* Edward Everett Hale's famous story "The Man Without a Country",
though it got into print too late to affect the election, was
aimed at Vallandigham. That quaint allegory on the lack of
patriotism became a temporary classic.
"Long experience [he wrote] has shown that armies cannot be
maintained unless desertion shall be punished by the severe
penalty of death. The case requires, and the law and the
Constitution sanction, this punishment. Must I shoot a
simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a
hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none
the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or brother,
or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his
feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is
fighting in a bad cause for a wicked administration and a
contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he
shall desert. I think that in such a case to silence the
agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but,
withal, a great mercy."
His real argument may be summed up in these words of his:
"You ask, in substance, whether I really claim that I may
override all the guaranteed rights of individuals, on the plea of
conserving the public safety--when I may choose to say the public
safety requires it.
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