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
PLEASE continue to post. you are one of the southland's BEST recruiters, as you change neutrals into southrons & that is a GOOD THING.
YOU serve the RISEN SOUTH!
free dixie,sw
His position is reasonable, in that Lincoln had no warrant to make war on the Southern States that had withdrawn from the Union.
You will recall that Tennessee, Missouri, and Virginia had all rejected secession initially. In the case of Virginia, rejection was by the secession convention called specifically to consider the question. That should tell you something about what it took to push Virginia and Tennessee over the edge. It was Lincoln's call for troops to go kill people in the other States.
Lincoln couldn't argue "insurrection", since there was no "uprising" or "rebellion" or similar civil disorder certified to him by the governors of the Southern States. Gov. Sam Houston of Texas even refused Lincoln's solicitation of a certification, with its offer of 75,000 men stapled to it, and certified the opposite by his actions: that Texas's secession, like the secession acts of each of the other States, was a lawful act of the entire People of Texas, and that they had acted wholly within their powers to make the decision to secede.
Lincoln, absent a declaration of war by the Congress, without any true certification of rebellion or insurrection, had no right to proceed to war. We might argue, conditionally, about what might have been required for him to wage war constitutionally on the newly-estranged States, had Congress sat to consider the question.
But the bottom line is that Congress did not sit to consider secession, Lincoln did not recall the House to consider articles of war, he did not seek the advice and consent of the Senate. Instead, he undertook a clandestine and left-handed decision for war. War was his policy, undertaken as soon as the House adjourned. He did so wilfully and extraconstitutionally, from the standpoint of the United States Constitution and the U.S. political system, and as an alien aggressor from the POV of the seceding States.
Thus GOPcapitalist has made a strong case, that Lincoln's responsibility -- which Lincoln himself gave voice on at least one occasion -- for the WBTS was very grave, and that having no warrant to wage it, his actions were wanton and burdened accordingly.
Violence in posts and personally abusive invective (Capitan_refugio's #1488 having been called to my attention) are mentioned in FR's TOS, but it seems to me that outright deception and dishonesty in argument is likewise abusive of all other persons reading a thread, including lurkers, whom such deceptions are intended to mislead.
"Catch me if you can" may be a standard operating practice for a liberal troll or a Marxist apparatchik "plying his avocation", but I thought conservatives were better than that.
There are a number of people with whom we've shared differences but haven't ever had to put up with this kind of intent to mislead and deceive. Citing a contaminated Supreme Court opinion like Texas vs. White (or the infamous anti-RKBA 1939 Miller decision, or Plessey vs. Ferguson, or Roe vs. Wade) is one thing, but just making stuff up by transposing briefs, pleas, and holdings for one another is something I don't think readers of these threads ought to have to put up with.
Respectfully request removal of the posts nolu chan cites as disinformative and deceptive.
An honest poster would have made the request of AM's himself, immediately the error had been brought to his attention.
You're a loony.
As did I. Then again, perhaps the persons in question are not truly conservatives. Capitan does have a tendency to take the "CBS News" approach to historical documentation.
For a person who proclaims his hatred of Lincoln, his endorsement of legal slavery, and who is a poster who hurls invective and innuendo with the worst of them,
I find it very disappointing that you would run to the admin moderator instead of standing on your own two feet.
The reason this type of post is called a "hairball" is that it is repetitive and disingenuous. You keep coughing them up.
As for you and your neo-confederate "friends" - gianni, 4conservativejustice, GOPcapitalist, and lentulusgracchus - your modus operandi is to smear and misrepresent. You revel in quoting Hitler and the most miserable of anti-American texts. I invite the moderators to review all of my posts! All of them. You'll find in four years I have had exactly two pulled - neither for overt profanity. So my posting record is virtually impeccable.
Your little tantrum here is rather embarrassing. If you can not debate the issues, then I suggest you stay off of these threads. You have chosen the loathsome task of defending the actions and the principles of the Confederacy.
None of my posts are outrightly deceptive or dishonest. Whenever I make a mistake, I correct it. There is nothing there dishonest or deceptive.
And you can me abusive? Can you justify your personal attack "a liberal troll or a Marxist apparatchik"? You must not see my post conserning Tom McClintock and conservative activism in the liberal state like California. My conservative credentials are unquestionable.
