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THE

PRISONER OF STATE.

BY D. A. MAHONY.

'It is important that the habits of thinking in a free coun-
try should inspire caution in those entrusted with its ad-
ministration, to confine themselves within their respective
spheres, avoiding, in the exercise of the powers of one
department to encroach upon another. The spirit of en-
croachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the depart-
ments in one, and thus to create, whatever be the form of
Government, a real Despotism."-WASHINGTON.

"Cling to the Constitution, as the shipwrecked mariner
clings to the last plank, when night and the tempest close
around him."-DANIEL WEBSTER.

New-York:

CARLETON, PUBLISHER, 413 BROADWAY.

233.

M DCCC LXIII.

f. 192

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863,

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In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New

York.

то

EDWIN M. STANTON,

SECRETARY OF WAR, U. S. A.

Sir,-Having considered for some time to whom it was most appropriate to dedicate a work describing the kidnapping of American freeman by arbitrary power, and their incarceration, without trial or the judgment of any court in Military Prisons, no one has occurred to my mind who has so well earned the unenviable distinction as yourself of having your name connected imperishably with the infamy of the acts of outrage, tyranny and despotism which the book, I hereby dedicate to you, will publish to the American People.

You it was, sir, who after setting at liberty the victims immured in Forts Lafayette and McHenry by your predecessors in tyranny, Messrs. Cameron and Seward, and after causing the great heart of the People to leap with joy and swell with gratification at this, one of the first of your official acts, and exult in hope that by you, the Constitution of our country, violated and abrogated by your predecessors in infamy, would be restored-you it was, who, after thus exciting emotions in the American People that they should again be governed by the Constitution of their country and not by the will of a partisan, united in your person and committed by your acts the treacherous tyranny of Seward and the arbitrary des

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