If it was difficult, it was also undesirable to confute the President’s logic.  The necessity for military arrests and for indefinite detention of the arrested persons was undeniable.  Congress therefore recognized the legality of what had been done, and the power was frequently exercised thereafter, and to great advantage.  Of course mistakes occurred, and subordinates made some arrests which had better have been left unmade; but these bore only upon discretion in individual cases, not upon inherent right.  The topic, however, was in itself a tempting one, not only for the seriously disaffected, but for the far larger body of the quarrelsome, who really wanted the government to do its work, yet maliciously liked to make the process of doing it just as difficult and as disagreeable as possible.  Later on, when the malcontent class acquired the organization of a distinct political body, no other charge against the administration proved so plausible and so continuously serviceable as this.  It invited to florid declamation profusely illustrated with impressive historical allusions, and to the free use of vague but grand and sonorous phrases concerning “usurpation,” “the subjection of the life, liberty, and property of every citizen to the mere will of a military commander,” and other like terrors.  Unfortunately men much more deserving of respect than the Copperheads, men of sound loyalty and high ability, but of anxious and conservative temperament, were led by their fears to criticise severely arrests of men who were as dangerous to the government as if they had been soldiers of the Confederacy.

May 3, 1861, by which time military exigencies had become better understood, Mr. Lincoln called “into the service of the United States 42,034 volunteers,” and directed that the regular army should be increased by an aggregate of 22,714 officers and enlisted men.  More suggestive than the mere increase was the fact that the volunteers were now required “to serve for a period of three years, unless sooner discharged.”  The opinion of the government as to the magnitude of the task in hand was thus for the first time conveyed to the people.  They received it seriously and without faltering.

July 4, 1861, the Thirty-seventh Congress met in extra session, and the soundness of the President’s judgment in setting a day which had at first been condemned as too distant was proved.  In the interval, nothing had been lost which could have been saved by the sitting of Congress; while, on the other hand, the members had had the great advantage of having time to think soberly concerning the business before them, and to learn the temper and wishes of their constituents.