If you have a problem with the posts, then refute them. You don't do that, insterad you resort to personal attacks. I can take it, because of the fundamental correctness of my postion. The Republican Party is the "Party of Lincoln." As an avowed Lincoln-hater, this must really bother you, and must, in part, underlie your desire to have posts defending Lincoln and the cause of the North in the Civil War pulled.
I feel sorry for you.
As in my two previous posts, I point out yet again the neo-reb proclivity for ad hominem attacks. When you wallow in the cesspool, you're going to end up dirty.
...so says the guy who posts tracts from left wing reparationists, marxists, and berkeleyite wackos while making Stalinist endorsements of torture, arson, and other fundamentally unamerican abuses of civil liberties under the guise of defending his false idol.
"All the News that Fits"/"Whatever Works", eh? A friend who recently joined her county Democrats just sent me a CNN story spinning furiously on Iraq and quoting GOP senators (Hagel, McCain, Lindsay Graham, Lugar, Kyl) on Iraq to try to sell the "Bush is Lying to Us" line. I replied to her that if she were genuinely interested in discussing it -- which I challenged, based on earlier conversations -- she could use some of her free long-distance cellular minutes to call me next weekend and chat it up. I don't think my phone will ring. The whole country is so split along political lines, it really is realistic to speak of two countries again, just as in the 1850's.
Of course, our Marxist historian and poly-sci friends have been vigorously promoting this.......I wonder to what end?
</sarcasm>
By the way, my own cure for the "split" is to kick New England out of the Union, together with the east bank of the Hudson as high as the Fish Kill River. Let them join their socialist-meme pod-people pals in Canada.
And we get the western and northwestern provinces, of course, and all that Alberta natural gas and great BC coastline. And the northern archipelago, too, of course, west of Prince of Wales Island, and the Yukon and Nunavut.
Seems fair to me. We'd exile about 26,000,000 cranky, greedy liberals, and get about 12,000,000 relatively conservative Canadians in return -- including most of the ones who know how to mine gold, drill oil wells, and brew beer.
What could be a better or fairer deal?
I leave this one up to you mods. You can cowtow to the demands of the neo-confederate cabal, or you can stand up for the principles of the forum and the founder. It's not a difficult question.
CBS News => knowingly created false contents in four separate national guard memos to smear President Bush.
capitan_refugion => knowingly inserted false contents into four separate Supreme Court rulings to smear various southerners.
HEY CAPITAN! IF THE SHOE FITS....
free dixie,sw
color me PALEO-Confederate and i'll HAPPILY agree with the label.
otoh, the unionist loonies on FR (like heyworth, ditto,x,whisky papa,et.al.) post NOTHING of VALUE, but instead go about posting HATEFILLED, IGNORANT,SELF-RIGHTEOUS NONSENSE & trying "to dress that drivel up" as something worth reading.
NOT a single time has ANY of the unionist loonies EVER posted any ORIGIONAL SOURCE DATA for his/her rantings & lunatic, UNtruthful ANTI-southern nonsense. otoh, he/she/it are REALLY good at "namecalling" & PERSONAL attacks.
i asked one of them the other day for his ORIGIONAL SOURCE DOCUMENT & he/she gave me a (IRRELEVANT!) citation from an ENCYCLOPEDIA! (perhaps ORIGIONAL SOURCES post HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS in encyclopedias in his/her twisted world, but NOT in the REAL world that the rest of us reside in.)
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
Really? Cause that makes for three deceptions, all of the uncorrected, right there.
The Republican Party is the "Party of Lincoln."
It was at one time. It generally has not been since 1964 in all parts of the nation, and it never has been during its post reconstruction existence in the south. My state even bears the unusual distinction of never having been under Lincoln's rule since we left before he was inaugurated and were the last to come back well after his assassination. So why should the Republican Party of Texas celebrate a man who never did any good for our state, never ruled our state, and was despised by our state's heroes and founders such as Sam Houston?
The only reason he uses that term is its pejorative value. In short, he likes to be intentionally inflamatory.
Concurring Bump.
Oh, I agree fully. I would not lament for one moment if Massachusetts desired to leave. Heck, I may even support a vote to simply kick them out! That state is a disease upon this nation. Of the few conservatives who still live there, I fully sympathize with their plight and would offer them every opportunity to relocate. But there's no longer any reason to try and save the rot that is new england.
unionists are like that.
free dixie,sw
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