Lincoln’s 'Great Crime': The Arrest Warrant for the Chief Justice

Lew Rockwell.com ^ | August 19, 2004 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

[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

[nolu chan]

[Nonsense] The nonsense is the connection that you made between this case and the impeachment of a cabinet official.

Mr. Chief Justice TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question whether under the Constitution the President has the exclusive power of removing executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.

[capitan_refugio]

"Here's an odd fact. Canby was Sibley's brother-in-law."

You're kidding! Small world.

[nolu chan]

SOVEREIGN STATES
Edgar Lee Masters

The Constitution was ratified by states, by sovereign states, not by the American people in mass. This is the history of the legalism of ratification. Going back of the legalism, another story emerges out of the records of those times. Beard in his work, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, made the following analysis: The movement for the Constitution was engineered by money, public securities, manufactures, trade and shipping. The initial steps in the forming of a new Constitution were taken by a small group of property interests. No popular vote was taken for the calling of the conven­tion which drafted the Constitution. A very large class of persons without property had no representatives, and no voice in the con­vention. The delegates to the convention themselves had an economic interest in the formation of a new government. The Constitution drafted was an economic document. Three fourths of the adult males in the states failed to vote for delegates who ratified the Constitu­tion, either positively abstaining from voting or else they were dis­franchised by property qualifications. The Constitution was ratified by not to exceed one sixth of the adult males. The delegates in the state conventions represented the same economic groups which were represented in the Constitutional Convention. Beard showed that it is questionable whether the delegates in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Virginia, and South Carolina were chosen by voters who approved of the Constitution. The vote in New York has been preserved for us by the Daily Advertiser, and this vote in New York may be taken as an intrepretation of the general public will in many of the states. Albany, Ulster, Duchess, Orange, Columbia, Mont­gomery, Suffolk, and Washington Counties polled 11,230 Anti-Federalist votes; and 5496 Federal votes. The former thereby won 41 delegates to the state convention. New York County, Westchester, Queens, Kings, Richmond won but 25 delegates. With the apportionment against them, the Anti-Federalists thus elected twice as many delegates as the Federalists.

Returning to the Union and government under the Constitution which Lincoln said he was sworn by an oath to defend and protect, while no one had an oath registered in heaven to destroy them, there is a popular supposition that in some way the states lost their sovereignty by the ratification of the Constitution; or if they did not suffer quite so serious a deprivation that there were clauses in the Constitution which made the government under it supreme, whereas the government under the Articles was limited. In this connection much has been said of the clause in the Constitution which reads: "This constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." But by Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation it was provided: "Every state shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation is submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every state, and the union shall be perpetual." In truth all con­ventions and compacts between sovereigns are the supreme law of the land. A treaty between Great Britain and the United States would be the supreme law in both realms, and binding upon the sovereignties and upon the subjects and citizens of both govern­ments without any clause to that effect in the organic law of either government. This must be so in the nature of things; and it is so by the express law of nations. The courts of both are bound to hold a treaty to be supreme, and no constitutional clause is necessary to empower them so to hold. And it is to be observed that only laws and treaties which are made in pursuance of the Constitution are the su­preme law; whence it follows that the Federal government was in this clause expressed to be one of limited powers, and that obedience to it is due only to the circumscribed extent that it legislates and makes treaties consonant to the grant of powers from the states expressed in the Constitution.

