Wendell Phillips said in his oration before the Smithsonian Institute:  ‘Abraham Lincoln sits to-day the greatest despot this side of China.’  The mistake of Mr. Phillips was this:  He confounded the method of exercising power with the nature of the power exercised.  It is the latter which decides the question of despotism or of freedom.  The methods of the republican governor and of the despot may be, in times of war must be, for the most part, identical.  But the one is, nevertheless, as truly a republican as the other is a despot.  Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of travel, the writ of habeas corpus—­these insignia of liberty in a people are dispensed with in despotic Governments, because the ruler chooses to deprive the people of their benefits, and for that reason only; they were suspended in our Government because the national safety seemed to demand it, and because the President, as the accredited executive of the wishes of the people, fulfilled their clearly indicated will.  In the former case it is lordly authority overriding the necks of the people for personal pride or power; in the latter, it is the ripe fruit of republican civilization, which, in times of danger, can with safety and security overleap, for the moment, the mere forms of law, in order to secure its beneficial results.  They seem to resemble each other; but are as wide apart as irreligion and that highest religious life which, transcending all external observances, seems to the mere religious formalist to be identical with it.

But how is the Executive to ascertain the behest of the people?  In accordance with the modes which they, as a part of their behest, indicate.  But as there are two methods of fulfilling the wishes of the people, one adapted to the ordinary routine of peaceful times, and another to the more summary necessities of war, so there are two methods, calculated for these diverse national states, by which the Government must discover the will of the people.  The slow, deliberate action of the ballot box and of the legislative body is amply expeditious for the purposes of undisturbed and tranquil periods.  But in times of rebellion or invasion, the waiting and delay which are often essential to the prosecution of forms prescribed for undisturbed epochs are, as has been said, simply impossible.  War is a period in which methods and procedures are required diametrically opposite to those which are so fruitful of good in days of peace.  The lawbreaker who comes with an army at his back cannot be served with a sheriff’s warrant, nor arrested by a constable.  War involves unforeseen emergencies, to meet which there is no time for calling Congress together, or taking the sense of the populace by a ballot.  It is full of attempted surprises, which must be guarded against on the instant, and of dangers which must be quickly avoided, but for whose guardance or avoidance the statutes make no provision.  Hence arises a necessity for a mode of ascertaining the will of the people other than the slow medium of formal legislation or of balloting.