“The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it.  By necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is to be made from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time, the people have, under the Constitution, made the Commander-in-chief of their army and navy, is the man who holds the power and bears the responsibility of making it.  If he uses the power justly, the same people will probably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands to be dealt with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves in the Constitution."(17)

Browning’s argument over again-the President can be brought to book by a plebiscite, while Congress can not.  But Lincoln did not rest, as Browning did, on mere argument.  The old-time jury lawyer revived.  He was doing more than arguing a theorem of political science.  He was on trial before the people, the great mass, which he understood so well.  He must reach their imaginations and touch their hearts.

“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 desertions from the army, and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to sup-press 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.  He was warring upon the military, and this gave the military constitutional jurisdiction to lay hands upon him.

“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 can not 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?"(18)

Again, the ironical situation of the previous December; the wrathful Jacobins, the most dangerous because the most sincere enemies of the presidential dictatorship, silent, trapped, biding their time.  But the situation had for them a distinct consolation.  A hundred to one it had killed the hope of a Lincoln-Democratic alliance.

However, the President would not give up the Democrats without one last attempt to get round the Little Men.  Again, he could think of no mode of negotiation except the one he had vainly attempted with Seymour.  As earnest of his own good faith, he would once more renounce his own prospect of a second term.  But since Seymour had failed him, who was there that could serve his purpose?  The popularity of McClellan