This discussion of Lincoln's theories of the Union and the Con­stitution, naturally leads to a consideration of the right of secession which the Southern states asserted, and which Lincoln resisted by the waging of one of the most cruel and bloody wars of history. If the right or wrong of slavery was in his opinion not sufficiently clear to warrant him in denouncing those who had slaves, as he said, the right or wrong of secession was certainly not clear enough to justify the killing of thousands of men for the purpose of demonstrating by arms its wrong. The truth is Lincoln did not know the Constitu­tion and its history sufficiently well to have a well based opinion on this subject. It is perhaps true that he was not aware of the fact that Webster, whom he followed, had modified his views on the nature of the Union, and the rights of states under it. As we have seen, Webster in 1830 had debated these vexed questions with Hayne, and in 1833 with Calhoun. In 1839 he expressed himself very differently from what he had done on those prior occasions. In January of the latter year he argued the case of The Bank of Augusta against Earle in the Supreme Court, when he used this language in ad­dressing the Court: "But it is argued, that though this law of comity exists as between independent nations, it does not exist between the states of this Union.... In respect to this law of comity, it is said, states are not nations; a sort of residuum of sovereignty is all that remains to them. The National sovereignty, it is said, is con­ferred on this government, and part of the municipal sovereignty.... Suppose that this Constitution had said, in terms after the language of the court below-all national sovereignty shall belong to the United States; all municipal sovereignty to the several states. I will say, that however clear, however distinct, such a definition may appear to those who use it, the employment of it, in the Con­stitution, could only have led to utter confusion and uncertainty. I am not prepared to say that the states have no national sovereignty. The laws of some of the states, Maryland and Virginia, for instance, provide punishment for treason. The power thus exercised is cer­tainly not municipal.... The term sovereignty does not occur in the Constitution at all. The Constitution treats states as states and the United States as the United States; and by a careful enumer­ation, declares all the powers that are granted to the United States, and all the rest are reserved to the states.... The states of this Union, as states, are subject to all the voluntary and customary laws of nations." The Supreme Court, in passing on the case which Webster had thus argued, said: "It has, however, been supposed that the rules of comity between foreign nations do not apply to the states of this Union; that they extend to one another no other rights than those which are given by the Constitution... and that the courts are not at liberty to presume, in the absence of all legislation on the subject, that a state has adopted the comity of nations toward the other states.... The Court thinks otherwise. The intimate union of these states, as members of the same great political family; the deep and vital interests which bind them so closely together; should lead us, in the absence of proof to the contrary, to presume a greater degree of comity and friendship and kindness towards one another, than we should be authorized to presume between foreign nations. And when (as without doubt must occasionally happen) the interest or policy of any state requires it to restrict the rule, it has but to declare its will, and the legal presumption is at once at an end. But until this is done, upon what grounds could this court refuse to administer the law of international comity between these states? They are sovereign states.... We think it is well settled that by the law of comity among nations, a corporation created by one sovereignty is permitted to make contracts in another, and to sue in its courts; and that the same law of comity prevails among the several sovereignties of this Union."

Was Lincoln familiar with the letter which Webster wrote to the Barings in London in the year 1839? They had asked him for a legal opinion as to whether the legislature of one of the states had the legal and constitutional power to contract loans at home and abroad. "To this I answer," wrote Webster, "that the legislature of a state has such power; and how any doubt could have arisen on this point it is difficult for me to conceive. Every state is an independent, sovereign, political community, except in so far as certain powers, which it might otherwise have exercised, have been conferred on a General Government, established under a written Constitution, and exerting its authority over the people of all the states. This general government is a limited government. Its powers are specific and enumerated. All powers not conferred upon it still remain with the states and with the people. The state legislatures on the other hand, possess all usual and extraordinary powers of government, subject to any limitations which may be imposed by their own constitutions, and with the exception, as I have said, of the operation of those powers of the Constitution of the United States." If Lincoln had read this and absorbed its truth he never would have delivered the Cooper Institute Speech.

SOURCE: Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln, The Man, Copr 1931, Reprint 1997, pp. 332-6.

[capitan_refugio]

From encyclopedia.com

Masters, Edgar Lee

1869-1950, American poet and biographer, b. Garnett, Kans. He maintained a successful law practice in Chicago from 1892 to 1920. Masters's Spoon River Anthology (1915), a collection of epitaphs in free verse revealing the secret lives of dead citizens, was acclaimed for its treatment of small-town American life. Less successful volumes that followed include Starved Rock (1919), Domesday Book (1920), Poems of People (1936), and Illinois Poems (1941). His Lincoln the Man (1931) is a bitter and prejudiced attack. Other biographies are Vachel Lindsay (1935), Whitman (1937), and Mark Twain (1938).

Edgar Lee Masters is known as the "John Wilkes Booth" of poetry.

Birds of a feather ...

[capitan_refugio]

"Why not simply let them heal at the only civilized location in hundreds of miles, especially when that location is indisputably within your own borders?"

With the knowledge that an opposing force was approaching your position, the commander of the confederate forces had two choices:

(1) Transport the sick and wounded, as well as possible, or
(2) Abandon them to be captured.

Sibley, on his flight back to San Antonio, chose the latter. You can make the case that it was the "humanitarian" choice, or I can make the case it was the "expedient" choice. Either way, they were left behind.

