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JJ ]£ \ \[ ^\ I! NI ( ) _N . ^ General Burnside was invitedby the court to appear in theonse in thisuEj.sKsim srmi%lt;;, ua st. is**.Tra\w:-Ort* £M!art*T In w.ttnnrfc—C*e chcap^ **** lt;**“!** P*!** lB Dh,°?J W Uarx, £ rtwus#. Ohio.Ta* Uaio* of Heart#— tfca Union of Hindi The Union of State* non* c*a lew;Th* Cftteo Of Uke»-lh* fuloo of Load* U» Fj.*e or Ocm Ukjos Form er?* Vitr JhauMA tom* la * newapap«r for the v-f*opI« of coBBty. It * not Id the****** of ® f parte. nor h i! meuot tot* Men-t Ufi*4 wtih thoiut*n*i of any party, became » wUI ool be fettered It will not be Neutral for that aimxu tinte-aemng timidity. It will have . *trf distinct opinion: on all public qocvttoua e*unce?oS with ^.'•ernnicnt, whether Union, State, «r County; and on the cxprowrton of opln-* Jon* It will hure but on* giUte,-* Btflet adhrt. ? oeec to law. It will #apport the Cmwtltutlon v and the Law*, without rogurd to idatfonns or toSitenrfwrrirswi or thi whiBswno Mat 27, 1863-YnE first things which came to os after our last issue, was that General Burnside had selected Fort Warren as the place of oonfiacment for Mr. Vallandigham—* ~ very strings selection, as Fort Warren is ’Wyond General Burnside s district, aod hd placing his prisoner beyond his own control. The next item that wc had waa the Preaidont had changed this sentence into use of banishment into the cmmya country, which is a sort of hall recognition of that being a foreign gov-Jornroent. K Hr. ValUndigham should 1»h Forced into the rebel ainsy by conserip-, tioUyAnd thou be captured iu arm* against us, dt may become n question who made liim * positive traitor instead of a cou-.in#; ®w_ *struct i re one.The. account* from General Grant’s nnny had almost assured us that hi# suc-^ cea* in turning off the rebel’* interior _ pommtttiieafcoua would lead to the eap-^ lure of Ficisburg by force, or the voluntary abandonment of it by the enemy,c , making it only a question of time. Our v Utar advices speak of large euccew— Vicksburg-—Pemberton's amy taken; zZ. bat recent dncoprion* in news had made tie public caution* in their belief in great ^ tritunphs. We supple lhat there is no 4 reason to doubt that we have possession :■ of 1*11 the important river batteries, and . the importance of this cannot be overrated if tho navigation of the river from t the Ohio to Sew Orleans can U moin-. ttuoed.wveo with convoy of genboafca.•It will of course be found that we have J overstated the extant of the enemy’* Iom. And nndemied our own.I# If the enemy have retired in force, we M| expect a diversion of the war into Teuowee, with a desperate purport of reaching Ohio.lodge Leavitt and the Habeas Oorpra.As proposed in the Urb.vna Unxqk of May 20th, wc resume the consideration of Judge Leavitt* judicial opinion in the habeas corpus case of C. L. Vallandig ham. We shall deal with it purely as a matter of law, and pass over the patriotic parts which have gained the Judge the special approval of a National Vuion association in Cincinnati.The Judge begins his opinion by Mt-ting forth the case of the petitioner, which u ha BUtes as follows: That Vallaridigbam had been unlawfully arrested at bis own house in Dayton, by a detachment of U. 8. tolditrs acting under the special order* of hlajor-Goneral Burnside, and had been taken to Cincinnati and there confined. That he was not in the military or naval service of the United States, and had not ._been called into actual service in the ^ W — •militia of any State, and that his arrest waa illegal, and ho therefore prayed a writ of habeas corpus directed to General Burnside, commanding him to produce* the body of the petitioner, with the causehia arrest, capture and detention. 1 Along with the petition he also exhibited a copy of the charge* which had beenpreferred against him by a military courtbefore which he had been tried. The Judge states the substance of the charge ^a* imputing to the prisoner “the utter anoe of sundry disloyal opinions and flateaenta in a puMic speech at Mount Vernon, in the State of Ohio, with the know lodge that they did aid and comfort and encourage those in arm* against the Government, and could but indno* in Lis hearers a distrust in their own OoTern-^jnent, and sympathy for tbo*e ia arms against it. and a deposition to resist the law* of the land.”