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
Perhaps that thing hanging down is the chain pull to flush the left-wing toilet.
Will the ignorance ever cease?!
"Here are the definitions I posted ..."
"Well, three different dictionaries with three definitions ALL state that force is a part of it. And in a military sense, the exertion of force to obtain something almost always involves either a skirmish (meaning a small battle) or a battle."
WRONG! Only according to your highly selective "thought processes" and willfully incomplete documentation of the full meaning of the word. And you even failed to notice that in two of the definitions, an alternative to force is mentioned! ("by force OR CRAFT"; "by force, surprise, OR STRATAGEM") What a maroon!!
The real point is, my use of the term was absolutely correct:
"capture: 2. To gain possession or control of"
American Heritage Dictionary
No battles. No skirmishes. No necessity for the use of force of any type.
That you ignorantly or deceitfully misconstrued my meaning, despite the abundant documentation and clear context, is not my problem. It is just another indication of the weakness of your argument and your tendency to bluster in the face of the truth.
"It means that whatever moron used it doesn't know the plain and common meaning of the word "capture."
Hoist on your own petard.
"I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."
You mean in the "sovereign and independent" state of Texas?
"Where Indian fights are colorful sights,
and nobody takes a lickin'
When [rebel] and redskin
both turn chicken!"
There wasn't ever going to be a Battle of Fort Davis.
The Texans were running away too quickly.
"Full meaning of the word," eh? Is that like the "world test" for going to war? Or the Non-Seq test for obiter dictum? I suspect that it is as all three change their meanings out of convenience to the user, namely John Kerry, Non-Seq, and you. The fact remains that three common-use definitions from three different dictionaries ALL define capture with the use of force. Then there's also the etymological issue. Capture derives from latin variants on captus, namely captivus, a word meaning one that is held by force, or a prisoner. And finally there is the basic issue of possibility, namely it is impossible to capture, and thus take away from another, something that is not owned or claimed by anybody such as, say, a bunch of abandoned ruins.
And you even failed to notice that in two of the definitions, an alternative to force is mentioned! ("by force OR CRAFT"; "by force, surprise, OR STRATAGEM")
Sigh. You never learn, do you.
strat·a·gem ( P ) Pronunciation Key (strt-jm) n. 1. A military maneuver designed to deceive or surprise an enemy.
Obviously the cavalry action would have been a military maneurer, thus the question: who was their enemy? A cactus? An armadillo?
And of course there is craft, in its uncommon usage (which was no doubt the furthest thing imaginable from your simplistic mind when you used the word capture intending to connote a battle, but let's give you the benefit of the doubt) found from Princeton Word Net: "shrewdness as demonstrated by being skilled in deception"
...which begs the question, WHO did they decieve? A rattlesnake? Desert ghosts? The Marfa lights?
That's not what general Banks learned at Sabine Pass. In reality we were smart enough to realize that a run down fort in the middle of nowhere was useless. The Californy Cavalry learned that the hard way by riding across the desert in the middle of august to find themselves a pile of scrapwood.
I'm not sure I read this the same way you do. If I have the right, I have the right. Lincoln oppressed those whom he disagreed with. By what agency could a state "secede" if there was no constitutional provision to do so? It is logically absurd.
Same goes for his linguistic charades. The guy is nothing but word games in every single debate, yet he's a terrible sophist and even worse at etymology!
Don't look for a coherent answer to that. He is a walking logical absurdity personified - the same type that reasons along the following lines:
"We know that Saint Abe is perfect, therefore Saint Abe can do no wrong"
"And those who can do no wrong are perfect"
"Saint Abe can do no wrong, thus it is proven that Saint Abe must be perfect"
"Since Saint Abe is perfect, all that contradicts him is flawed"
...Saint Abe being Lincoln of course in their minds. Every argument that comes from that side of threads like this one is built around justifying and excusing the acts of Lincoln at all costs to maintain the farcical state of perfection they have placed him in. They behave like cultists, or mohammedans
Yes, I know. Although I didn't read all 2400 some posts I read enough to get the general drift. It is just my take on things.
Every argument that comes from that side of threads like this one is built around justifying and excusing the acts of Lincoln at all costs to maintain the farcical state of perfection they have placed him in. They behave like cultists, or mohammedans.
If I hadn't come to the realization from my own research, "The Real Lincoln" wouldn't have influenced me. But it only confirmed what I already understood.
I admired the coherence of your arguments, (and nolo chan's) and the reasoning is clear.
I didn't really want to get involved in this debate because there is no possible resolution, but certain aspects bothered me. For example:
The court may reverse itself in later decisions, but almost never on the same set of circumstances.
The almost means that the principle is forefeit. It either is or isn't. If it is violated one time, then it isn't a principle. This guy is one slippery fish. He does this continually. So do his compadres, or should I say comrades?
In the final analysis, such as these never want to address the centralization of power that sets the stage for the usurpation of freedom that takes place today. It is the basis for Kerry's wife saying that every child will get health care, "from day one" or the concept of universal health care guaranteed by the federal government.
If we, as a state, don't have the right to secede from this insanity - under threat of war - then there is no such thing as freedom. It is just another form of tyranny.
Yes, you Texans were smart enough to leave your sick and wounded behind. "A good idea," you say, "medical common sense." Why? "There were several hundred miles of barren open desert between El Paso and San Antonio. Trying to transport wounded soldiers across that desert in the middle of July would have been a death sentence to them all."