[GOPcapitalist]

With the knowledge that an opposing force was approaching your position

His position? The only time Carlton ever came even remotely close to Sibley's position was a brief skirmish near Tuscon. Sibley left because of Canby's actions in New Mexico, not Carlton's in Texas, and was well out of Carlton's way when his forces made it back to El Paso that May. Carlton was still running around somewhere in Arizona or western New Mexico at that time and did not make it to El Paso until August - four months after Sibley returned there and almost two months after Sibley's rear guard pulled out to San Antonio! To suggest that Sibley was running from some sort of imminent attack by Carlton - so fast that he allegedly didn't have time to bother with the wounded - is accordingly outright absurd.

the commander of the confederate forces had two choices: (1) Transport the sick and wounded, as well as possible, or (2) Abandon them to be captured.

Garbage! Why would he see some imminent need to transport them in June? Sibley did not know if Carlton was even going to head for El Paso considering that Carlton was a state away at the time of the pullout and considering that their forces only met once in a single skirmish outside of Tuscon. They were safe in El Paso and probably could have easily held off any attack by Carlton had they decided to stay, but that would have been strategically stupid since the war was for the most parts over in New Mexico and West Texas was of no strategic value.

Ockham's razor is simply against you on this one, capitan. Far from being the product of a convoluted botched exit strategy, the simplest explanation - that being the health threat posed by desert travel in the middle of summer - is the most likely.

[GOPcapitalist]

That's right, capitan. Call Masters and his book names then pretend what it actually says has gone away.

[nolu chan]

As usual, capitan_refugio cannot contest what has been said, he can only call the writer names. That the writer was quoting Daniel Webster and the United States Supreme Court does not matter. He is naturally Kerry-like in his ability.

CARL SANDBURG at encyclopedia.com

Sandburg's most ambitious work was his six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln (1926-39); this monumental work exalts Lincoln as the symbol and embodiment of the American spirit. The last four volumes won the Pulitzer Prize.

Sandburg noted that poor Whites were worse off than enslaved field hands who had better "quantities of food, clothing, shelter, and employment..." (Abraham Lincoln, The War Years, 4 vols., New York, 1939, Volume 1, page 11.) Indeed, there was little unemployment among the slaves. For pointing that out, Sandburg definitely earned an award.

Of course, the Illinois poet who gets showered with Lincolnian praise would be Carl Sandburg who prostituted his writing talents to shill for the following lie, which Sandburg penned in a letter of July 16, 1929 to Paul M. Angle: "the use of the word 'Nigger' was never indulged in by Lincoln unless he was quoting somebody..." Just who was Lincoln quoting at the sixth Lincoln-Douglas debate when, in front of 15,000 witnesses, Lincoln denied he wanted a "Nigger wife?" In the last debate, in front of 4,000 witnesses, Lincoln averred he had "no taste for running and catching niggers." Who was he quoting that time? In Carlinville, Lincoln opened a speech with, "the question is often asked, why this fuss about niggers?" A year later, in Elwood, Kansas, Lincoln said, "People often ask, why make such a fuss about a few niggers." It is efforts such as Sandburg's which win Lincoln awards and the Pulitzer.

Lincoln asserted the accuracy of Robert Roberts Hitt, the shorthand expert who reported the Lincoln-Douglas debates for the Chicago Tribune and included various N-bombs. Lincoln himself corrected the debate manuscripts before they were published as a collection, changed poorly chosen words and didn't edit or evince any qualms about the recorded N-bombs. Lincoln said, "In my own speeches, I have corrected only a few small typographical errors." Obviously, he did not consider the recorded N-bombs to be errors. One wonders who Sandburg thought Lincoln was quoting.

ALL LINKS go to the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy. P. Basler. Italics in original.

---

| Speech at Carlinville, Illinois, August 31, 1858 |

He [Lincoln] said the question is often asked, why this fuss about niggers?

---

| Speech at Elwood, Kansas, December 1 [November 30?], 1859 |

People often ask, ``why make such a fuss about a few niggers?''

---

|CW 2:396, Springfield, May 25, 1857. |

There is no longer any difficult question of jurisdiction in the Federal courts; they have jurisdiction in all possible cases, except such as might redound to the benefit of a "nigger'' in some way.

---

| First Debate with Stephen Douglas, Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858 |

[CW 3:20] When my friend, Judge Douglas, came to Chicago, on the 9th of July, this speech having been delivered on the 16th of June, he made an harangue there, in which he took hold of this speech of mine, showing that he had carefully read it; and while he paid no attention to this matter at all, but complimented me as being a "kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman,'' notwithstanding I had said this; he goes on and eliminates, or draws out, from my speech this tendency of mine to set the States at war with one another, to make all the institutions uniform, and set the niggers and white people to marrying together.

[CW 3:27] There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets and with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet march into Illinois and force them upon us.

