Lincoln vs Vallandigham

[David Lockmiller]

Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume Two, page 532:
Chapter 31 - "The Signs Look Better" Victory at the Polls and in the Field (July -- November 1863)

Lincoln was less jovial in dealing with state courts which seriously hindered the enforcement of the draft through habeas corpus proceedings. The problem became acute in Pennsylvania, where resistance to conscription was widespread, especially in the mining regions. By a 3-2 margin, that state’s supreme court ruled the Enrollment Act unconstitutional. At a cabinet meeting on September 14, 1863, the president (according to Attorney General Bates) “was greatly moved – more angry than I ever saw him” by the action of judges who had been releasing civilians arrested for obstructing conscription. He “declared that it was a formed plan of the democratic copperheads, deliberately acted out to defeat the Govt., and aid the enemy” and that “no honest man did or could believe that the State Judges have any such power.” He was, he added, “determined to put a stop to these factious and mischievous proceedings.” He even threatened to banish such jurists to Confederate lines, just as he had exiled Clement L. Vallandigham. Pounding the table, he “said with great emphasis: ‘I’ll not permit my officers to be arrested while in the discharge of their public duties.’” 35

Footnote 35 reads: Statement by the son of Robert B. Carnahan, U. S. district attorney for the western district of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, May 1896, Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College. [Please note that this important footnote in history might well have been lost but for the work of Ida Tarbell.]