To some minds this will seem to be an attitude dangerous to liberty, but he was surely justified when he said, “In such cases the purposes of men are much more easily understood than in cases of ordinary crime.  The man who stands by and says nothing when the peril of his Government is discussed cannot be misunderstood.  If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy, much more if he talks ambiguously—­talks for his country with ‘buts’ and ‘ifs’ and ‘ands.’” In any case, Lincoln stood clearly and boldly for repressing speech or act, that could help the enemy, with extreme vigour and total disregard for the legalities of peace time.  A little later on we shall see fully whether this imported on his part any touch whatever of the ferocity which it may seem to suggest.

The Democratic opposition which made some headway in the first half of 1863 comprised a more extreme opposition prevailing in the West and led by Clement Vallandigham, a Congressman from Ohio, and a milder opposition led by Horatio Seymour, who from the end of 1862 to the end of 1864, when he failed of re-election, was Governor of New York State.  The extreme section were often called “Copperheads,” after a venomous snake of that name.  Strictly, perhaps, this political term should be limited to the few who went so far as to desire the victory of the South; more loosely it was applied to a far larger number who went no further than to say that the war should be stopped.  This demand, it must be observed, was based upon the change of policy shown in the Proclamation of Emancipation.  “The war for the Union,” said Vallandigham in Congress in January, 1863, “is in your hands a most bloody and costly failure.  War for the Union was abandoned; war for the negro openly begun.  With what success?  Let the dead at Fredericksburg answer.—­Ought this war to continue?  I answer no—­not a day, not an hour.  What then?  Shall we separate?  Again I answer, no, no, no.—­Stop fighting.  Make an armistice.  Accept at once friendly foreign mediation.”  And further:  “The secret but real purpose of the war was to abolish slavery in the States, and with it the change of our present democratical form of government into an imperial despotism.”  This was in no sense treason; it was merely humbug.  The alleged design to establish despotism, chiefly revealed at that moment by the liberation of slaves, had of course no existence.  Equally false, as will be seen later, was the whole suggestion that any peace could have been had with the South except on the terms of separation.  Vallandigham, a demagogue of real vigour, had perhaps so much honesty as is compatible with self-deception; at any rate, upon his subsequent visit to the South his intercourse with Southern leaders was conducted on the footing that the Union should be restored.  But his character inspired no respect.  Burnside, now commanding the troops in Ohio, held that violent denunciation of the Government in a tone