Of course, your story is one big fabrication! The average high temperature at San Antonio in July is 92 degrees. In August it is 95 degrees; in September it is 95 degrees, and in October it is 90 degrees. There is not that much difference between July and October, and the abandoned confederate sick and wounded made the trip in September, with a Union escort for safety, just fine. It seems that the Confederates were more concerned about bugging out before the Californians showed up, than about their wounded comrades-in-arms. As Hunt documents:
"Even the retreating confederate soldiers must have respected the commander of the column from California [General Carleton] for his consideration of the prisoners of war. His letter [Sep 1, 1862] to the commander of the Confederate forces at San Antonio offers evidence of his compassion as well as the lack of subsistence.
"Sir: I found upon my arrival here, twenty or more sick and wounded soldiers of the Confederate States army whom I was ordered by General Canby, commanding the Department of New Mexico, to make prisoners of war.
"These men, at their earnest solicitations, I sent to San Antonio on their parole. They have been furnished with rations for forty day and with medicine and hospital stores necessary for the road. I have also furnished two wagons for those who cannot walk, and have sent an escort of one lieutenant and twenty-five rank and file of the first cavalry to guard them from attack by Mexicans or Indians until a sufficient force of your army is met to whom they can be transferred; or until they reach some point near San Antonio from which they can travel with safety. From that point the lieutenant is ordered to return with his party and all the means of transportation belonging to the United States with which he was entrusted for the use of his escort and for the benefit of the prisoners."
Of General Henry H. Sibley, Confederate commander in west Texas and New Mexico, it is written: "He believed that his troops would be able to live off the land of New Mexico, and that the Union troops would not resist a Confederate invasion. On both counts, he was mistaken. While he defeated Union forces at Valverde and La Glorieta, he was unable to withstand the Union counterattack. He and his 1,500 remaining troops withdrew to Fort Bliss, Texas, and went to San Antonio to escape the California Column, under Union Brig. Gen. James H. Carleton. After this, Sibley was assigned to minor commands, and struggled with chronic illness and alcoholism."
A state could also leave the Union by consent of the other states. This need not be unanimous consent, because as a legislative majority in Congress can evolve (create) a new state, so too can it devolve a state.
"We know that Saint Abe is perfect, therefore Saint Abe can do no wrong" "And those who can do no wrong are perfect"
Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent. The form is wrong. It should be All A is B, A therefore B. You have here, All A is B, B therefore A, which is fallacious. That may be the way this guy debates, but the structure is wrong.
and again
"Saint Abe can do no wrong, thus it is proven that Saint Abe must be perfect" "Since Saint Abe is perfect, all that contradicts him is flawed"
Same error. Can't affirm the Consequent.
Obvious example.
All horses are mammals.
That is a mammal.
Therefore, it is a horse.
I don't know if you were illustrating the nature of his errors, or making them yourself. In either case, it is logically absurd.
"capture: 2. To gain possession or control of"
American Heritage Dictionary
"Sigh. You never learn, do you.
"stratagem: 1 a : an artifice or trick in war for deceiving and outwitting the enemy b : a cleverly contrived trick or scheme for gaining an end"
Exactly how does a trick imply the use of force? I made no claim that the California Cavalry used a ruse capture Fort Davis. They rode right in and reclaimed it. You seem to be hallucinating.
Sergeant Morgan O'Rourke : Agarn, I don't know why everybody says you're so dumb!
Corporal Randolph Agarn : Who says I'm dumb?
His orthography sux, too -- and I'm not exactly blown away by his apologetics, either.
Inside-out reasoning.
The Constitution is basically a listing of sovereign powers conveyed to the new federal government by the sovereign States whose Union existed in the Congress under the Articles previously, and whose sovereignty had been presented each of the 13 States seriatim and by capitulations of King George III in the Treaty of Paris of 1783.
So George III made each and every one of his former colonies an independent State, imbued with all his own powers.
The Constitution defined a new relationship among these sovereign States, and created a new federation and Union.
The point here is, anything not conveyed to the Union specifically and explicitly, was reserved. The Tenth Amendment memorializes and formalizes the reservation, and makes it explicit.
Ergo, secession need not be described in, by, or under the Constitution, because it is a sovereign act of the People, i.e. a supraconstitutional act undertaken at a pay grade above the Constitution itself, and ergo above and beyond the review of any constitutional officer of the Union.
Here is the pecking order:
1. God.
2. People = State (in convention assembled as the People) = kings, emperors, and the Powers of the Earth
3. Constitution and Constitutional Law
4. United States Government, US statutes, treaty law
And so on.
DingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingggggg.....
Winner!
Not true. There is no constitutional mechanism such as you describe.
Ratification and joining the Union was a function of the decision of each individual State (People) in its ratification convention. The decision was taken by each State in its own, solitary discretion.
Secession is the same, in reverse.
Territories petitioned for admission to statehood. They do not have the status of States when they petition Congress.
The original 13 States, however, walked through the front door as peers -- and they didn't ask anyone's permission!
When former territories are granted statehood, they become full States with all the powers and reserved powers of the original 13. Sovereignty is conveyed to them which is fully the equal of all the other States, which they have the authority to convey to them as sovereign entities in their own right, just as King George conveyed their own sovereignty to them.
Uh oh. You realize that by stating the obvious, you've invited the, "Who's that trip-trapping across my bridge" treatment?
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