May 4 1863. |
April 22. |
 |
| Clement L. Vallandigham. |
May 16. |
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persons who should “commit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country should be tried as spies and traitors, and, if convicted, should suffer death.”
“It must be distinctly understood,” said the order, “that treason, expressed or implied, will not be tolerated in this department.”
In defiance of this order (whose specifications of offenses were clear1), Vallandigham continued his seditious speeches, and denounced the order itself.2 He was arrested at his own house in Dayton, Ohio,
on a charge of having been guilty of treasonable conduct.
He was tried by a court-martial convened at Cincinnati,
over which Brigadier-General
R. B. Potter presided; and was convicted, and sentenced
to close confinement in a fortress for the remainder of the war. This sentence was modified by the President, who directed him to be sent within the military lines of the Confederates, and, in the event of his returning without leave, to suffer the penalty prescribed by the court.
Judge Leavitt, of the United States District Court of Ohio, refused an application for a writ of Habeas Corpus in his case, and the convict was passed by General Rosecrans toward the Confederate lines.
Vallandigham being of use to the conspirators in Ohio, and none at all in their own dominions, his ungrateful “Southern friends,” for whose cause he had labored, treated him with the indifference they would exhibit toward a poor relation3 Disappointed and disgusted, he soon left their society, escaped from Wilmington, and sailed to Nassau in a blockaderunner, and finally found his way to Canada, where he enjoyed congenial society among his refugee friends from the “Confederate States,” with whom he was in sympathy.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Convention of Ohio had nominated him for Governor.
The arrest of Vallandigham produced intense excitement throughout the country, and its wisdom and lawfulness were questioned by a few of the
1 One specification was as follows: “The habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy will not be allowed in this department. Persons committing such offenses will be at once arrested, with a view to being tried as above slated, or sent beyond our lines into the lines of their friends.”
2 There appeared real fanaticism among the followers of this man, while he was engaged in this campaign against the Government. While he was riding in a procession at Batavia, in Ohio, some of his abject admirers took the more noble horses from his carriage, and drew the vehicle through the village themselves.-Letter of an eye-witness, a friend of the author.
3 Lieutenant-Colonel Freemantle, of the British army, already mentioned, was then with the Confederate forces in Tennessee, below Murfreesboroa. In his Diary, under date of “May 28, 1863,” he wrote: “When I arrived [at Wartrace], I found that General Hardee was in company with General Polk and Bishop Elliott of Georgia, and also with Mr. Vallandigham. The latter (called the Apostle of Liberty) is a good-looking man, apparently not much over forty, and had been turned out of the North three days before. Rosecrans had wished to hand him over to Bragg by flag of truce; but as the latter declined to receive him in that manner, he was, as General Hardee expressed it, ‘dumped down’ in the neutral ground between the lines, and left there. He thus received hospitality from the Confederates in the capacity of a destitute stranger. They do not in anyway receive him officially, and it does not suit the policy of either party to be identified with one another. He told the generals that if Grant was severely beaten in Mississippi by Johnston, he did not think the war could be continued on its present great scale.” --Three Months in the Southern States, page 137.
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