---

| Third Lincoln-Douglas debate,Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858 |

We have seen many a "nigger'' that we thought more of than some white men.

---

| Speech at Springfield, Illinois June 10, 1856 |

He would occasionally launch out and lead his hearers to think that the most ultra abolitionism would follow, when, under the old whig eyes we have mentioned, he would soften his remarks to a supposed palatable texture. In this way, backing and filling, he frittered away anything of argument that he might have presented, convincing his audience, however, that his niggerism has as dark a hue as that of Garrison or Fred Douglass but that his timidity before the peculiar audience he addressed prevented its earnest advocacy with the power and ability he is known to possess. ... To attain power, by whatever means, was the burden of his song, and he pointed to the complexion of the Bloomington ticket as evidence of the desire of the factions to attain it by any process.

---

| August 9, 1856 |

Lincoln then took the stand and made a three hours speech. It was prosy and dull in the extreme---all about ``freedom,'' ``liberty'' and niggers.

---

| Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858 |

Then if Mr. Douglas did not invent this kind of Sovereignty, let us pursue the inquiry and find out what the invention really was. Was it the right of emigrants in Kansas and Nebraska to govern themselves and a gang of niggers too, if they wanted them? Clearly this was no invention of his, because Gen. Cass put forth the same doctrine in 1848, in his so-called Nicholson letter, six years before Douglas thought of such a thing. Gen. Cass could have taken out a patent for the idea, if he had chosen to do so, and have prevented his Illinois rival from reaping a particle of benefit from it. Then what was it, I ask again, that this ``Little Giant'' invented? It never occurred to Gen. Cass to call his discovery by the odd name of ``Popular Sovereignty.'' He had not the impudence to say that the right of people to govern niggers was the right of people to govern themselves. His notions of the fitness of things were not moulded to the brazen degree of calling the right to put a hundred niggers through under the lash in Nebraska, a "sacred right of self-government." And here, I submit to this intelligent audience and the whole world, was Judge Douglas' discovery, and the whole of it. He invented a name for Gen. Cass' old Nicholson letter dogma. He discovered that the right of the white man to breed and flog niggers in Nebraska was POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY!

Chicago Press and Tribune, September 11, 1858.

Way to go Abe!! Dropped the N-bomb four times in one paragraph in a public speech.

---

| Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858 |

Then, if Mr. Douglas did not invent this kind of sovereignty, let us pursue the inquiry and find out what the invention really was. Was it the right of emigrants in Kansas and Nebraska to govern themselves and a gang of niggers too, if they wanted them? Clearly this was no invention of his, because Gen. Cass put forth the same doctrine in 1848, in his so-called Nicholson letter---six whole years before Douglas thought of such a thing. Gen. Cass could have taken out a patent for the idea, if he had chosen to do so, and have prevented his Illinois rival from reaping a particle of benefit from it. Then what was it, I ask again, that this ``Little Giant'' invented? It never occurred to Gen. Cass to call his discovery by the odd name of ``Popular Sovereignty.'' He had not the impudence to say that the right of people to govern niggers was the right of people to govern themselves. His notions of the fitness of things were not moulded to the brazen degree of calling the right to put a hundred niggers through under the lash in Nebraska, a "sacred right of self-government." And here, I submit to this intelligent audience and the whole world, was Judge Douglas' discovery, and the whole of it. He invented a name for Gen. Cass' old Nicholson letter dogma. He discovered that the right of the white man to breed and flog niggers in Nebraska was POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY!---[Great applause and laughter.]

Alton Weekly Courier, September 16, 1858.

Way to go Abe!! Quite a stump speech you have going there! Different newspaper, still four n-bombs.

---

| Seventh and Last Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858 |

We profess to have no taste for running and catching niggers---at least I profess no taste for that job at all. Why then do I yield support to a fugitive slave law? Because I do not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that right, can be supported without it.

---

| Editor of the Central Transcript. Springfield, July 3, 1859 |

Dear Sir:

Your fling about men entangled with the "Matteson Robbery" as you express it; and men indicted for stealing niggers and mail-bags, I think is unjust and impolitic. Why manufacture slang to be used against us by our enemies? The world knows who are alluded to by the mention of stealing niggers and mail-bags; and as to the Canal script fraud, the charge of being entangled with it, would be as just, if made against you, as against any other Republican in the State.

---

| Speech at Council Bluffs, Iowa, August 13, 1859 |

He then, with many excuses and a lengthy explanation, as if conscious of the nauseous nature of that Black Republican nostrum, announced his intention to speak about the "eternal Negro," to use his own language, and entered into a lengthy and ingenious analysis of the Nigger question, impressing upon his hearers that it was the only question to be agitated until finally settled.