%n. 4 According to the Judge’* own showing j here is a clear case for the allowance of wj. a writ of habeag eorpm and yet b« pro-* eecdc to tell uj that he informed the cocmcl of Vail an dig ham that the writ- was not grantable of course, and would only be allowed on s full fhowiog that it ought to issue. The peiition was sworn to, and therefore all the facta stated in it wore to be taken as true. Yet tho Judge 1 required General Burnfide to have noticethat the writ was applied for. So far asmost utin»ual munnor, he must stand excused from any cl.urge of willful disrespect to the court; but if he had otherwise attempted to intervene it would have been *uch a contempt of court ns would have called for correction by commitment.The Judge makes another remarkable statement, that the petitioner did not itate what the judgment of the military commiwion was, and that the court is notinformed whether he waa acquitted or condemned. And moHt assuredly it was not needful that the Judge should know what had been done, as tho petitioner had distinctly e-titcd that bo wna still do taiued in custody, and he had also sbowu the charges against him, which were such that a military const could not lawfully try. Taking the charge against the prisoner as true, it is treason, and that is an offense for the civil oourta onlj, as long as there are any civil courts. Military oocrta cannot try even military men for treason, much less can they try civilian*. This is a matter oF settled law, about which there never was auy doubt or question. The Judge was therefore bound to ban* the writ and men* the prisoner from the detention, and not remit him to the chance# of acquittal by u court where the arrest was against !awr and the tribunal utterly without authority to try.But ths Judge further guards himself by saying that on the presentation of the petition for the writ, he made a distinct reference to the case of Bethuel Rupert, and he uow rests hia denial of the Val-landighaui petition on the binding precedent of the Rupert case, decided in the same court by Justice Swayne, and with his own conc urrence, at the October term of 18fi2, which dociaion the Judge consider* binding on him until reversed by a higher court: This respect for the decision of the full court is commendable, and it is only unfortunate lhat he so understood the Rupert case,This Rupert case is stated thus by the Judge; “He (Rupert) aet out in his petition what he alledgod to he an unlawful arrest by the order of a military officer, on a charge imputing to him acta of disloyally to the Government, and sympathy with the rebellion against it; and an unlawful detention and imprisonment the result of such order. The application, however, ia the case of Rupert, differed from the one now before the court, in this: that affidavits were exhibited, intended to disprove the charge of disloyal conduct imputed to him; and also in this; that there teas no pretcute or showing by Rupert that there had been any investigation or trial by avy court of (he charge again* him!Now if we should simply deny this statement of the case, it would be regarded as an unseemly contradiction of the Judge. Wo therefore etate the facta;During the summer of 1802, on the strength of two affidavits made before Nelson Rhodes, a Justice of the Peace, in Drbana, Bethuel Rupert was arrested by John Hurd, who professed to act as a local deputy of A. C. Sands, United States Marshal for tho Southern District of Ohilt;s and in obedience to a telegraphic order frarn Marshal Sand*r to whom c had been sent announcing thecapture, Rwpert was taken to Cincinnatiand lodged in the jail of Hamilton county. The charge against him was, that he had initiated, or offered to initiate persons into the order called Knighta of the Golden Circle. In the month of November application was made by Dr. Rupert, through his counsel, John A. Corwin, for a writ of habeas corpus, and the hearing was in open court before Juatice Swoyne and Judge Leavitt, during which time the prisoner was in court in custody of the Marshal. The case was closed on the 5th, and the court adjourned till next morning, when the opinion was to be delivered. During that night a telegraphic order from the Wax Department came to Marshal Sands, directing him to take the prisoner to Camp Chase, and by trick and deception the prisoner was enticed from the jail to tho railroad station, under pretence of going to the court, and sent to Camp Ch\*e before the court met When the court did meet at 10 o'clock, the Judges seemed to know of the transfer of thoir prisoner, and then tho court declined allowing the writ 41 under the peculiar circumstance* of the case. They took no notice of the misconduct of the Marshal in obeying an executive order