A. LINCOLN.
TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BURNSIDE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, June 28, 1863.
MAJOR-GENERAL BURNSIDE, Cincinnati, O.:
There is nothing going on in Kentucky on the subject of which you telegraph, except an enrolment. Before anything is done beyond this, I will take care to understand the case better than I now do.
A. LINCOLN.
TELEGRAM TO GOVERNOR BOYLE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 28, 1863.
GOVERNOR J. T. BOYLE, Cincinnati, O.:
There is nothing going on in Kentucky on the subject of which you telegraph, except an enrolment. Before anything is done beyond this, I will take care to understand the case better than I now do.
A. LINCOLN.
TELEGRAM TO GENERAL SCHENCK.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., June 28, 1863.
MAJOR GENERAL SCHENCK, Baltimore, Md.:
Every place in the Naval school subject to my appointment is full, and I have one unredeemed promise of more than half a year's standing.
A. LINCOLN.
FURTHER DEMOCRATIC PARTY CRITICISM
TO M. BIRCHARD AND OTHERS.
WASHINGTON, D. C., June 29,1863.
MESSRS. M. BIRCHARD, DAVID A. HOUK, et al:
GENTLEMEN:--The resolutions of the Ohio Democratic State convention, which you present me, together with your introductory and closing remarks, being in position and argument mainly the same as the resolutions of the Democratic meeting at Albany, New York, I refer you to my response to the latter as meeting most of the points in the former.
This response you evidently used in preparing your remarks, and I desire no more than that it be used with accuracy. In a single reading of your remarks, I only discovered one inaccuracy in matter, which I suppose you took from that paper. It is where you say: "The undersigned are unable to agree with you in the opinion you have expressed that the Constitution is different in time of insurrection or invasion from what it is in time of peace and public security."
A recurrence to the paper will show you that I have not expressed the opinion you suppose. I expressed the opinion that the Constitution is different in its application in cases of rebellion or invasion, involving the public safety, from what it is in times of profound peace and public security; and this opinion I adhere to, simply because, by the Constitution itself, things may be done in the one case which may not be done in the other.
I dislike to waste a word on a merely personal point, but I must respectfully assure you that you will find yourselves at fault should you ever seek for evidence to prove your assumption that I "opposed in discussions before the people the policy of the Mexican war."
You say: "Expunge from the Constitution this limitation upon the power of Congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and yet the other guarantees of personal liberty would remain unchanged." Doubtless, if this clause of the Constitution, improperly called, as I think, a limitation upon the power of Congress, were expunged, the other guarantees would remain the same; but the question is not how those guarantees would stand with that clause out of the Constitution, but how they stand with that clause remaining in it, in case of rebellion or invasion involving the public safety. If the liberty could be indulged of expunging that clause, letter and spirit, I really think the constitutional argument would be with you.
My general view on this question was stated in the Albany response, and hence I do not state it now. I only add that, as seems to me, the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus is the great means through which the guarantees of personal liberty are conserved and made available in the last resort; and corroborative of this view is the fact that Mr. Vallandigham, in the very case in question, under the advice of able lawyers, saw not where else to go but to the habeas corpus. But by the Constitution the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus itself may be suspended when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.