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

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."

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).

[Non-Seq #2716] Lerone Bennett has supported reparations for years, speaking in support of them before the Chicago City Council, in Jet, on PBS, before a National Reparations Convention, positions that some haver compared favorably to Marxist policies, and others have calles Stalinist.

In labeling Bennett a Marxist-Stalinist, Non-Sequitur provided six links. Below I provide -ALL- six links and -ALL- comment by, or about, Bennett. The provided evidence, or lack thereof, clearly shows Non-Sequitur for the racist bigot, smear-job artist that he is.

ONE

http://racerelations.about.com/library/weekly/aa051200a.htm

ABOUT.COM -- NO AUTHOR

The question of slavery reparations was raised at an April 26, 2000 joint hearing of the Chicago City Council Finance and Human Relations committees. U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) told the committees that, "The future of race relations will be determined by reparations for slavery," according to a Chicago Tribune report. The committees heard testimonies from Rush along with Claud Anderson, author of "Black Labor White Wealth; The Search for Power and Economic Justice," Lerone Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine and U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL), among others. For her part, Ald. Carrie Austin (34th) joked following her comments, "I want 40 acres and a Lexus," referring to a post-Civil War promise that former slaves would receive 40 acres of land and a mule.

[nc] Non-Sequitur here provides proof that a city of Chicago committee heard testimony from Lerone Bennett.

TWO

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_23_97/ai_62298398

Jet, May 15, 2000

The Chicago City Council's Human Relations and Finance committees unanimously adopted a resolution to seek government hearings on the issue of reparations for the descendants of slaves in America.
The full Chicago City Council is scheduled to address the resolution on May 17.
The city's Finance and Human Relations committees recently held a joint hearing in City Hall chambers on the resolution proposed by Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman that calls for state and federal hearings on the reparation issue.
Tillman already has garnered the signatures of half of the City Council's 50 members and the endorsement of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Participants at the hearing included Lerone Bennett, Jr., executive editor of EBONY Magazine and noted historian, Illinois Congressmen Bobby Rush and Danny Davis, and Wade Nobles, a San Francisco state psychologist who said slavery damaged both Blacks and Whites.

[nc] Non-Sequitur here provides proof that a city of Chicago committee heard testimony from Lerone Bennett. This is the same committee hearing as above. This amounts to two sources documenting nothing.

THREE

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/race_relations/july-dec00/reparations.html

PBS, September 5, 2000

"Chicago City Council members prepare to host a national discussion on paying reparations to descendants of American slaves. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW-Chicago reports."

LERONE BENNETT: The question is not what are we today, the question is what would we have been today if we'd had all the billions of dollars that belonged to us. The question is how much greater we would have been and how much greater white people would have been if we had been given the money we deserved to have, and if we had the economic development that we should have now.

[nc] Yep. Lerone Bennett said money is owed. It is not yet clear how the racist bigot, smear-job artist Non-Sequitur turns this into proof that Bennett is a Marxist, Communist, or Stalinist.

FOUR

http://www.americanpolicy.org/more/dollarandsense.htm

The Dollars and Sense Answer to Black Reparations

By Tom DeWeese

Over the weekend of Friday, February 2nd, a National Reparations Convention was held in Chicago to draft a plan to see payment for blacks today based on the belief that the nation owes the present generation for the slavery imposed more than a century ago.
Historian and Ebony magazine editor, Lerone Bennett, Jr., says, "We're not talking about a sentimental argument. We're talking about the fact that America owes us some money."

[nc] Yep. Lerone Bennett said money is owed. It is not yet clear how the racist bigot, smear-job artist Non-Sequitur turns this into proof that Bennett is a Marxist, Communist, or Stalinist.