---

| Speech at Clinton, Illinois October 14, 1859 |

He then spoke of the evils and disasters attending the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, by which the barriers protecting freedom and free labor were broken down and the Territories transformed into asylums for slavery and niggers....

---

| Speech at Hartford, Connecticut, March 5, 1860 |

[Daily Courant Version]

They say that between the nigger and the crocodile they go for the nigger. The proportion, therefore, is, that as the crocodile to the nigger so is the nigger to the white man.

---

[capitan_refugio]

This is from the O.R., Vol L, page 128. It may help explain the confederate "transport" problem.

"On the 28th ultimo [June 28, 1862] I received a positive order from Colonel Howe not to leave Las Cruses [New Mexico Territory] until further orders. Subsequently, while accompanying the general commanding on his march to Fort Quitman, I learned that [confederate] Colonel Steele greatly feared he would be overtaken by the California troops, and in his hurried retreat burned a number of his wagons and destroyed a large amount of ammunition. I also learned that so much were his men disheartened and so thoroughly disorganized, that had they been attacked by even a small force they would have at once surrendered.... had it not beeen for the orders ... I should certainly have followed and as certainly overtaken them before they left the river at Fort Quitman."

"Ockham's razor is simply against you on this one, capitan."

Your are forgetting Sibley's first postulate: Git while the gittin's good. Lt. Col E. E. Eyre
First California Volunteer Cavalry

Lt. Col. Eyre was in command of the advanced parties of the California Column.

[capitan_refugio]

Tell me, how does your foul-mouthed, tight-fisted little rant add to the discussion? I didn't bring up Sandburg. I don't recall ever quoting from Sandburg.

You are an embarassment to Free Republic.

[capitan_refugio]

I simply quoted an easily accessible encyclopedic website. Do you deny that's what they wrote about Masters, or that it is a correct assessment?

His book was meant for the "haters." Don't pretend that it represents any sort of scholarship.

[nolu chan]

[cr #2684 quoting from encyclopedia.com] "He maintained a successful law practice in Chicago from 1892 to 1920. ... His Lincoln the Man (1931) is a bitter and prejudiced attack."

I like the way encyclopedia.com calls ELM prejudiced and then reports that "he maintained a sucessful law practice in Chicago." For eight years, until he resigned from the firm and started his own practice, Edgar Lee Masters was the law partner of Clarence Darrow.

Praise for LINCOLN, THE MAN
by Edgar Lee Masters

"Seldom have I read so brilliant a picture of the decay of the old American spirit, with its horrible consequences in politics, busi­ness, and daily life. The writing here is so eloquent as to be gen­uinely moving. And under it there is visible the fine earnestness of an American who really loves his country."
-- H. L. Mencken, The New York Herald-Tribune

"A people lives by myths, religious and social. And it is always a dangerous thing to tamper with them. But the Lincoln myth is definitely a bad myth, and Mr. Masters deserves great credit for shattering it..."
-- Andrew Nelson Lytle, The Virginia Quarterly Review

“There is no reason why there should not be a Copperhead [pro-South Northern] life of Lincoln. This is a Copperhead, not a Confederate biography..."
-- C. W. Thompson, The New York Times

"Needless to say, a writer of Mr. Masters's talent has a good deal to say that is worth hearing..."
-- The Times of London

"An intensely interesting, arresting, challenging book which will create no end of bitter controversy and have in consequence, a wide reading."
-- Claude Bowers, The Saturday Review of Literature

[nolu chan]

AMERICA'S GREATEST THINKERS v. Lincoln
Edgar Lee Masters

John Quincy Adams, an offshoot of Hamiltonian Federalism, and a bitter enemy of slavery as we have had occasion to see, delivered an address in 1839 before the Historical Society of New York, and committed himself as follows: "With these qualifications we may admit the same right in the people of every state in the Union, with reference to the general government, which was exercised by the people of the colonies with reference to the supreme head of the British Empire, of which they formed a part; and under these limitations have the people of each state of the Union a right to secede from the Confederated Union itself. Here stands the right. But the indissoluble Union between the several states of this con­federated nation is, after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come (may heaven avert it), when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or col­lision of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political as­severation will not long hold together parties no longer attached by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the dis-United States, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint; then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect Union by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation."

