It is nonsense to say that resisting the
draft or the arrest of deserters only meant voting for an opposition
party at the elections. There had been armed and organized
resistance to arrest of deserters in Noble County just before his
speech, and soon after it there was a still more formidable armed
organization with warlike action against the enrolling officers in
Holmes County, in the same region in which the speech was made. This
last took the form of an armed camp, and the insurgents did not
disperse till a military force was sent against them and attacked
them in fortified lines, where they used both cannon and musketry.
It did not seem plausible to the common sense of the people that we
could properly charge with volleying musketry upon the barricades of
the less intelligent dupes, whilst the leader who had incited and
counselled the resistance was to be held to be acting within the
limits of proper liberty of speech. Law and common sense are
entirely in harmony in regarding the conspiracy as a unit, the
speech at Mount Vernon and the armed collision on the Holmes County
hill being parts of one series of acts in which the instigator was
responsible for the natural consequences of the forces he set in
motion.
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