FIVE

http://members.cox.net/smrose7/Marxist%20Concepts.html

Capitalism, Racism, Imperialism, Communism, Fascism, and Other Related Concepts

Dr. Steven Rosenthal, Professor of Sociology

Here is a brief introduction to the sociological analysis of capitalism, social classes, and class struggle; race, racism, super-exploitation, and the criminal justice system; imperialism and imperialist wars; fascism and communism.. This analysis is derived from the work of the two classical sociologists who contributed the most to a critical analysis of capitalism, racism, and imperialism, Karl Marx and W.E.B. DuBois. Throughout the essay there are links to articles you may be reading during this semester that provide or more detailed explanations or applications of these sociological concepts and theories.
Black historian Lerone Bennett, in The Road Not Taken, a chapter from his book The Shaping of Black America, 1975, pp. 61-82, originally published in Ebony, vol. 25 (August, 1970), pp. 71-77), provided a good historical analysis of how racism was developed in colonial North America. According to Bennett, the African, European, and Native American workers on the colonial plantations were at first all indentured servants, that is, temporary slaves. They were largely unconcerned about the color of their skin. They worked together, made love together, rebelled, and ran away together. The plantation owners, desperate to control their labor force, pushed Africans down into hereditary slavery in order to divide and conquer. They used their control of colonial society to impose laws intended to force blacks, whites, and reds apart. Bennett shows that racism is not "natural." It is not something that is "just there." European laborers had no inherent fear or dislike of Africans. A century of terror, law, and religious propaganda were required in order to drive white and black labor apart in Colonial America.
Class Struggle. Summarizing Lerone Bennett's analysis using Marxist concepts, we could say that there was sharp class struggle in colonial North America between capitalist plantation owners and working class indentured servants. The capitalists sought to suppress this class struggle by dividing the workers into a "white" race of indentured servants, a "black" race of permanent slaves, and an "Indian" race that was mostly exterminated. Class struggle is the inevitable conflict that takes place between workers and the capitalists who exploit them. As Karl Marx wrote in the opening pages of The Communist Manifesto, class struggle has been going on for thousands of years, ever since human societies became divided into opposing classes.
Primitive Accumulation. The process Lerone Bennett described is part of a global process that Karl Marx called primitive accumulation. The first capitalists used the most primitive (that is, brutal and violent) methods to accumulate the capital they needed and to create a vast class of proletarians (workers) who owned nothing but their ability to work. They kidnapped and enslaved tens of millions of Africans and Native Americans and worked them to death in gold and silver mines and on sugar and tobacco plantations. W.E.B. DuBois, in The World and Africa, praised Marx, stating that "it was Karl Marx who made the great unanswerable charge of the sources of capitalism in African slavery." Read the analysis Marx wrote about primitive accumulation that earned Dubois's praise.

[nc] The author actually praises Bennett for having provided "a good historical analysis of how racism was developed in colonial North America." The author proceeds to summarize Bennett's "good historical analysis" using Marxist concepts. Lerone Bennett is not found to be in error, is praised as having provided "good historical analysis," and is not shown to be a Marxist. It will never be clear how the racist bigot, smear-job artist Non-Sequitur turns this into proof that Bennett is a Marxist, Communist, or Stalinist, other than through sheer racist bigotry.

SIX

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=3205

Black Stalinists Will Fail (Reply to Robert George)

