as was the case in relation to myself, or of other affecting motives, as occurred in other cases, were threatened with arrest and incarceration themselves if they did not desist their efforts in behalf of their friends and clients. Nay more, it is notorious that some Counsel who persisted in doing what they thought to be their duty, and knew to be their right, were arrested in the same arbitrary and illegal manner as were their clients, and thrust into Fort Lafayette to keep company with the other victims of partisan malignity and of arbitrary power.

And this tyranny, this despotism, this flagrant violation of their Constitution and trampling down of their personal rights under the heel of their mere fellow-citizens who happen to be invested with the constitutional authority of the government to be exercised for constitutional objects only, the American people have borne, submitted to, become almost servile to its behests, and acquiesced in its usurpations. O God, how often did the thought attempt to burst my lips for utterance while subjected to this tyranny: have we no man among us like these who wrested our rights and liberties from the subjection of a foreign tyrant to preserve them from the despotism of our domestic rulers. Have the people of the United States ceased to be Americans with the generation of patriots who give us a continent for our inheritance and provided us with such a guide for our relations to each other while enjoying it, as would, if observed, preserve us as a people forever in peace and security, and promote our

rights. A perusal of the following pages work might aid in arriving at such conclus will have a tendency to restore our violated tution to its former purity, and our subverted ernment to its original integrity, harmon glory. THE AUTH

THE

PRISONER OF STATE.

ASSUMPTION OF ARBITRARY POWER-INCREASE OF THE REGULAR ARMY BY PROCLAMATIONEXTENDING THE PERIOD OF VOLUNTEER ENLISTMENT BEYOND THE TIME PRESCRIBED BY LAW.

ONE of the most flagrant acts of Executive violation of the Constitution of the United States, was the proclamation of the third of May, 1861, providing for the increase in number of the regular army and navy, and prescribing that the volunteers called into the service of the United States under that proclamation should serve for a period of three years if the war might continue during that period. As a part of the history of the subversion of the government, this proclamation is referred to as evidence of fact. The Constitution, in the most positive, express, and unequivocal terms, delegates to Congress the sole authority both to raise armies and to make rules for their government, as well as of the naval force. This Constitutional provision was disregarded by the President in his proclamation of the third of May. He assumed the power in that proclamation which the Constitution had vested in Congress alone, and which no one ever supposed that the President had any right to exercise. The

proclamation of the fifteenth of April of the same year, calling out seventy-five thousand volunteers, was in one aspect at least, also violative of the Constitution; but this infraction was treated lightly by most persons. Not so, however, by the writer of these papers. It was the first more than the subsequent infractions of the Constitution that alarmed me for the safety of the Republic. The President might have called out a million of men according to law, but he had no right whatever to call out a single man without authority of law, much less in direct violation of law. It is pleaded not only in extenuation of his offence, but as a justification of his acts, that the State was in danger and that there was no time to lose. To this it needs but to be replied, that dangers of this kind had been foreseen by the framers of the Constitution, and provided against by acts of Congress. Under the act of Congress of 1795, by whose authority the President acted in his proclamation of the fifteenth of April, 1861, he might have called out the whole militia of the United States, but not for a longer period than that act prescribed. But while acting under the authority of that law in calling out the seventy-five thousand volunteers, he wantonly disregarded the conditions and restraints prescribed upon such exercise of power by the same act. Thus by almost the first public act of the President, did he violate the Constitution, which a little more than a month previously he had taken an oath to "preserve, protect and defend," which oath, it seems, he has since construed so that it does not require him to obey the Constitution, as if he could both preserve, protect and defend it by the same act which disobeys it.

Whatever doubt some casuists may have had of the violative spirit of the proclamation of the fifteenth of April, there is no room for cavil on that point-the proclamation of the third of May. It was

to all intents and purposes, a legislative act. It increased the regular by express terms, which I quote:

"I also direct that the regular army of the United States be increased by the addition of eight regiments of infantry, one regiment of cavalry, and one regiment of artillery, making altogether a maximum aggregate increase of twenty-two thousand seven hundred and fourteen officers and enlisted men, the details of which increase will also be made known by the War Department; and I further direct the enlistment for not less than one nor more than three years, of eighteen thousand seamen, in addition to the present force, for the naval service of the United States, the details of enlistment and organization will be made known through the Department of the Navy."

It was in vain that the Constitution vested in Congress the power to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, and to make rules for the government of the land and naval forces. The President by this proclamation assumed the right and power to do all this-a right which scarcely any monarch, if a single one, would dare to assume, and a power which no one but a usurper would attempt to exercise.

That is no newly formed opinion in the writer, I quote for the reader a few short extracts from the Dubuque Herald of the date of May fifteenth, 1861, the first referring to this proclamation, the others introducing it as a significant fact of history:

Dubuque Herald, May 18th, 1861.

ASSUMPTION OF ARBITRARY POWER.

The late Proclamation of the President of the United States calling for volunteers to serve for a longer period than is authorized by law, and in