Ohio Congressman and Gubernatorial Candidate, Clement Vallandigham, On President Lincoln's 1863 Law Which Would Have Given Provost Marshalls the Sole Right to Determine What Type of Speech and/or Action Was Seditious

"Sir, some two hundred years ago, men were burned at the stake, subjected to the horrors of the Inquisition, to all the tortures that the devilish ingenuity of man could invent - for what? For opinions on questions of religion - of man's duty and relation to his God. And now, today, for opinions on questions political, under a free government, in a country whose liberties were purchased by our fathers by seven years outpouring of blood, and expenditure of treasure - we have lived to see men, the born heirs of this precious inheritance, subjected to arrest and cruel imprisonment at the caprice of a President, or a secretary, or a constable...………………………………………………………………….What is it, sir, but a bill to abrogate the Constitution, to repeal all existing laws, to destroy all rights, to strike down the judiciary, and erect, upon the ruins of civil and political liberty, a stupendous superstructure of despotism...….These, sir, are now to be our American liberties under your Administration. There is not a crowned head in Europe who dare venture on such an experiment...….Whoever shall denounce or oppose this Administration - whoever may affirm that war will not restore the Union, and teach men the gospel of peace, may be reported and arrested, upon some old grudge, and by some ancient enemy, it may be, and imprisoned as guilty of a treasonable practice." - These are clearly some of the most powerful words ever uttered by an American politician and I'll bet that 99% of you have never heard of Clement Vallandigham (the fellow was deported by Lincoln several weeks after giving this speech, another fact that the court historians tend to gloss over). I'm correct, huh?