I have learned that many approve the course taken with Mr. Vallandigham, while I have not heard of a single one condemning it.  I cannot assert that there are none such.  And the name of President Jackson recalls an instance of pertinent history.  After the battle of New Orleans, and while the fact that the treaty of peace had been concluded was well known in the city, but before official knowledge of it had arrived, General Jackson still maintained martial or military law.  Now that it could be said that the war was over, the clamor against martial law, which had existed from the first, grew more furious.  Among other things, a Mr. Louaillier published a denunciatory newspaper article.  General Jackson arrested him.  A lawyer by the name of Morel procured the United States Judge Hall to order a writ of habeas corpus to release Mr. Louaillier.  General Jackson arrested both the lawyer and the judge.  A Mr. Hollander ventured to say of some part of the matter that “it was a dirty trick.”  General Jackson arrested him.  When the officer undertook to serve the writ of habeas corpus, General Jackson took it from him, and sent him away with a copy.  Holding the judge in custody a few days, the general sent him beyond the limits of his encampment, and set him at liberty with an order to remain till the ratification of peace should be regularly announced, or until the British should have left the southern coast.  A day or two more elapsed, the ratification of the treaty of peace was regularly announced, and the judge and others were fully liberated.  A few days more, and the judge called General Jackson into court and fined him $1000 for having arrested him and the others named.  The General paid the fine, and then the matter rested for nearly thirty years, when Congress refunded principal and interest.  The late Senator Douglas, then in the House of Representatives, took a leading part in the debates, in which the constitutional question was much discussed.  I am not prepared to say whom the journals would show to have voted for the measure.

It may be remarked—­first, that we had the same Constitution then as now; secondly, that we then had a case of invasion, and now we have a case of rebellion; and, thirdly, that the permanent right of the people to public discussion, the liberty of speech and of the press, the trial by jury, the law of evidence, and the habeas corpus suffered no detriment whatever by that conduct of General Jackson, or its subsequent approval by the American Congress.

And yet, let me say that, in my own discretion, I do not know whether I would have ordered the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham.  While I cannot shift the responsibility from myself, I hold that, as a general rule, the commander in the field is the better judge of the necessity in any particular case.  Of course I must practice a general directory and revisory power in the matter.