Republican (nationalist) President Abraham Lincoln, of the united States, in a Letter to Democratic (constitutionalist) Erastus Corning, of New York, explains his support for the court martial conviction of Democratic de facto Representative Clemet L. Vallandigham, of the federal enclave of Ohio:

       Prior to my installation here it had been inculcated that any State had a lawful right to secede from the national[compulsory] Union, and that it would be expedient to exercise the right whenever the devotees of the doctrine should fail to elect a president to their own liking.

       … [A] jury too frequently has at least one member more ready to hang the panel than to hang the traitor. And yet again, he who dissuades one man from volunteering, or induces one soldier to desert, weakens the[compulsory] Union cause as much as he who kills a[compulsory] Union soldier in battle. …

       Ours is a case of rebellion—so called by the resolutions before me—in fact, a clear, flagrant, and gigantic case of rebellion; and the provision of the Constitution that “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it,” is the provision which specially applies to our present case. …

       … The man who stands by and says nothing when the peril of his government is discussed, cannot be misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy; much more if he talks ambiguously—talks for his country with “buts,” and “ifs” and “ands.” Of how little value the constitutional provision I have quoted will be rendered if arrests shall never be made until defined crimes shall have been committed. … Unquestionably if we had seized and held them, the insurgent cause would be much weaker. But no one of them had then committed any crime defined in the law. Every one of them, if arrested, would have been discharged on habeas corpus were the writ allowed to operate. In view of these and similar cases, I think the time not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many.

       … Mr. Vallandigham avows his hostility to the war on the part of the [compulsory] Union; and his arrest was made because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the raising of troops, to encourage desertions from the army, and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to suppress it. He was not arrested because he was damaging the political prospects of the administration or the personal interests of the commanding general, but because he was damaging the army, upon the existence and vigor of which the life of the nation depends. …

       [added 4/8/2022]