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."
Forcible and convincing as was this legal analysis, a single sympathetic
phrase of the President's reply had a much greater popular effect:
"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?"
The term so accurately described the character of Vallandigham, and the
pointed query so touched the hearts of the Union people throughout the
land whose favorite "soldier boys" had volunteered to fill the Union
armies, that it rendered powerless the crafty criticism of party
diatribes. The response of the people of Ohio was emphatic. At the
October election Vallandigham was defeated by more than one hundred
thousand majority.
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