[DiogenesLamp]

Both Union & Confederate officials arrested & held thousands of anti-war citizens. I couldn't say how many were tried or convicted on what charges, but both sides did it in roughly equal proportions.

What the Confederates did does not excuse or justify what the supposed adherents to the US Constitution did.

The Constitution is absolutely clear that giving aid and comfort to those at war against the United States is treason.

It is also remarkably clear on the requirements to prove treason, and it is also remarkably clear on the rights listed in the Bill of Rights, most conspicuously among them being "Due Process."

What's remarkable is that Lincoln chose as "punishment" to turn the good congressman over to his Confederate friends.

Yes, completely illegal. As illegal as it gets.

Of course I wasn't there, and haven't studied the legalities...

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "What the Confederates did does not excuse or justify what the supposed adherents to the US Constitution did."

I'd say it does, why would we not apply the same standards to both sides?
After all, doesn't the Confederate constitution use the same words on this subject as the US Constitution?
So how is it OK for thee but not for me?

Seriously, the real issue here is the typical blazing hypocrisy of Democrats which, sadly, DiogenesLamp seems to share.

DiogenesLamp: "It is also remarkably clear on the requirements to prove treason, and it is also remarkably clear on the rights listed in the Bill of Rights, most conspicuously among them being 'Due Process.' "

I'll admit a problem when you show us where Confederates followed their constitution more religiously than the Union did.
Here, for example:

"In Texas local officials harassed unionists and engaged in large-scale massacres against unionists and Germans.
In Cooke County 150 suspected unionists were arrested; 25 were lynched without trial and 40 more were hanged after a summary trial."

And here:

"Vice President Alexander H. Stephens feared losing the very form of republican government.
Allowing President Davis to threaten 'arbitrary arrests' to draft hundreds of governor-appointed 'bomb-proof' bureaucrats conferred 'more power than the English Parliament had ever bestowed on the king.
History proved the dangers of such unchecked authority.'[235]
The abolishment of draft exemptions for newspaper editors was interpreted as an attempt by the Confederate government to muzzle presses, such as the Raleigh NC Standard, to control elections and to suppress the peace meetings there."

Or here:

"The Confederacy actively used the army to arrest people suspected of loyalty to the United States.
Historian Mark Neely found 4,108 names of men arrested and estimated a much larger total.[264]
The Confederacy arrested pro-Union civilians in the South at about the same rate as the Union arrested pro-Confederate civilians in the North.[265] Neely argues:
'The Confederate citizen was not any freer than the Union citizen – and perhaps no less likely to be arrested by military authorities.
In fact, the Confederate citizen may have been in some ways less free than his Northern counterpart.
For example, freedom to travel within the Confederate states was severely limited by a domestic passport system.[266]"

DiogenesLamp: "Yes, completely illegal. As illegal as it gets."

Says our newest Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Crazy Roger DiogenesLamp.