There is a wealth of material and authority upon this matter in hand too great to be used in a study where Lincoln's mind is the main consideration. This much shows that Lincoln stood up in the delivery of his First Inaugural and opposed himself to the greatest thinkers that America had then produced on this matter of the nature of the Union and the right of states to get out of it if they chose, and that for a good or a bad reason. A bad reason would have proved the immorality of the step, not its lack of right. A good reason established the step both upon legality and morality. In this connection one can begin with Hamilton who feared secession if the state debts of the Revolution were not assumed by the Federal Government. He urged the funding of the debts to prevent secession, without even referring to the right of secession. He assumed without question that the right existed. One can refer to the words of Wash­ington, Madison, Hamilton again, Jefferson, Rufus King, Ells­worth, Morris, Randolph -- all fathers, so-called, and all of whom spoke of the United States Government as Federal in character, several of them calling the Constitution a compact. One can refer to Jackson's apologia in the South Carolina nullification matter as published in the Washington Globe shortly after his proclamation, and the argument upon the Force Bill of the time, in which he de­clared that the Constitution originated in a compact, and that it was one among the several states, and that it was not the work of the whole people in the aggregate. "The Constitution of the United States is founded in compact... this compact derives its obli­gation from the agreement, entered into by the people of each of the states, in their political capacity, with the people of the other states.... In the case of a violation of the Constitution of the United States, and the usurpation of powers not granted by it on the part of the functionaries of the general government, the state governments have the right to interpose and arrest the evil, upon the principles which were set forth in the Virginia resolutions of 1798 against the Alien and Sedition laws." In these words Jack­son backed down from the coercion of South Carolina, while the difficulty with that state over the tariff bill was composed in com­promise.

The Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, and Madison's report or state paper upon them must not miss something of reference. In 1798 Jefferson drew up Resolutions for the Kentucky legislature in which he laid down the doctrine that "the several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States... they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no force... that as in all cases of compact, among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions, as of the mode and manner of redress."

There were also the Virginia Resolutions, which passed the House of Delegates on December 21, 1798, which declared, the powers of the Federal Government resulted "from the compact to which the states are parties," and that its powers were "limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact, as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said com­pact, the States, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them." These Virginia reso­lutions were sent out to the several states, and were by some of the states disapproved. Whereupon a committee was appointed in the 1799-1800 session of the Virginia House of Delegates, of which Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution, was chairman, the business of the committee being to consider the communications of the several states which had noticed them, and to report upon them to the House. Madison made the report of the Committees. He first held that the position was clear that the powers of the Federal Government resulted from a compact; and that in all the contemporaneous comment on the Constitution while it was depend­ing for adoption it was said that all powers not granted were re­served; and that if any doubt could ever have existed on this sub­ject it was removed by the Xth amendment. "The other position involved in this branch of the resolution, namely, that 'the states are parties to the Constitution or compact, is in the judgment of the committee equally free from objection." Further, "it appears to your committee to be a plain principle, founded in common sense, illustrated by common practice, and essential to the nature of com­pacts that where resort can be had to no tribunal superior to the authority of the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges in the last resort, whether the bargain has been pursued or violated.... The states, then, being the parties to the constitu­tional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of neces­sity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether, the compact made by them be violated.... If the deliberate exercise of dangerous powers, palpably with­held by the Constitution itself, could not justify the parties to it, in interposing even so far as to arrest the progress of the evil, and thereby to preserve the Constitution itself, as well as to provide for the safety of the parties to it, there would be an end to all relief from usurped power."

Then Madison touched upon a subject which may be already in the reader's reflections. "But it is objected," he said, "that the judicial authority is to be regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution in the last resort.... On this objection it might be observed: first, that there may be instances of usurped power, which the forms of the Constitution would never draw within the control of the judicial department." Parenthetically here Lincoln usurped power as president which even Chief Justice Taney tried to arrest and was overcome by Lincoln as head of the army. To go on with Madison: "Secondly that if the decision of the judiciary be raised above the authority of the sovereign parties to the Constitution, the decisions of the other departments, not carried by the forms of the Constitution before the judiciary, must be equally authoritative and final with the decision of that department.... The resolution supposes that dangerous powers not delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that the ju­dicial department also may exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of the Constitution; and consequently that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution, to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated, must extend to viola­tions by one delegated authority, as well as by another; by the judiciary, as well as by the executive or the legislative." The ju­dicial department was undoubtedly made the judge of questions submitted to it in relation to the "authority of the other depart­ments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial as well as the other departments hold their delegated trusts.... On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and be­yond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitu­tion, which all were instituted to preserve."

