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
Gentleman, PERIOD.
Van Dorn had more than that at Pea ridge and was blown away. His army was destroyed.
Somehow I doubt that Grant ever said that 10,000 enemy were any kind of a threat.
Plenty of Rebels expected just that. They took off in all directions, especially Mexico and Egypt.
That may be the case and the custom now, where the justices exchange drafts and comments, and make revisions, but back in the 1850's, it was not the case. In fact, Taney would not even make a preliminary copy of the decision that he read available to Curtis. That is why the rule for prompt delivery to the Clerk existed.
"It's not the justices opinion until they are thru with it, and the final copy is published."
And the the majority/plurality opinion is the one which was reflects the voice of the Court and the vote on the issue.
Taney violated that rule to do exactly what the rule was meant to prohibit - Rewriting the opinion that had been voted on and delivered orally. Bad form ,Roger B. Dishonesty.
Gee, you keep changing the subject. The term "cop" is from England where it meant constable on patrol. It meant what we mean by duty officer.
Hardly the first. Jefferson, for one, threw it out when he purchased Louisiana.
As for the origin of "cop," you're just wrong.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cop2.htm
<[Q] From Billyboy Mackey: “Could you possibly tell me the origin of the slang term for policemen, cops?”
[A] Half a dozen explanations at least have been put forward for this one, including an acronym from “constable on patrol”, which is reminiscent of the story behind posh and quite certainly just as spurious. It is also said to come from the copper badges carried by New York City’s first police sergeants (patrolmen were alleged to have had brass ones and senior officers silver); it is almost as often said to refer to the supposedly copper buttons of the first London police force of the 1820s. Both these stories seem about equally unlikely.
The most probable explanation is that it comes from the slang verb cop, meaning “to seize”, originally a dialect term of northern England which by the beginning of the nineteenth century was known throughout the country. This can be followed back through the French caper to the Latin capere, “to seize, take”, from which we also get our capture.
The situation is complicated because there are—or have been—a number of other slang meanings for cop, including “to give somebody a blow”, and the phrase cop out, as an escape or retreat. Both of these may come from the Latin capere. But it’s suggested that another sense of cop, “to steal”, could come from the Dutch kapen, “to take or steal”. There’s also “to beware, take care”, an Anglo-Indian term from the Portuguese coprador, and phrases like “you’ll cop it!” (“you’ll be punished, you’ll get into trouble”), which could come from the idea of seizing or catching, but may be a variant of catch.
But the “seize; capture” origin for the police sense seems most plausible. So policemen are just those who catch or apprehend criminals, a worthy occupation. And a copper is someone who seizes, a usage first recorded in Britain in 1846.
You would have us believe that Mr. Sheperd, a "free person of colour", who could not vote in Virginia, be a member of the miltia in Virginia, and who could be expelled from the Commonwealth of Virginia altogether if the legislature decided to do so, had arrest powers over white people as part of an organization that wouldn't be established until over 60 years after he died? As our esteemed friends across the pond would say, pull the other one. It's got bells on it.
At least he could legally live there, which is more than could be said for most other states, and particularly those on the other side of the Ohio, at the time.
That would depend on the circumstances of his freedom wouldn't it, tu quoque boss? If he had been born a slave and freed some timr in the previous 50 years then legally he should have left the state or else he would have been liable to be sold back into slavery.
Apparently the Federal troops were ordered the night before the Texas troops came not to load their weapons or resist any large organized force attempting to take the facilities by force. To do so, IMO, might well have started the war and been the end of those Federal troops as well as the loss of all of their arms.
The Feds were aware that the armed force of Texans was coming. They appear to have had a better estimate (at least from the post-incident Federal correspondence) of the number of troops coming to San Antonio than the local newspaper had published the day before.
The Federal troops were awakened when the Texas troops started coming into the city at 4 AM. The Federal troops assembled and were told to stay in their quarters. A later report by their local officer noted that none of them could move without having several hundred guns pointed at them.
Twiggs negotiated that the Federal troops could take two batteries of light artillery with them, artillery that would have otherwise gone to the state whether Twiggs had chosen to fight or just acceded to the initial demand of the state.
If I remember the law correctly he would have had a year or more to move. Compare that with Illinois where staying more than about a week got you sent over to the indentured auction block.
Having been on several similar auto "safaris," both as a kid, and later as an adult with the kids in tow, I can appreciate your observations.
4CJ, you are condemned to remain "Amateur Hour" material unless you obtain your Capitan Juris Doctor degree. It requires rigorous training, but I thought perhaps I could offer a few pointers.
First you must learn to vehemently argue with an air of great authority about a court decision you have not read. For further guidance study the antics of capitan_refugio arguing the Mitchell case up until his #1370 where he states, "I have not read Mitchell, but the description in the Hamdi footnote is that the plantiff was a US citizen."
Next, you must learn compound lying, where one attention-getting statement draws attention away from the accompanying whoppers. For example see capitan_refugio #1370 where he states, "I have not read Mitchell, but the description in the Hamdi footnote is that the plantiff was a US citizen." The admission that he had not read Mitchell distracts you from realizing that there is no footnote and the cited description appears neither in any footnote nor in the Supreme Court decision in Hamdi nor in any court decision in any case. You just obtain a copy of a Petition for a Writ or any court pleading by any public defender and annoint it as the opinion of the Supreme Court.
Next, you must learn to simply deny the undeniable. For example, see capitan_refugio #237 "Bollman was not about habeas corpus."
Next, you must learn to do something completely ridiculous, for example quoting Mr. Carlisle, an attorney in the case of the Brilliante, and attributing it to the opinion of the Supreme Court in a different case, say the Amy Warwick. For lessons on how to do this, see capitan_refugio #649.
Next, you must learn to describe, with great conviction, a non-existent Supreme Court case. For example, the non-existent Supreme Court case of Lemmon v. The People, and blame the despicable non-existent result on the perfidy of Roger B. Taney. For an example, see capitan_refugio #386.
For extra credit, master the art of quoting a dissenting opinion as the opinion of the court.
Only when you have learned to demonstrate expertise such as described above, may you attain the Capitan Juris Doctor degree. With this degree, earned by said demonstrated expertise, you earn the right to call all others "Amateur Hour."
Good luck.
4CJ #1807 - "So in other words, your contention is that Fehrenbacher did NO ORIGINAL research, and simply relied on others?"
4CJ #1826 - "So again, your contention is that Fehrenbacher did not research the case, that he simply used the research of others, without any attempt at validating the information?"
Clarification ... or changing the subject? I made no such contention. Indeed, you will find that Fehrenbacher lists in his bibliography about every important published source concerning Taney and many unpublished personal papers, letters, etc. The issue of the 1818-19 case is illustative only to the extent that it bears on the "antislavery Taney myth," otherwise it has no bearing on the Dred Scott case. There is little or no reason why Fehrenbacher should have looked at the case; although it appears that he did. A good, concise researcher and writer will point the readers to the orignal supportive material that he has no intent on challenging.
Open your mind. Read the book.
I hear there are a couple of unreconstructed rebels there to this day!
Maybe it had something to do with some guy who said that he hoped for "malice toward none, with charity for all."
The slave owning families in the south were the ruling oligarchy. They tightly held the real power and were influential far beyond their numbers (which were about 30% of the population).
I believed I raised this hypothetical in the now-deleted 4,000+ post thread. As Virginia had not yet seceded when Twiggs capitulated, what do you think Twiggs' predecessor in the position might have done? The predecessor, of course, was Robert E. Lee.
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