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Lincoln’s 'Great Crime': The Arrest Warrant for the Chief Justice
Lew Rockwell.com ^ | August 19, 2004 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

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


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; Miscellaneous
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To: capitan_refugio
I have read a couple of his books, but that is about it. He's not on my list of regular references. Can you cite the McPherson quotations I reportedly made?...

Since you challenged me, absolutely confident I wouldn't find a quote, I accepted the challenge, never mind that I had to crawl back up six months' worth of threads to find you out:

The Confederate battle flag continues to be a symbol of regional pride

Posted by capitan_refugio to stand watie
On News/Activism 03/04/2004 1:31:13 AM CST · 985 of 1,042

Stand, at least you are true to form. You contend "liberty" was the main southern cause for secession. Let us investigate the declaration of several of the secessionist states, to find out what they said the reasons were. That's fair, isn't it - I mean their reasons in their own words?
Here's what Georgia said:.....

[snipping for relative brevity, from your very long, "hairball" post]

"I want Cuba, ... I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason - for the planting and spreading of slavery." - Senator Albert Gallatin Brown of Mississippi (quoted in "Battle Cry of Freedom, pg 106)[Emphasis supplied]

"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?" - Robert Hunter of Virginia, discussing the proposal to form slave regiments in the CSA army.

[snipping again]

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The page citation you gave, puts a copy of McPherson in your hands. You didn't just happen to remember that because you "have read a couple of his books."

So who is "dripping with dishonesty" now?

The larger significance of this quote, which is not "embedded" in a quotation from someone else, but using McPherson to quote Gallatin to make McPherson's argument, is quite precisely that you spent several posts making this argument to stand_watie and others: that the primary cause of the Civil War was slavery, from which flows McPherson's further argument (which you embraced in all its squirmy Stalinist sequelae) that all measures were justified in the War Between the States, because the South was morally maculate and an oppressor class to boot, and that Lincoln was a liberator and an expunger. (Do you want me to go back up there and quote you gloating to your opponent that we ought to rejoice that the South was devastated [your word, "devastated"]?)

You are channeling pure Marxist ideological arraunt. I have identified the idea, and the sentiment that, like Dr. Frankenstein's amanuensis, intimately attends it, both as to their form and their source -- Marxist scholarship. You wallow in both, and then you deny it and challenge me to prove it. Well, bite me. For your rudeness. For wishing all the people of the South had died. For jumping on people because their opinions were incorrect -- yes, I looked up your first post on this thread, too -- and then giving them a hard time ad hominem, lying to us (yeah, you did), brawling on quotes and shouting "prove it to me" after you have uttered endless unsupported statements of your own, and for appealing to force, and to the sword -- for all of that. You aren't the legend that you are in your own mind, bud.

You keep bringing up "marxist authorities" with no specificity beyond an extremely weak link to McPherson. Since you "called me out" on that, you have the obligation to prove it. I am quite confident that you will either run and hide, or fail in the attempt.

Slur. Bite me again. Then go peel me a grape.

The derogatory and hateful language used by your group with reference to Lincoln is proof enough. If you believe that have been included, unfairly, by association, then I retract that assignation to you.

Retraction accepted.

You will find that I accuse Lincoln of tyranny, because his remedies were largely extraconstitutional and often secretive, but most of all because IMHO his remedies required war, and so he sought it out -- and against his own countrymen, over mere political differences. I say this without blinking the responsibility of intemperate men like Edmund Ruffin, or incautious and insufficiently reflective men like Jefferson Davis (who took the proffered bait of Fort Sumter, and bought himself a war, and his country's ruin), or the destructiveness of excessively combative generals like Lee and Hood, who incurred great and unnecessary losses in their own ranks by active campaigning and aggressive battle. Everybody gets some blame for the 600,000 battlefield dead, and for the indeterminate number of other deaths during the war. My point is, the heaping helping owing and due to the man up on Rushmore has been too long deferred, and that we should now begin to count the cost of Mr. Lincoln's War, and resolve to send him the bill.

2,061 posted on 09/27/2004 7:40:43 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: lentulusgracchus
well said.

lincoln, the TYRANT & GREAT spiller of INNOCENT blood AND his coven of thugs, criminals & murderers SHOULD be "OUTED".

free dixie,sw

2,062 posted on 09/27/2004 7:50:13 AM PDT by stand watie ( being a damnyankee is no better than being a racist. damnyankee is a LEARNED prejudice.)
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To: Non-Sequitur
So when Capitan Refugio stated that the matter of who could suspend habeas corpus was not a question before the bench in Bollman, and you asked for a source, were you just trying to be annoying, too?

