Another noticeable factor in this opposition were the constitutional legalists, who were in sistent upon holding the conduct of the war strictly to the forms of the law and the Consti tution. These made the preservation of civil liberty and the rights of the individual their special cause and chief concern. They were more strenuous to preserve these individual rights than they were to preserve the Union, and they contended that the Union could not be preserved, or need not be, if the Constitution and the law were violated and disregarded. That which claimed their obedience and loyalty, they asserted, was not a person invested with office, nor an idea of public necessity, nor an imaginary national life apart from the life of the Constitution. "What the Constitution or dains or authorizes, that is the public necessity, that is the national life, that is the supreme civil obligation? This was the position taken by able and conservative lawyers and leaders like George Ticknor Curtis and Horatio Sey mour, who opposed the conduct of the war be cause of what they considered the high-handed usurpations of power by the war authorities. They felt that loyalty required them to be loyal to the reserved rights of the States as the supreme law of the land as well as to the pow ers vested in the general government; that loyalty bound them to safeguard the rights of persons and property guaranteed by the Con stitution to every citizen, as well as to support a war to crush insurrection. With these feel ings and principles they opposed the adtninis tration on account of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, on account of arbitrary arrests and the suspension of free assembly, free speech and free press. Certain newspapers had been suppressed (the New York News, the New York Journal of Commerce, Chicago Times Brooklyn Eagle and others) on the ground that they were encouraging the rebels to persevere in their resistance, by expressing sympathy with them, by urging the duty of acceding to their demands and by expressing dissatisfaction with the policy of employing force to overcome them. These papers were constantly denouncing as °lin unholy warp the war °in defence of our country, its institutions and most sacred rights, and carried on solely for the restoration of the authority of the government? This kind of party opposition to the war was what Lincoln called °the fire in the rear.° See HABEAS CORPUS ; MILLIGAN DECISION.
Some of these opponents of the war were disloyal factionists who at heart were in sym pathy with the South, and who preferred dis union to the political and military success of the administration. These were the °Copperheads° of the North. Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio was one of the most distinguished and extreme representatives of this group. He was arrested at Mount Vernon, Ohio, in May 1863, upon a charge of °publicly expressing sympathy for those in arms against the government of the United States and declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions with the object and purpose of weakening the powers of the government in its efforts to suppress an unlawful rebellion? He was found guilty by a military tribunal and sen tenced to close confinement — a sentence which President Lincoln commuted to banishment to the enemy's lines. The Democrats of Ohio of ficially protested against these proceedings and Lincoln informed them that Vallandigham had been arrested 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 any adequate mili tary force to suppress it? While in exile Val landigham was nominated by the Democrats for the governorship of Ohio and was defeated by the unprecedented majority of 100,000 votes.
Elsewhere in the North Democratic leader ship, while its purposes and principles were in most respects the same as those of Vallandig ham, was more moderate and restrained, and, under the direction of men whose loyalty to the Union was undoubted, the Democratic successes in the elections of 1862 and 1863 were very pro nounced. The military losses and disasters, the newness of the emancipation policy, the unex pected extension of the war, the unfriendly atti tude of foreign powers, the growing belief that the Union could not be restored by war, the vigor of the Democratic attack in the rear—all these were factors in causing the loss of the fall elections in 1862. This was interpreted as a vote of want of confidence in the administra tion, and it is probable that if Lincoln had been a candidate for re-election in 1862 he would have been defeated.
Another cause of opposition is to be taken into account after the summer of 1863. This was the Conscription Act and the effect of the draft. Although what seems now like decisive military successes had tome to the national arms in July of that year (Gettysburg, Vicks burg) a successful end of the war seemed dis tant, and the people were becoming very weary of waste, bloodshed and battle. They were sighing for peace. But the burdens of the war were to be still further increased. On 3 March 1863 Congress passed a Conscription Act au thorizing a draft of 300,000 men. Certain pro visions of the act led to disagreements as to quotas between Federal and State authorities, and a clash seemed imminent. A $300 clause allowed a man who could pay that sum to be released, while one who could not must go into the ranks. With this discrimination in favor of the rich and against the poor, a great deal of popular prejudice and opposition were aroused by the party opponents of the admin istration against the draft; and the draft riots in New York, in July 1863, resulted in serious loss of life and property. Governor Seymour of New York requested President Lincoln to suspend the enforcement of the draft in that State, and it was intimated to Secretary Stan ton that this act could be enforced only by the co-operation and consent of the State authori ties. Stanton held that the issue of the Civil War was the enforcement of the national au thority by its own power without dependence upon the consent of the State.
Added to the excitement and opposition aroused by the draft came the President's proc lamation of 15 Sept. 1863, suspending the priv ilege of the writ of habeas corpus throughout the United States in all cases where persons were held by the civil, military or naval au thorities under the orders of the President, as "aiders or abettors of the enemy.* This proc lamation followed the grant of power conferred by the Act of 3 March 1863, by which Congress, as it had previously legalized previous suspen sions of the writ, authorized the President to suspend this guarantee of personal liberty dur ing a period of Civil War throughout the whole United States. Under this act military arrests without civil warrants and trials by military commissions continued in various parts of the North. The critics of the administration held that the purpose of this policy was to consider all political opponents of the administration as "aiders and abettors of the enemy,* and they feared that all political discussion and criticism were to be suppressed by a military absolutism. (See HABEAS CORPUS; MILLIGAN DECISION). Freedom of the mails had also been denied to hostile matter, or such as might instigate others to co-operate with the enemy. (Consult Report of the Judiciary Committee of the House, 20 Jan. 1863).