Strange now is it that these irrefragable protests should in the aftermath of the War between the States have brought down upon the head of Jefferson the hatred of every centralist historian and politician, with accusations against him violent enough to extend to a charge that it was he who originally counseled secession, and thus brought the war of the South against the North which Lincoln in noble obedience to the Constitution and the laws broke with the mighty force of a virtuous people in righteous arms and led by the God of Battles. It is stranger still that these arguments, made for the benefit of the people, for the liberty and peace and happiness of generations to come, should have been ignored or despised by the heedless throngs who have passed along the scene of life revering Hamilton, and making a demi-god of Lincoln. Yet before the heretical dogma of the supremacy of the Supreme Court arose and became sacred, it was not so with the people. Upon these Kentucky-Virginia resolutions, Jefferson was elected president in 1800 and again in 1804; Madison was elected upon them in 1808 and 1812; Monroe was elected upon them in 1816 and 1820. John Quincy Adams, who had repented of the principles of his father, who was responsible for the Alien and Sedition Laws to which the Kentucky-Virginia resolutions were a protest, was elected upon them in 1824. Jackson twice came to the power of the presidency upon them. This was popular construction of the Constitution which lawyers and statesmen regard with respect, even as they pay heed to the legis­lative construction of the Constitution.

SOURCE: Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln, The Man, Copr 1931, Reprint 1997, pp. 336-41.

[capitan_refugio]

Here's some more I found in the O.R., Vol IX, Chap XXI, pg 602-603

"As soon as the arrival of Colonel Eyre on the river was known the Texans made a hasty flight. Their army was completely demoralized, and Colonel Eyre's force magnified fourfold. What they could not carry with them they destroyed. One hundred and fifty sick and wounded were left in hospital at Franklin, Tex., and above."

"General Carleton moved the column down the river as far as Las Cruces, La Mesilla, and Franklin [El Paso]. Taking with him two companies of cavalry, he proceeded on down as far as Fort Quitman, Tex.; from there he dispatched a company of the First Cavalry as far as Fort Davis, distant from Fort Quitman - miles. The Texans had abandoned this post. One man, much reduced, was found dead, his body being pierced in many places with arrows. This man had evidently been left behind sick. The sick and wounded Texans left behind at Franklin were sent with an escort to San Antonio."

"General Canby, at this time in command of the Department of New Mexico, had been ordered East, and on the 16th of September, 1862, General Carleton arrived in Santa Fe, and on the 18th assumed command of the department. Before leaving the lower country he published the following general order:

GENERAL ORDERS, Numbers 15.
HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF ARIZONA,
Las Cruces, N. Mex., August 14, 1862.

I. Commanders of towns will at once establish sanitary regulations, and require them to be observed by the inhabitants by the troops, so far as the policing of the streets and the keeping of their dwellings, quarters, stores, corrals, &c., in a state of cleanliness may be necessary to their health and comfort. Frequent inspections will be made by commanding officers or by a medical officer under his direction, to see that in all respects these regulations are followed. II. It is expected that all of the inhabitants living along the Rio Grande southward from the Jornada del Muerto to Fort Bliss, in Texas, will, at the earliest practicable moment, repair their dwellings and clean up their streets. The people may now rest assured that the era of anarchy and misrule - when there was no protection to life or property, when the wealthy were plundered, when the poor were robbed and oppressed, when all were insulted and maltreated, and when there was no respect for age or sex - has passed away; that now, under the sacred banner of our country, all may claim and shall receive their just rights. Therefore let the burden of anxiety be lifted from their hearts, and once let them pursue their avocations with cheerfulness, and with the full confidence that the protection which now shelters them from injustice will always be stronger in proportion as they shall be powerless to protect themselves."

[capitan_refugio]

Masters thought Darrow was a publicity hog.

[Non-Sequitur]

You will note that Nolu Chan and his buddies will label James McPherson Carl Sandburg as a socialists and dismiss their positions as a result, yet Nolu Chan has no trouble quoting from Communist supporters like Edgar Lee Masters. If it were not for double standards, that crowd would have no standards at all.

[nolu chan]

So you think accurately quoting what Lincoln said is an embarrassment to FR. What is an embarrassment are those historians, and others, who falsely claim it did not happen, or who sanitize history to make believe it did not happen.

Of course, lies by you or your sources have never been a problem to you. For one clear-cut example of many, in cr #1606, you falsely alleged, "You revel in quoting Hitler." When repeatedly challenged to provide documentation or retract your lie, you slithered away and did not respond.

