further projects of invasion by Lee—­which would tend, he thought, to silence the peace party at the North, and again arouse the war spirit.  The letter of Mr. Stephens was written on the 12th of June, and President Davis responded by telegraph a few days afterward, requesting Mr. Stephens to come to Richmond.  He reached that city on the 22d or 23d of June, but by that time Lee’s vanguard was entering Maryland, and Gettysburg speedily followed, which terminated all hopes of peace.