By David Horowitz

FrontPageMagazine.com | June 6, 2000

Against my argument that blacks owe a debt to America, George counters that "just because a given group overcomes evil circumstances, does not mean that those responsible for that evil should be commended - or rewarded for their actions. For example, one could make the argument that the Holocaust created greater worldwide support for the creation of the modern state of Israel. But no one would suggest that the Nazis should be commended for wanting to bring about the extinction of the Jewish people."
As in so many other invocations of the Israeli case, the analogy itself is inappropriate. America did not create slavery, while Germany was the fount of the plan to exterminate the Jews. Germany was not the inspiration for the Zionist idea, but America was for the idea that black slaves should be free. America was conceived in the revolutionary idea that all men are created equal and endowed with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Without this commitment, without America, blacks would still be slaves. Therefore blacks directly owe their freedom to America, to the American idea, and to the Americans - white Americans - who consecrated their lives and their sacred honors to the realization of the idea.
There is a powerful tendency on the part of black leaders these days to foul their own nest, to desecrate America and its heritage of freedom. Lerone Bennett Jr., the editor of Ebony, who once wrote a book about the arrival blacks on this continent "Before The Mayflower" has now written a 600-page diatribe against Abraham Lincoln to prove that the "The Liberator" himself - the American President most profoundly connected to the integration of blacks into the American narrative of freedom - was little more than a KKK racist. I myself quoted the attack by Randall Robinson (who is a Stalinist) on Thomas Jefferson, the author of the words that freed Robinson's ancestors (and therefore himself). Robinson wrote that Jefferson was a slaver and a rapist and that the honor that Americans (who voted for the Civil Rights Acts and gave trillions to blacks to redress their grievances) still paid to him, merely showed how evil and racist they were too.

[nc] Here, the racist bigot, smear-job artist Non-Sequitur advocates for the position that blacks owe a debt to America. Here, the racist bigot, smear-job artist Non-Sequitur advocates for the position that Blacks owe their freedom to America.

[nc] Bennett sees it otherwise. I have presented many of Bennett's arguments on FR and the racist bigot, smear-job artist Non-Sequitur cannot make any counter-argument on the merits so he calls Bennett names such at Marxist or Stalinist.

[nc] Here Randall Robinson is labeled a Stalinist.

As for the merits of what Robinson purportedly said:

Jefferson was most definitely a slaver. That is unassailable historical fact.
As to whether Jefferson was a rapist may depend on whether one conceives that a slave has the power to consent. It is known that not only was Jefferson movin' on up, he was also gettin' on down. There is a family, descended from former Jefferson slaves named Hemings, with Jefferson DNA.
I am unaware that trillions were given to anybody.

http://www.africana.com/articles/daily/index_20020501.asp

Debating Reparations with Horowitz and Ogletree
By Lee Hubbard

Charles Ogletree is a professor of law at Harvard University.

[Hubbard to Ogletree] What do you think of David Horowitz and his role against reparations?
His silly ideas and public posturing has actually placed the reparations debate back in the mainstream dialogue in America. Now, by trying to sell books that attack reparation supporters he has generated more public dialogue, more understanding and more support for an idea that was once thought of as being extreme. He has contributed to a deeper understanding of reparations based on the simplistic notions he promotes.

[cr #2763] What a joke. If you want to compare the relative accomplishments of the Pulitzer Prize winning Carl Sandburg to the embittered hack poet Edgar Lee Masters, go right ahead. Masters is Solieri to Sandburg's Mozart.

Of course, you always go for the card-carrying Socialist or Communist. That is what California radical liberals do. Others may choose to prefer a Jeffersonian.

I demonstrated Sandburg to have knowingly published false information to perpetuate the Lincoln myth and sell books. You are unable to demonstrate similar fallacy in the material I quoted from Masters.

As for being a hack poet, The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters continues to sell:
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 18,983.

By contrast, the best-selling item by Carl Sandburg is The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg: Revised and Expanded Edition.
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 94,239

And let us give recognition where recognition is due. There is Back to Basics for the Republican Party, Third Edition by Michael Zak . Let's hear it for our favorite hack of all. B2B has cracked the Amazon.com top half million.
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 493,808

BREWSTER THE DEMOCRATIC ROOSTER

Bubba was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers called pullets and eight or ten roosters, whose job was to fertilize the eggs.
Bubba kept records and any rooster that didn't perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of Bubba's time so Bubba got a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so Bubba could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.
Bubba's favorite rooster was old Brewster, a very fine specimen he was too. But on this particular morning Bubba noticed old Brewster's bell hadn't rung at all! Bubba went to investigate.
The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover. BUT, to Bubba's amazement, Brewster had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.
Bubba was so proud of Brewster, he entered him in the county fair... and Brewster became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result...
The judges not only awarded Brewster the "No Bell Piece Prize" but they also awarded him the "Pulletsurprise" as well.
Clearly Brewster was a Democratic Politician. Who else could figure out how to win two of the most politically biased awards on our planet by being the best at Sneaking up on the populace and Screwing them...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/departments/right_answers/1999/vo15no10_answers.htm

