The rapidity of these proceedings had taken every one by surprise.  But the Democrats throughout the North, rapidly surveying the situation, seized the opportunity which perhaps had been too inconsiderately given them.  The country rang with plausible outcries and high-sounding oratory concerning military usurpation, violation of the Constitution, and stifling freedom of speech.  It was painfully obvious that this combination of rhetoric and argument troubled the minds of many well-affected persons.  If the President had been consulted in the outset, it is thought by some that he would not have allowed matters to proceed so far.  Soon afterward, in his reply to the New York Democrats, he said:  “In my own discretion, I do not know whether I would have ordered the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham.”  On the other hand, Mr. Blaine states that Burnside “undoubtedly had confidential instructions in regard to the mode of dealing with the rising tide of disloyalty which, beginning in Ohio, was sweeping over the West.”

In a very short time the violence of the fault-finding reached so excessive a measure that Burnside offered his resignation; but Mr. Lincoln declined to accept it, saying that, though all the cabinet regretted the necessity for the arrest, “some perhaps doubting there was a real necessity for it, yet, being done, all were for seeing you through with it.”  This seems to have been his own position.  In fact it was clear that, whether what had been done was or was not a mistake, to undo it would be a greater mistake.  Accordingly Mr. Lincoln only showed that he felt the pressure of the criticism and denunciation by commuting the sentence, and directing that Vallandigham should be released from confinement and sent within the Confederate lines,—­which was, indeed, a very shrewd and clever move, and much better than the imprisonment.  Accordingly the quasi rebel was tendered to and accepted by a Confederate picket, on May 25.  He protested vehemently, declared his loyalty, and insisted that his character was that of a prisoner of war.  But the Confederates, who had no objection whatsoever to his peculiar methods of demonstrating “loyalty” to their opponents, insisted upon treating him as a friend, the victim of an enemy common to themselves and him; and instead of exchanging him as a prisoner, they facilitated his passage through the blockade on his way to Canada.  There he arrived in safety, and thence issued sundry manifestoes to the Democracy.  On June 11 the Democratic Convention of Ohio nominated him as their candidate for governor, and it seems that for a while they really expected to elect him.