affecting a matter pending before them, and Mr. Justice Swayne advised that the habeas corpus papers be laid before Samuel Galloway, who was acting in some sort ns a comimBsioner for the discharge of prisoners at Camp Chase, which wus done, and the discharge of Dr. Rupert finally procured.Now From these facts it is very clear that Bethuel Rupert could not have aet forth in hie petition “an unlawful arrest by the.order of a military officer, os Judge Leavitt states, and therefore the conclusion is forced upon us that the court did not make the decision and establhsb .the precedent, which Judge Leavitt now think they did. The court simply ab-stained from a rain conflict with “ the war power/’ which thus came athwart themguflge for a Judge on the bench, and a dtrangrr mode of construing Lira, to make them bait circumstances. In connection with this he make* the singular statement that the framers of the Constitution had not Forvcen and contemplated the present state of things— that they bad not provided for secession! Certainly tho country roust have beeu under a great mistake for the last seventy years, for it waa supposed that the snjrpmajon of insurrection waa most distinctly provided for, and power given to call out the militia for that very purple. The powers of the Constitution are all sufficient for every purpose, and all that we need is an honest and fcitbful exercise of the powers given, without any fancied necessity of dispensations and assumptions.But the paramount vice of the whole opinion is, that a Judge cannot interfere in any case with a military officer, or with auythingn military officer may do. This is an utter abandonmoDt of the judicial function, and leaves tho multiplied agents of the executive entirely without control, and free to practice every enormity, A military officer, like every other, ta the creature of law, and be mast act within the law which gives him power. A true military arnyfc, such as a military officer may lawfully make, cannot be interfered with by the civil power. Bui if the military officer mistake* his powers and does an net beyond the law, ha not may at once be brought before the court, and hi* mistake or his abuse corrected. That is the very object for which Judge Leavitt bolds his office in tire Southern District of Ohio, and on every complaint before him he is bound to render judgment according to the law—the known and settled rales of law, and not by military orders made by whnt he cr.lLs “agents nf the President/’ whom he seema to regard as vested with all poweft under hi* prolific oath of office ns President—a view which may prove true in practice if the Judges throughout the land tee fit to euccomb before him.But the Judge furthor thinks that he cannot interfere with General Burnside, because the General's powers arc not known to the court! that tho General ha* been appointed by the President, and that it is a fair presumption that the President has clothed him with ail the power r.ec-e-wary to tho performance of his dutiesis tbi* military department. The Gene-ral’e patriotism; and distinguished services also canie in a* h consoling circumstance. Now he had just told us that the President derives all his powers from the Constitution, which we arc elsewhere told, together “with the laws passed in pursuance thereof/' shall be the supreme law of the land. It would then be a fair presumption that the President ban not given the General any powers to supercede the law of the land—and if be bad attempted to do bo the act would be a nullity.Now the charge against Mr. Vallatdig-ham before this pretended military court was, that he had made speeches which he well knew did aid, comfort mul encourage those in arm# sgaixi6t the Government. r On the 17th of July, 1862. Congress passed a law to “suppress insurrection, and to punish treuson aud rebellion/’ which stiye, (section 2,) 44 that if any person shall hereafter incite, set on foot, assist or engage iu any rebellion or insurrection aguinst the authority of the United States, or the lews thereof, or shall give aid and comfort thereto, or shall give aid and comfort to any existing rebellion, and be convicted (hereof buch person shall be punished by imprisonment for n period not exceeding ten years, or by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars, and be forever incapable and disqualified to hold any office under tho United States. Ah? but who is to do this? someone will ank. The last section of the act tells us, in these words;“ The oourta of the United States shall have full power