civil officers is a virtual and actual acknowledgment that a new order
of things has arisen for which the usual methods are insufficient, civil
authority inadequate, and to contend with which powers must be exercised
not before in vogue. Codes of procedure arranged for an established and
harmoniously working Government cannot answer all the requirements of
that Government when it is repudiated by a large body of its subjects,
and the existence of the nation itself is in peril.

It is evident, therefore, that at times the accustomed methods of Civil
government must, in deference to national safety, be laid aside, to some
extent, and the more vigorous adaptations of Military government
substituted in their stead. But it does not follow from this that
_arbitrary_ power is necessarily employed, or that such methods are not
strictly legal. There is a despotic Civil government and a despotic
Military government, a free Civil government and a free Military
government. The Civil government of Russia is despotic; so would its
Military government be if internal strife should demand that military
authority supersede the civil; the Civil government of the United States
is free, so must its Military government be in order to be sustained.

But what is a free Military government? There is precisely the same
difference between a free and a despotic _military_ polity as between a
free and a despotic _civil_ polity. It is the essential nature of
_despotic_ rule that it recognizes the fountain head of all power to be
the ruler, and the people are held as the mere creatures of his
pleasure. It is the essence of _free_ government that it regards the
people as the source of all power, and the rulers as their agents,
possessing only such authority as is committed by the former into the
hands of the latter. It matters not, therefore, whether a ruler be
exercising the civil power in times of peaceful national life, or