No, I wasn't trying to be annoying, I was trying to be germane and find the decision to read it. I had been trying to stand aside from this particular micturition contest, but it became obvious I had to break down and read the damned decision, and not just the epitomes.

The issue here is that capitan keeps insisting that Ex Parte Bollman & Swartout was a treason case, not a case about habeas corpus. So he has a dog in the fight -- which is about his credibility, really -- and I didn't, so I was trying to stay out.

And your statement, paraphrasing capitan, "the matter of who could suspend habeas corpus was not a question before the bench" (emphasis added), is correct as far as it goes, but it's a red herring.

Marshall's decision does mention the source of the habeas power and who can wield it, which necessarily involves interpretation of who can suspend it as well. It's a casuistical argument as to whether Marshall's comments on that section of the Constitution are dicta or binding interpretation adjudicating the case before him. I'm not going to get into arguing with you over that.

We're all about five posts away from having to retain counsel to help with further discussion.

2,063 posted on 09/27/2004 8:29:11 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: lentulusgracchus
And your statement, paraphrasing capitan, "the matter of who could suspend habeas corpus was not a question before the bench" (emphasis added), is correct as far as it goes, but it's a red herring.

Hardly that, it's a central point in the claim by Nolu Chan and GOPcapitalist et.al. that Ex Parte Bollman ruled only congress can suspend habeas corpus, therefore Lincoln's actions were illegal. And far from needing to retain counsel any good legal dictionary will define obiter dictum for you, and any good civics text will point out that the Supreme Court cannot make advisory rulings because of the separation of powers. The court can only rule for the purpose of stare decisis on matters which have happened. Habeas corpus had not been suspended by anyone prior to the Bollman case. The court could therefore not rule on who may suspend the writ. Any comments made on who may suspend it therefore qualify as obiter dictum.

2,064 posted on 09/27/2004 8:41:29 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur (Jefferson Davis - the first 'selected, not elected' president.)
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To: capitan_refugio
Please post something ex iudicio from Taney expressing the views you wish him to possess. As Attorney General, his views on the subject were the same as Berrien, his predecessor. His views were mirrored by 6 other justices on the US Supreme Court, the St. Louis Circuit Court, and the St. Louis Federal Court, and the Missouri State Supreme Court.

"By declaring that slaves could never become free and free black men could never be citizens of the United States under the Constitution as written, Taney blocked the last avenues of legal and realistic political recourse for changing the status quo. Former slave Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists realized that a higher authority would have to overrule the ultimate constitutional authority of our country. After the Scott decision, the only recourse the reformers had was revolution and ultimately war."

ROTFLMC*A!!!!! It didn't reqire a war, it required an Amendment to allow NATIVE blacks to acquire federal citizenship. Lincoln, on the other hand, supported an Amendment that would have PREVENTED their citizenship forever, by guaranteeing that slavery would exist forever. Lincoln was the RACIST.

2,065 posted on 09/27/2004 8:42:13 AM PDT by 4CJ (Laissez les bon FReeps rouler)
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To: nolu chan; capitan_refugio
....quoting Taney interpreting Federal law. That would be Federal law that permitted slavery in every state of the union. That would be a Constitution that recognized and protected the institution of slavery. ....Taney's great sin was telling the ugly truth and documenting it by quoting a series of acts of the New England hypocrites.....

Taney was not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Morality in the United States. His job, and the job of the other justices, was to interpret Federal law, including the Constitution, as it was, not as they or anyone else felt it should be.

Concurring bump.

capitan attributes, for the purpose of demonizing Taney, personal animus against Negroes that may or may not have been there. But if Taney were, as you say, doing his job, then what is reflected in Dred Scott is not prejudice and racism in Taney and the South, but prejudice and racism in all of 18th-century society.

But our more generous attribution of these biases to the rest of the country doesn't comport with capitan's purpose, so we get the tirade against Taney, and not a word, not a scrap of acceptance of your point, that Lincoln shared these prejudices, and that the Civil War was not the great crusade to "liberate" the Negro that the revisionists say it was, but rather an extraconstitutional remedy for getting rid of the Negro -- and burning down the South to achieve it, if necessary.

2,066 posted on 09/27/2004 8:46:57 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: lentulusgracchus
!!!!!!

furthermore, lincoln the destroyer said that he intended to KILL or DRIVE OUT "every red savage in the country".

nice guy, huh?

free dixie,sw

2,067 posted on 09/27/2004 8:52:35 AM PDT by stand watie ( being a damnyankee is no better than being a racist. damnyankee is a LEARNED prejudice.)
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To: lentulusgracchus
"The page citation you gave, puts a copy of McPherson in your hands. You didn't just happen to remember that because you "have read a couple of his books."

