The Daily Argus

In regard to Sheridan's "banditti" dispatch he said that, "since civilization favorably progressed under the influence of our christian faith no words ever fell from the lips of any man, civilian or soldier which more outrage every obligation of humanity or exhibit a more fiendish thirst for human blood. Not satisfied with denouncing the people of three states he suggests as you have seen, that if the President will issue a proclamation declaring the parties he refers to "banditti," "no further action need be taken, except that which would devolve upon him !"
How he proposed to act, we gather from his dispatch. To arrest and try the ringleaders of what he calls the armed White Leagues. To try them by a military commission. Execution, then, would instantly follow sentence and the cities and villages of three states would be the scenes of a carnage, the horrors of which no imagination can adequately depict. In this recommendation he totally disregards all the guarantees of personal liberty contained in the constitution. Those guarantees are to be found in the constitution itself, and it is historically certain that, without an assurance that they would be provided, the constitution would not have been ratified. Among them-not to mention them all-are, first the security of the people against seizure of their persons; second, that no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury," except persons in the military or naval service of the United States; third, that every party charged with a crime is secured a trial "by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed," and this trial by jury was also provided by the original constitution.