Posted on 08/20/2004 5:43:21 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
Imagine that America had a Chief Justice of the United States who actually believed in enforcing the Constitution and, accordingly, issued an opinion that the war in Iraq was unconstitutional because Congress did not fulfill its constitutional duty in declaring war. Imagine also that the neocon media, think tanks, magazines, radio talk shows, and television talking heads then waged a vicious, months-long smear campaign against the chief justice, insinuating that he was guilty of treason and should face the punishment for it. Imagine that he is so demonized that President Bush is emboldened to issue an arrest warrant for the chief justice, effectively destroying the constitutional separation of powers and declaring himself dictator.
An event such as this happened in the first months of the Lincoln administration when Abraham Lincoln issued an arrest warrant for Chief Justice Roger B. Taney after the 84-year-old judge issued an opinion that only Congress, not the president, can suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Lincoln had declared the writ null and void and ordered the military to begin imprisoning thousands of political dissenters. Taney’s opinion, issued as part of his duties as a circuit court judge in Maryland, had to do with the case of Ex Parte Merryman (May 1861). The essence of his opinion was not that habeas corpus could not be suspended, only that the Constitution requires Congress to do it, not the president. In other words, if it was truly in "the public interest" to suspend the writ, the representatives of the people should have no problem doing so and, in fact, it is their constitutional prerogative.
As Charles Adams wrote in his LRC article, "Lincoln’s Presidential Warrant to Arrest Chief Justice Roger B. Taney," there were, at the time of his writing, three corroborating sources for the story that Lincoln actually issued an arrest warrant for the chief justice. It was never served for lack of a federal marshal who would perform the duty of dragging the elderly chief justice out of his chambers and throwing him into the dungeon-like military prison at Fort McHenry. (I present even further evidence below).
All of this infuriates the Lincoln Cult, for such behavior is unquestionably an atrocious act of tyranny and despotism. But it is true. It happened. And it was only one of many similar constitutional atrocities committed by the Lincoln administration in the name of "saving the Constitution."
The first source of the story is a history of the U.S. Marshal’s Service written by Frederick S. Calhoun, chief historian for the Service, entitled The Lawmen: United States Marshals and their Deputies, 1789–1989. Calhoun recounts the words of Lincoln’s former law partner Ward Hill Laman, who also worked in the Lincoln administration.
Upon hearing of Laman’s history of Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and the mass arrest of Northern political opponents, Lincoln cultists immediately sought to discredit Laman by calling him a drunk. (Ulysses S. Grant was also an infamous drunk, but no such discrediting is ever perpetrated on him by the Lincoln "scholars".)
But Adams comes up with two more very reliable accounts of the same story. One is an 1887 book by George W. Brown, the mayor of Baltimore, entitled Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1887). In it is the transcript of a conversation Mayor Brown had with Taney in which Taney talks of his knowledge that Lincoln had issued an arrest warrant for him.
Yet another source is A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, a former U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Judge Curtis represented President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate; wrote the dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case; and resigned from the court over a dispute with Judge Taney over that case. Nevertheless, in his memoirs he praises the propriety of Justice Taney in upholding the Constitution by opposing Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. He refers to Lincoln’s arrest warrant as a "great crime."
I recently discovered yet additional corroboration of Lincoln’s "great crime." Mr. Phil Magness sent me information suggesting that the intimidation of federal judges was a common practice in the early days of the Lincoln administration (and the later days as well). In October of 1861 Lincoln ordered the District of Columbia Provost Marshal to place armed sentries around the home of a Washington, D.C. Circuit Court judge and place him under house arrest. The reason was that the judge had issued a writ of habeas corpus to a young man being detained by the Provost Marshal, allowing the man to have due process. By placing the judge under house arrest Lincoln prevented the judge from attending the hearing of the case. The documentation of this is found in Murphy v. Porter (1861) and in United States ex re John Murphy v. Andrew Porter, Provost Marshal District of Columbia (2 Hay. & Haz. 395; 1861).
The second ruling contained a letter from Judge W.M. Merrick, the judge of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, explaining how, after issuing the writ of habeas corpus to the young man, he was placed under house arrest. Here is the final paragraph of the letter:
After dinner I visited my brother Judges in Georgetown, and returning home between half past seven and eight o’clock found an armed sentinel stationed at my door by order of the Provost-Marshal. I learned that this guard had been placed at my door as early as five o’clock. Armed sentries from that time continuously until now have been stationed in front of my house. Thus it appears that a military officer against whom a writ in the appointed form of law has first threatened with and afterwards arrested and imprisoned the attorney who rightfully served the writ upon him. He continued, and still continues, in contempt and disregard of the mandate of the law, and has ignominiously placed an armed guard to insult and intimidate by its presence the Judge who ordered the writ to issue, and still keeps up this armed array at his door, in defiance and contempt of the justice of the land. Under the circumstances I respectfully request the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court to cause this memorandum to be read in open Court, to show the reasons for my absence from my place upon the bench, and that he will cause this paper to be entered at length on the minutes of the Court . . . W.M. Merrick Assistant Judge of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia
As Adams writes, the Lincoln Cult is terrified that this truth will become public knowledge, for it if does, it means that Lincoln "destroyed the separation of powers; destroyed the place of the Supreme Court in the Constitutional scheme of government. It would have made the executive power supreme, over all others, and put the president, the military, and the executive branch of government, in total control of American society. The Constitution would have been at an end."
Exactly right.
August 19, 2004
Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is the author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, (Three Rivers Press/Random House). His latest book is How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold Story of Our Country’s History, from the Pilgrims to the Present (Crown Forum/Random House, August 2004).
Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com
This is even more easily understood.
150. Civil war is war between two or more portions of a country or state, each contending for the mastery of the whole, and each claiming to be the legitimate government. The term is also sometimes applied to war of rebellion, when the rebellious provinces or portions of the state are contiguous to those containing the seat of government.-- War Department General Order 100, "Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field."
The "belligerent" class referred to in The Prize Cases was invented by Justice Grier and made its initial appearance in The Prize Cases.
When Lincoln proclaimed the BLOCKADE, Britain declared NEUTRALITY, which in international law pertained to two nations at war. Other nations of Europe followed. A BLOCKADE is an act of war. A war must have two parties. What was going on did not meet the definition of a "Civil War." Justice Grier invented a new party to warfare, the "belligerent" that is not a nation.
History now nods, winks, and looks the other way at the declarations of NEUTRALITY.
[El Capitan] If the purpose of the destruction of the Confederate infrastructure was to sooner end the war and save Union lives, it was permissible and justified.
Uff da.
It did occur to me after your post lamenting Lincoln's inability to carry out ideological cleansing that nolu chan and I were both born North of the Mason-Dixon; I suppose that means you were really daydreaming about Russian-style butchery.
You make me want to puke.
According to "Battles And leaders of the Civil War: Vol.4", page 767, the number of southerners serving in the Union Army was more than 'nonexistent'. There were 2576 from Alabama, almost 8300 from Arkansas, almost 6,000 from Louisiana, 2000 from Texas. And that does not count the more than 150,000 men from Kentucky and Missouri, two ostensibly confederate states. And these are not all black soldiers, either. A considerable number were white troops. Here is a Link to a site that details all the Union regiments during the war, including those from southern states.
Bump. Amzing what gets trotted out, Wheaton, Farber, Fehrenbacher, etc. I'm waiting to see if he trots out Don King or his grandmother. He's already made it perfectly clear that Lincoln shold have lined up ALL Southerners - men, women and children - on the sides of ditches and slaughtered them. Either that, or run them through the "showers". Amazing mentality - I wonder where I've seen it's ilk before?
Bump. A unanimous court agreed. The Constitution does not have on 'on/off' switch, to be turned off by any two bit dictator at will.
LOL! Yep, you must have thought you weren't in Kansas Iowa anymore.
I am glad stainless and family made it through safely.
Ass backwards. The Confederates renounced their allegiance to the 'mystical Union' [*music in the background*] by exercising their God given right to self government.
A later decision, unanimously decided by the Supreme Court, holds that your argument is so much bovine scatology.
Nothing like sending the military to 'guard' the pooling booths, to prevent those disloyal copperheads from voting for his competitors.
Wow, you don't give up do ya? There was a German dictator that shared your views. And one in the USSR and one just captured in Iraq. You should be proud. </sarcasm>
Lincoln passed the 14th Amendment? He certainly didn't fight a war to free the first slave! He wanted to REWARD them with a free, all expense paid trip to Panama, Mexico, anywhere but within the United states Of America.
I think you mean the 13th Amendment.
You'd been corrected on this argument two or three times even before you posted it to me. Don't dish that swill as fresh.
Either the secessionists were out of the Union, and were foreign nationals -- and you have virtually conceded that argument -- or they were not. You can't have it both ways and just do what you want.
Oh, but wait -- that is the point, isn't it, El Supremo?
That too ;o)
Concurring bump. Worth repeating.
Except that you forgot to mention "raising the bar" and "deliberately misquoting court cases and then sticking labels on them that say 'THE SUPREME COURT HELD THAT....'"
Furthermore, I think it would have to be a very short list of personalities whose reputations were ever restored by the serving up of a steaming pile.
Concurring thud-bump. <crockery bounces>
That's the consistently employed device in all the court cases cited here that pretend to put secession and the secessionists on trial, in order to find their acts "illegal" for some immediate purpose of the Government.
But Job One is to ignore the elephant in the room, which is the competence of the powers exercised, the legality of their form of exercise, and the consequent legality of secession and must flow from it like a river, which is the confession of the legitimacy of the Confederacy.
consequent legality of secession and that which must flow.....
Solly. <8^\
Me too, but don't worry, they've already admitted they don't read them. ;o)
heyworth is acting in the BEST INTEREST of dixie. since 'ole WP has been banned (i assume permanently????), heyworth is taking the lead in making the damnyankees & their hatefilled cause against dixie look WORSE. that is a GOOD THING;he's/she's one of the BEST players on OUR team!
heyworth is NO great mind, seems to be UNeducated & his/her IGNORANCE of the most basic facts about 19th century America & the WBTS is helpful in making him/her & the unionist loonies on FR look RIDICULIOUS. that too is a GOOD THING. i hope he/she sticks around, is not banned & continues his assault on me & the TRUE CAUSE!
i would think you & N-S, as the two unionists with a brain, otoh, would be trying to muzzle him/her.
in response to your other comment about the "crimes against humanity", since when does "enforcement of the law" include:
MASS RAPES,
the TORTURE & COLDBLOODED MURDER of TENS of THOUSANDS of CIVILIAN WOMEN & CHILDREN,
organized ARMED ROBBERY,
the wholesale LOOTING of civilian property,
the intentional BURNING/LOOTING of CHURCHES & SYNAGOGUES for personal profit &
TORTURING & MURDERING HELPLESS POWs by the TENS of THOUSANDS (at least 15,000 at just ONE of the damnyankee death camps)????
i wonder if you think the resistance groups that fought the NAZI regime were ILL-advised AND if you think their war against the NAZI invaders was UNLAWFUL???? inquiring minds want to know.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
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