Q. Did the poet Carl Sandburg ever win a Pulitzer Prize? Was he active politically?
-- P.K., Roswell, GA
A. Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) won a Pulitzer in 1940 for his four-volume work Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. A onetime hobo who never graduated from college, Sandburg held a variety of jobs - from porter, to milk truck driver, to brickyard hand, to hired hand in the wheat fields of Kansas.
Sandburg was active in the Socialist Party in Wisconsin for at least a decade. Between 1910 and 1912 he was an organizer for the Social Democratic Party and was secretary to the mayor of Milwaukee.
These facts are available in standard reference works. Less well known is that Sandburg was not just a parlor pink, but worked closely with the Communists as they organized in this country. Maurice Malkin, a charter member of the Communist Party, described how Sandburg brought funds from Lenin intended for Santeri Nuorteva, a Finnish Red leader who organized radicals and subversives in this country (and who was deported to Moscow in 1920). Malkin recalled how U.S. Customs authorities in New York detained Sandburg, who even had a check for $10,000 taken from him by the officials.
Malkin, as he wrote in Return to My Father’s House (1972), noted that Sandburg "was one of the mainstays among American intellectuals, and had gone to the Scandinavian countries and Finland as a correspondent - and as a Soviet courier. We had eagerly awaited his return with an important message from Lenin and a large quantity of money and literature."
Soon after, Sandburg appeared at Communist headquarters in New York City in the company of the longtime legal representative of the Soviet government. The poet had been permitted to retain the "messages from Lenin, which were later translated as A Letter to American Working Men and published in The Revolutionary Age and The Liberator." For decades thereafter, Sandburg remained, as former Comrade Malkin put it, a "loyal friend of the Soviet Union...."

At the Claremont Institute:

http://www.claremont.org/weblog/001159.html
This includes modern left wing "scholars" such as Foner and McPherson. It includes several well known Lincoln writers of the past such as Carl Sandburg, who in his lifetime held affiliations with several communist organizations. But most of all, it includes the granddaddy of all things communist and all things on the political left: Karl Marx himself. Marx personally adored Lincoln in his own lifetime and spent much of the civil war writing editorials in the papers on Lincoln's behalf - an effort he undertook to sway European opinion. He viewed Lincoln as a hero of the working class who was to deliver America through its next revolution in the hegelian procession towards a communist state.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/United+States+Socialist+Party

United States Socialist Party - encyclopedia article about United States Socialist Party.
Prominent members included Victor L. Berger, Ella Reeve Bloor, Earl Browder, James Connolly, Eugene V. Debs, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, William Z. Foster, Bill Haywood, Morris Hillquit, Helen Keller, Jack London, Theresa S. Malkiel, Mary E. Marcy, Scott Nearing, Kate Richards O'Hare, Mary White Ovington, A. Philip Randolph, John Reed, Victor Reuther, Walter Reuther, Bayard Rustin, Carl Sandburg, Margaret Sanger, Upton Sinclair, Rose Pastor Stokes, Norman Thomas and Frank P. Zeidler.

DANIEL WEBSTER v. JOHN C. CALHOUN
February, 1833
From: Lincoln, The Man, by Edgar Lee Masters