If you go and find some off-the-wall web source to denigrate a source without being able to address the substance of what he said, that is an embarrassment.

It is more than fair to compare and contrast the truthful and honest and scholarly commentary of Edgar Lee Masters with the untruthful, dishonest, and unscholarly crap that receives awards from the Lincoln idolators.

You do not like the obscenity of the lie from Sandburg, lets try more modern obscenities in defense of Lincoln.

The following gems all come from Gabor Boritt, The Lincoln Enigma, (2001).

[p. 4] "It is worth digressing to note that if Lincoln's comments opposed to racial equality were forced out of him by politics, ...

[nc] At exactly what age would Lincoln be man enough to not have racial bigotry forced out of him? By this theory, Lincoln was not responsible for the racist remarks of Lincoln. The responsiblity belonged to Stephen Douglas. Douglas forced him to do it. Of course, Lincoln also made the same remarks when he was not running for any office.

[p. 4 continuing] "... on his own he told black jokes, occasionally unsing the 'n' word...."

[nc] And Lincoln repeatedly used the N-word in front of witnesses, indeed when giving a speech to as many as 15,000 witnesses. Perhaps Boritt meant that Lincoln may have been alone on the stage in front of the 15,000 people.

[p. 5] "While keeping alive the antislavery fight in Illinois by disavowing a desire for racial equality...

[nc] Lincoln made those racist remarks to keep the antislavery fight alive. Uh-huh.

[p. 5] "Lincoln also invoked in a vague way colonization."

[nc] Lincoln invoked, in a vague way, colonization, by vaguely being one of the founding members of the Illinois State Colonization Society and one of the 11 managers. In 1857, Lincoln vaguely "urged the illinois legislature to appropriate money for colonization in order to remove free Negroes from the state and prevent miscegenation." (Eugene H. Berwanger, The Frontier Against Slavery, Urbana, 1967, pp. 4-5.)

[p. 7] "Lincoln's fundamental rationale for colonizaton remained noble, as far as nobility was possible on behalf of such a proposal."

[nc] That was a noble effort.

[p. 15] "'Honest Abe' found it difficult to lie, but by blocking out even from his own awareness unwanted information, he forged ahead. This is how honest people lie. So long as he did not know the truth, he was not obliged to tell it."

[nc] Lincoln put the unwanted information in an Algore lock-box, in a Clintonian corner of his mind. In this way, "Honest Abe" made believe he did not know what he actually knew, and therefore he could make believe that he was telling the truth, because he made believe he did not know it was a lie. This is how honest people lie. It is also how dishonest people write.

[nolu chan]

[Nonsense #2696] You will note that Nolu Chan and his buddies will label James McPherson Carl Sandburg as a socialists

All will note that Nonsense provides no citation to any reality-based documentation. I have labeled some authors, such as Jack Rakove, as radical left. Ann Coulter wrote that this capitan_refugio source had been "dredged out of the left-wing toilet." I have then provided specific example after example documenting the relevant radical left positions of the author. For example, see my #2380.

[Nonsense #2696] Nolu Chan has no trouble quoting from Communist supporters like Edgar Lee Masters

Again, Nonsense brings the unsupported allegation. I had no knowledge of Masters' politics before Nonsense posted. I have equally no knowledge after he posted. Nobody should take anything at face value from the Minister of Propaganda.

I guess this means you are unable to argue on the merits. As usual.

Nonsense, how about a few words of support for your Brigade Commander? You guys have practially been joined at the hip.

Nonsense is, indeed, a man of standards. Here are the standards of the Minister of Propaganda, personified.

[nolu chan]

Your biography source failed to mention Darrow at all.

Did you have a source for the thoughts of Edgar Lee Masters, or did you channel via Ms. Cleo?

[Non-Sequitur]

Again, Nonsense brings the unsupported allegation. I had no knowledge of Masters' politics before Nonsense posted. I have equally no knowledge after he posted. Nobody should take anything at face value from the Minister of Propaganda.

Of course not, the fact that Edgar Lee Masters was a member of the national committee of the All American Anti-Imperialist League, an organization founded in 1925 by the Communist Workers Party, is of no interst to you since you focus solely on his anti-Lincoln agenda. Likewise, you'll ignore the racist, pro-reparations positions of Lerone Bennett in favor of his Lincoln-hating screed. You selectively ignore the parts which might be inconvenient in your sources, and flay others instead. Hardly surprising for someone I've come to consider the Mortimer Snerd of the Southron cause. We've been fortunate enough to uncover a picture of you and GOP discussing a supreme court decision. That's GOP on the right.