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struggle with its foes, leading politicians of the
Peace Faction, evidently in affiliation with the disloyal secret organization known as
Knights of the Golden Circle,
1 were using every means in their power to defeat the patriotic purposes of the loyalists, and to stir up the people of the Free-labor States to a counter-revolution.
This had been their course for several months during the dark hours of the
Republic, before the dawn at
Gettysburg; and the more strenuous appeared the efforts of the
Government to suppress the rebellion, the more intense was their zeal in opposing them.
This opposition was specially exhibited when the President acted in accordance with the law of Congress, passed in April, 1862, “for the enrollment of the National forces,” and authorizing the Executive to make drafts, at his discretion, from such enrolled citizens for service in the army.2 The President refrained from resorting to this extreme measure so long as the public safety would allow.
Finally, in consequence of the great discouragements to volunteering produced by the Peace Faction, he issued a proclamation
for a Draft to begin in July, and caused the appointment of an enrolling board in every Congressional district.
This was made the pretext for inaugurating a counter-revolution in the Free-labor States, which the leaders of the rebellion had been promised, and which their dupes were expecting;
3 and organized resistance to the measure instantly appeared, general and formidable.
The politicians of the
Peace Faction denounced the law and all acts under it as despotic and unconstitutional, and a hitherto obscure lawyer, named
McCunn, who had been elected to the bench in the
city of New York by the Opposition, so formally decided.
He was sustained by the decision of three respectable judges of the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania--
Lowrie,
Woodward, and
Thompson — and, with this legal sanction, the politicians opposed the Draft with a high hand.
In the mean time the suspension of the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus and the practice of arbitrary arrests had become a subject for the bitter denunciations of the Peace Faction.
They were specially excited to opposition by the arrest and punishment, under military authority, of C. L. Vallandigham, late member of Congress from Ohio, and the most conspicuous leader of the Opposition, in the West.
This politician, possessing ability and pluck, was very busy in sowing the seeds of disaffection to the Government in the spring of 1863.
On the 13th of April, General Burnside, then in command of a military department which included Ohio, issued a general order for the suppression of seditious speech and action, then seriously affecting the public service by discouraging enlistments.
It declared that