That collection of quotations on the March 2004 post cited came from a well-known list on a website. Try here:

http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/quotes.html

Your "deductive" powers need improvement. And you had to go back to March! That's 6 months ago!!! Doesn't seem like I quote McPherson all that often, does it? I'm willing to concede a reference every 3 months or so - maybe even as many as 10 in the last few years, out of about 5,000 made. That's what I mean by "very rarely." And I still don't own anything by McPherson, but given your level of hysteria, I might go out and buy a few, just to find out why your panties are all in a bunch.

So what was the point you were trying to make???

"The page citation you gave, puts a copy of McPherson in your hands. You didn't just happen to remember that because you "have read a couple of his books." So who is "dripping with dishonesty" now?"

You are more than just a fool - you are a dishonest and conniving fool! And not nearly as smart as you think.

"Slur. Bite me again. Then go peel me a grape."

Crawl back into your hole.

"Do you want me to go back up there and quote you gloating to your opponent that we ought to rejoice that the South was devastated [your word, "devastated"]?"

Yes. The CSA losing the ACW was the best thing that ever happened to this continent. The negative ramifications of a southern victory are unfathomable. The characterization as "gloating" is incorrect, but the substance is on the mark. The CSA was based on a thoroughly evil foundation. It is a good thing that there existed people then, like we have now, who had the courage to face evil head on, and the will to defeat it.

2,068 posted on 09/27/2004 8:54:59 AM PDT by capitan_refugio
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To: capitan_refugio
don't you wish you were correct???

the policies of the lincoln administration/coven of thugs was anything but decent.

the best thing for FREEDOM would have been an EARLY dixie TOTAL VICTORY at manassas, swiftly followed by capturing DC & a swift & honorable peace between the 2 nations.

free dixie,sw

2,069 posted on 09/27/2004 8:58:15 AM PDT by stand watie ( being a damnyankee is no better than being a racist. damnyankee is a LEARNED prejudice.)
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To: Non-Sequitur
To the case before it. But since habeas corpus had not been suspended then it was not a matter before the court, and your answer is incorrect.

Your arbitrary exclusion of case material that you do not like is amusing though ultimately wrong, non-seq. The court can rule on anything that is material to the case. If the habeas corpus clause is material to the case the court can rule on it, whether there was a suspension or not. Marshall did just that, finding the habeas corpus clause to be the basis upon which Congress could constitutionally authorize the courts to issue writs and thus, necessarily, the only way that authority could be withdrawn from the courts.

2,070 posted on 09/27/2004 9:02:08 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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To: Non-Sequitur
The case before the court was not whether their power to issue the writ had been suspended.

No non-seq. It was an even more basic issue than that, namely whether they had the basic power to issue writs. To find the power to issue writs necessarily entails a determination of where that power comes from and, with it, under what circumstances it is denied to the court. It's been a valiant effort, non-seq, but you are simply wrong on this one. The court's ability to rule comes upon what is material to the case, not what non-seq personally decides they can and cannot rule upon out of his own convenience.

2,071 posted on 09/27/2004 9:07:14 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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To: Non-Sequitur
If habeas corpus has not been suspended then why should the court be ruling on who may suspend it?

Because the question of who may suspend it was material to the case.

2,072 posted on 09/27/2004 9:09:19 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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To: 4ConservativeJustices
"[Taney's] views were mirrored by 6 other justices on the US Supreme Court, the St. Louis Circuit Court, and the St. Louis Federal Court, and the Missouri State Supreme Court."

His views were not "mirrored" by six other justices. I refer you to Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case, Chapter 14, "What the Court Decided." From the first paragraph:

"Only one thing was certain. Dred Scott had lost his eleven-year legal battle for freedom in the last court of appeal. Seven of the nine justices agreed that at law he was still a slave. Beyond that simple fact, the results of the contest were far from clear. In his 'opinion of the Court,' Chief Justice Taney had emphatically excluded Negroes from citizenship and denied Congress the power to prohibit slavery in the territories. But were these declarations part of the ratio decidendi and therefore authoritative? Concerning the first, there was doubt that it had the support of the majority of the justices, while the second was promptly challenged with the label, "obiter dictum." "It didn't reqire a war, it required an Amendment to allow NATIVE blacks to acquire federal citizenship."

Prior to the Dred Scott decision it required neither. Full federal Negro citizenship was hampered by post-constitution legislation. State citizenship for negroes varied from state to state. Taney interpreted the Constitution to support his own extreme racial opinions, setting aside all state and federal legislation on the subject which was at variance with his views.

2,073 posted on 09/27/2004 9:20:48 AM PDT by capitan_refugio
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To: capitan_refugio
Doesn't seem like I quote McPherson all that often, does it? I'm willing to concede a reference every 3 months or so - maybe even as many as 10 in the last few years, out of about 5,000 made.