to institute proceedings, make order* and decrees, issue process, and do all other things necessary to carry htia not into effect.Under thi# law was it not the duty ofarrest, any p*non so arrested, and dcsir ing to be discharged, shall be brought before the Circuit or District Judge, wboshall make an order for the officer having him in custody, to discharge such person. And if any officer shall neglect or refuse to obey such order, he alial! ha subject to indictment and punished by a fine of not less than fivo hundred dollars, and by imprisonment in the common jail for not less than six months. The J udge is bound to take notice of tho passage of all laws from their date, and the laws of that particular session were published end for sale in Cincinnati before the delivery of the Judge*!* opinion. In contrast with this obliviousnees of the acta passed by Congress, it may be noticed that the Judge talks about two statutes of Ohio, excusing those arrests, which statutes are not yet published, and if they were, are no rule for bis court.Tho last of all the considerations for refusing the writ, given by tho Judge, that is, the moral certainty that it would not be obeyed—is a most melancholy one. The J udge says—and we are happy to find that he did say it—that this would be no reason for refusing the writ, but that he is reluctant to issue n process knowing that it would not be respected, and that tho court is powerless to enforce obedience. Against this r el act n use wo have no heart to utter an unkind expression. When a pure and upright man— for such is Judge Leavitt—finds himself towards tho close of a long service in the administration of the law, nnd leela that ho has cause to fear that the lawful supporters of hia power may fail in their duty to him and to his office, ho may hesitate to iunke the ruin too manifest. And yet we could wish to see the crisis met with a firmer hand, and to see a Judge look only to the law and his duty nndcr it, and if his proew; should be disregarded or resisted, and the appointed authority refused to execute the law for him. he should close hi* court and rofuso to hear any other case, or to make another judgment while his process remained out-atanding and un^ustainod by the Government.Gov,eH#niolhe one it is abilldoty the lt;■ rf£ siitn of Uprct ther sue! befa so v ercii that in * aridrnirimetOU5worwrcatrewajorduporeelandere:thedi*eficforioneoil.theaspeopre*ioiopidimTho D*mccrfttio Party.The Slate Convention of the Democratic Party of Ohio it? tb:ed for the 11th of Juno next, and the county convention* to designatethe men who are to compose end give tone and direction to that convention, will generally bo held daring this and tho enoning week. Upon the principles adopted by the approaching convention and the men nominated to re-pt**cfti tl*lt;m depend the result of the comingfull election and to a great extent tho . ml! o the nttoreimportant con Jest for the Prr-rd-deiy next year, u ith its important bearing upon the destmy of the : a lun. It is therefore alUmpuii i*nt that a (rue direetion bejjv-en to iW cn*ir$e of the parry, that it ehoH not be made the muniment of faction, but that it shall rw?t on the enduring basis of patriotism and devotion to constitctionri liberty.Tho Democratic Party has labored under disadvantage of late from the efforts of a small but active faction holding the extreme and often treason able view* of Mr. Whrodigham— co identify ihemselves with the parly kiid to control and *bapc ifsoctioo, na effort in which they rue seconded heartily by the Republican party, winch publisher those obnoxious views* as ibc#*e of i ho Democracyy aod could not be better pleaded than by seeing its political opponent adapt principles so obnoxious ns lo * -curs it# defeat. Mr. Talhsndigbam in every singe of iu? progress has been opposed to the war and to supply ing men and money to carry if on. Iii-i friend# oppot-e—not the cei-surab'.e acl£ of the administration ahum—in doing which they would bo justified—but the leeitiniftie measure* os well and thoee neces-•mry for the prosecution of tho war. They Mwor a* and depreciate tho currency of the Government and are opposed to the taxation w hich fami-bes the riaews of war. They oppose th»- Conscription which would replenish our armies with roen. They talk about an nnniatiee, nnd cry Pence, Peace, wheu there in no pence and when they know there can bo none at thin stage of affairs without ft dkhonortihk and humiliating withdrawal from the contest. And entertaining tlitac views they seek to obtain