This Supreme Court decision held that the Court could not rule on the legality of sending civilians to military court. The issue arose after Lincoln’s 1862 proclamation that suspended habeas corpus, a defendant’s right to challenge the legality of their incarceration. Following this proclamation, General Ambrose Burnside, who oversaw the Ohio military district, announced that anyone expressing sympathies with the Confederates would be imprisoned. Soon after, Senator Clement Vallandigham, an anti-war Democrat, gave an inflammatory speech faulting the Lincoln Administration for the perpetuation of the war and encouraging resistance. Burnside arrested Vallandigham and gave him a military trial, which sentenced him to two years imprisonment. Vallandigham applied for a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that as a civilian, he deserved a trial in an ordinary criminal court. After a federal circuit judge upheld the conviction, he appealed to the Supreme Court, which refused to take the case on the grounds that it could not hear appeals from military courts. The court withheld judgement on the legality of Lincoln’s wartime suspensions of certain rights.