Lincoln's Sword by Douglas L. Wilson

Author:Douglas L. Wilson [Wilson, Douglas L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48753-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

Lincoln then concluded the story so that it drew its own moral. When word of the peace was finally received, Jackson withdrew martial law and permitted himself to be fined $1,000 by the same judge, a fine which Jackson magnanimously paid, but which the American Congress many years later, at the instigation of Democrats, voted to repay. “The permanent right of the people to public discussion,” Lincoln wrote, “the liberty of speech and the press, the trial by jury, the law of evidence, and the Habeas Corpus suffered no detriment whatever by that conduct of Gen. Jackson, or its subsequent approval by the American Congress.” There was a further message in this anecdote that, while it was important, was so obvious to his readers, especially Democrats, that Lincoln did not even have to utter it. Edward Everett, to whom Lincoln sent a copy, could not resist pointing it out: that Vallandigham “would not have got off so cheaply under General Jackson.”

At least one other portion of the Corning letter was quite likely conceived in advance, an extended analogy that involved the indelicate subject of emetics. Here the president declared himself unable “to appreciate the danger” that had been voiced by the petitioners

that the American people will, by means of military arrests during the rebellion, lose the right of public discussion the liberty of speech and the press, the law of evidence, trial by jury, and Habeas Corpus, throughout the indefinite peaceful future which I trust lies before them, any more than I am able to believe that a man could contract so strong an appetite for emetics while temporarily sick during temporary illness, as to persist in feeding upon them through the remainder of his healthful life.

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