control of the Democratic parly aud to commit it to their principles.But such a re not the doctrines of the Dem-nprSlitadcof 1tit)ourreilpiepar*3i»ioatsha wi* of i prc to. jar are tedtill!apjtewhtofcifan ( are■tilthtoe«tliPuthtthUJfovK*1imhoticof p U pitasanforBllCxcuocrolic Party, nnd we hope no honest and re-the Circuit Court of Ohio to restrain *««« ^.ocmt iriB be led by »jmt dfeap-bo suddenly.LJuiga Leavitt seems himself not towe know, thi« i* utterly without prece- * flrtn foilh in Ui!b BuPert ?reee'dent ; tho Judge may perhap* find a precedent for it, but it is none the less anibuBe. If a primn furi? ease wa* made,dent, for ho goes off into a discussion of the Constitution, and talks about “conceding to it such a capacity of adaptationth* court was bound to allow the writ,1 ^ circumstances as may be necessary to and then General Bunwidc could makelroeet an emergency and save the nationGeneral Burnside, and to take from his custody the prisoner, when attempting to try him for a crime of which rlio Circa t Court had exclusive jurisdiction? If the* prisoner has committed the offense charged against him, he is yet liable to indictment and trial in thatcourt, notwithstanding this military sentence.Then is still auotber law, passed on the 3d of March, 1863, “ relating to the iiubeaa corpus, and regulating judicial proceedings in certain crises, ’ which authorizes the President, during the present rebellion, to suspend the writ of ha-bt’ou corpus in any State, or any part thereof, nnd when such suspension shall bo declared, all proceedings under tbe writ of habeas corpus shall be suspended by overy jndge and court. The writ has not been suspended in Ohio, and therefor tho Judge had no discretion to forbear action if a proper ewe wan made.That act further provides that in nil States whore the ndministration of the laws had continued unimpaired, the citizens of which »hall be arreated by order or by authority of tbo President, end hold os political prisoners, and not as prisoner* of war, the Beoretary of State, or of War, a* the cose may bo, ahall within twenty days after nuch arrest, furnish to the Judges of the Circuit aud District Court* of the United States, a list of tbe person* bo arrested; and if such person? b* not indicted by the next grand jury, they shall be discharged, and if tho listpromt of the many reprehensible nets of the Administration into general opporiiion lo those which are legitimate and essential to the preservation of th- Government. The Government must be preserved and supported nt evF.ry cost. And the war roust be prosecuted. Before the er«# of the whole world we are engaged in rr rtruggie in which our success ns yet, it must bo admitted, has not beeu commensurate with the great superiority of our numbers and resources. If wo should uow retire from the conflict and acknowledge onrsrive* unable to or-plt;* with a foe of less thar hall our strength and numbers, we should be disgraced forever. We should lose the respect of other nations and ourown solf-respeci, and tho loss of national honor and reputation is not a thing to bo lightly regarded. And more than this we should by making peace on fhttr term*—(nnd until we have made greater progress ill subduing them, we cun not have it on any other terms) be losing all that we Lave been fighting for, at the expense of so much precious blood and treasure.Nor would any internal difference* of opinion among ountelves suffice to excuse us in the eye a of the world, or ot posterity, or of ourselves should we fail in our duty, to our country iu this crioU. A great war like this fs not a matter of party, but of national concern, in which nil parties are equally interested and with matters of such national importance no minor political differences ahould be allowed to interfere. The only hope of securing an early and honorable peace is by vigorously prosecuting the war to a successful termination, and all tire ntcc-sary means to that end—the tax law—the Conscription law, and all other lawafhouM be cheerfully supported.Bit while the most important duty of a!)ur1CofFiedLofnhi, uawfe »nd show tU c,aa, of dotes- from hoj*!«s rui^ This b Grange Un- he not fornishod within twenty d.y. after j*ti« in » time of war is tbe ouppon of «UoIBInvstfafita?ntait!blt;tiijoP4tva?maioisisttl!etlol01Cltlliaie:liPsia’fiei!z
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Urbana Union
Urbana, Ohio, US
Wed, May 27, 1863
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IN, USA 26 Mar 2022
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