You made McPherson's argument in a thread I read less than six months ago. I remembered it. You were part of the Pink Chorus singing the Battle Cry of Freedom rag.

You may or may not have shared McPherson and Foner's objective (IMHO) of using ACW and civil-rights issues to demonize Southern conservatives, in order to split the GOP coalition (see the Christopher Caldwell article I referenced upthread: you can search it out on Atlantic Monthly's site in their 1998 archived articles). Nevertheless, in the thread from which I quoted you, it wasn't just the quote, it was the metaphysical argument for the complete and total destruction of the South that you were championing. It was an important argument, which is why I remembered it, and I remembered your making it.

So what was the point you were trying to make???

Point's made, and documented. Slothful induction, more sand in the eyes. You're such an eye-gouger. We shouldn't give you credit for anything, just on general principle.

You are more than just a fool - you are a dishonest and conniving fool! And not nearly as smart as you think.

Blah, blah, blah.

Crawl back into your hole.

I would, but I'm afraid I'd find you there.

The CSA losing the ACW was the best thing that ever happened to this continent.

No, it wasn't. The arrival of European civilization was. Search on "Peter Brimelow, -stocks, -'Wall Street'"

The CSA was based on a thoroughly evil foundation.

Same one the USA was based on, bub.

You're just trying to use slavery to engage in moral vilification for partisan and rabble-rousing purposes. You have no business, if you're a conservative, in bed with people like Eric Foner and James McPherson. They are working this grift to the ruin, they hope, of the United States and its people. It's understandable that they should be grinding this Lincolnite organ -- but not that conservatives and Claremonsters should be helping them.

It is a good thing that there existed people then, like we have now, who had the courage to face evil head on, and the will to defeat it.

That's pure-dimensional vanguardism. Where's your regard for the rights and freedoms of the individual? You're wallowing in elite-led, mass totalitarianism, credere obeddere combattere, popular fronts, tides of history, syntheses and antitheses and all that crap. Smell the coffee, man.

2,074 posted on 09/27/2004 9:23:35 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: stand watie
lincoln the destroyer said that he intended to KILL or DRIVE OUT "every red savage in the country".

Phil Sheridan must have been in the room, and listening. "Cump" certainly was.

2,075 posted on 09/27/2004 9:25:23 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: capitan_refugio
Oh, and thanks for the link.
2,076 posted on 09/27/2004 9:27:27 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: nolu chan
"Quote one word of discontent with the decision emanating from Justice Nelson, Catron, Campbell, Daniel, Wayne, or Grier."

This was your request. Clearly Justice Catron was unhappy with aspects of the Taney opinion. Case closed.

2,077 posted on 09/27/2004 9:32:09 AM PDT by capitan_refugio
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To: lentulusgracchus
possibly so.

the TRUTH is that lincoln, the tyrant, HATED & FEARED all "persons of colour",asians,jews,latinos,indians,roman catholics & "muddy coloured people" (mixed-bloods like me!).

he said that we were ALL "somewhat less than human".

getting killed by an assassin does NOT make you a saint in anyone's eyes except the most IGNORANT of people.

getting killed, and thus getting promoted to secular sainthood by the northern press,the ONLY reason that "DIShonest abe" is remembered fondly today. he was nothing more or less than a CHEAP, scheming shyster lawyer/POLITICIAN, who was about the same sort as wee willie klintoon.

free dixie,sw

2,078 posted on 09/27/2004 9:35:37 AM PDT by stand watie ( being a damnyankee is no better than being a racist. damnyankee is a LEARNED prejudice.)
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To: nolu chan
"As usual, devoid of factual content. As usual, you sound like James Carville. The decision in Scott was 7-2, not 1-0."

Aside from the fact that Taney's published decision was never seen in full by the other justices, prior to publication (which suggests that the published decision was, indeed, 1-0), you need to go back and actually read chapters 12-14.

"Typical Capitan bullcrap. Such bullcrap relies upon quoting Taney interpreting Federal law."

The rest of your post is typical Taney idol-worship and rationalization.

2,079 posted on 09/27/2004 9:40:21 AM PDT by capitan_refugio
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To: capitan_refugio; lentulusgracchus
The CSA was based on a thoroughly evil foundation.

Nice try to invoke the moral argument, but you forfeited your right to credibly comment upon the immorality of slavery back when you attempted a defense of the indefensible. Somebody who cannot even bring himself to condemn mass murder and torture due to the fact that it would reflect unfavorably on his hero has no basis to criticize others over slavery.

2,080 posted on 09/27/2004 9:41:44 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
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