Whittier, in the calm of New England righteousness, fastened the name Ichabod on Webster, for his speech of March 7, without any leniency toward him, or consideration for the fact that Webster had been crowded out of his former logic by the giant strength of Calhoun, in whom he found no mere orator, as he had found in Hayne. Webster crossed swords with Calhoun in February of 1833. Calhoun referred to what Webster had said in 1830 in the Hayne debate: "But I am resolved not to submit in silence to accusations either against myself individually, or against the North, wholly unfounded and unjust -- accusations which impute to us a disposition to evade the Constitutional compact." There, said Calhoun, he used the word compact, which he now has rejected. And he has flouted the word accede to the Constitution which Washington and Jefferson employed. Then he referred to what Webster had said in the instant debate: "The Constitution means a government, not a compact ; not a constitutional compact, but a government. If compact, it rests on plighted faith, and the mode of redress would be to declare the whole void. States may secede if a league or a compact." "I thank the Senator for these admissions," said Calhoun. "It does not call itself a compact, but a constitution," said Webster. "The Constitution rests on a compact, but it is no longer a compact." Calhoun rejoined, "I would ask to what compact does the Senator refer, as that on which the Constitution rests? Before the adoption of the present Constitution, the states had formed but one compact, and that was the old Confederation; and certainly the gentleman does not intend to assert that the present Constitution rests upon that. What, then is his meaning? What can it be but that the Constitution itself is a compact? And how will his language read when fairly interpreted, but that the Constitution was a compact, but is no longer a compact? . . . He next states that 'a man is almost untrue to his country who calls the Constitution a compact.' I fear the Senator, in calling it a 'compact, a bargain,' has called down the heavy denunciation on his own head. He finally states that 'It is founded on compact, but not a compact.' 'It is the result of a compact.'"
Not only was it a compact, but it was an executory compact. The sovereign states had covenanted with each other that the general government should guarantee to every state a republican form of government; that full faith and credit should be given in each state to the public acts and records and judicial proceedings of every other state; that slaves and apprentices should be returned, when escaping, by the state into which they escaped, and without further detailment the Constitution required continual performance of its agreements. It was money and power on the one side which wanted what it called a sovereign nation; it was fear of money and power which wanted a confederated republic. This was the issue from the days of Hamilton on the one hand, with his bank report, and Jefferson, on the other, with his Kentucky Resolutions; and from the time when Chancellor Kent in 1826 published his Commentaries, and was the first man of note to deny that a state had the right to withdraw from the Union. It is not what Whittier wrote about Webster that has dimmed his reputation; it is that Webster, like Lincoln after him, had a divided mind, and that he clothed logical solecisms and false historical interpretations in sonorous rhetoric which became harsh when thoroughly digested. When debating with the watchful and remorseless Calhoun, Webster dared to deny the states sovereignty, because, he exclaimed, whoever heard of a sovereignty being suable as the states were made in the Constitution. How easy for Calhoun to reply that from time immemorial states were suable when they submitted themselves to be sued. What is an arbitration between France and England but a submission on the part of both to be sued, and to abide by the adjudication? In like manner Webster could spend his logic-chopping powers to the demonstration that the Constitution was not a compact; and yet at another time he spoke with such perspicacity as this: "Where sovereign communities are parties, there is no essential difference between a compact, a confederation and a league. They all equally rest on the plighted faith of the sovereign party. A league or confederacy, is but a subsisting or continuing treaty. If in the opinion of either party it be violated, such party may say that he will no longer fulfill its obligations on his part, but will consider the whole league or compact at an end, although it might be one of its stipulations that it should be perpetual." Reserved sovereignty includes the power to break the league whether the reason be good or bad, or none. The other party to the league can do nothing about it except to kill men for breaking it.
All confederated republics are both federal and national: federal with each other and national with the rest of the world. The Constitution was framed under the inspiration of Montesquieu more than any other authority. He had written of a government formed of several small republics bound together in such a way as to be a nation to the world, while each retained its own nationality and sovereignty. Montesquieu also treated of the division of powers in a government between the executive, the legislative and the judicial, each independent of the other. What the framers of the Constitution did was to federate the republics of the states so that the motto of the United States, E Pluribus Unum, would fittingly describe what was done; and then to divide the powers of the artificial nation into legislative, executive and judicial, making the general government their joint agent for the exercise of those powers.
A passing glance may be given to the charges flung by Southern statesmen against the North, that the North had on occasion advocated secession, and even taken steps toward it. There was Massachusetts, which in 1803 was reported to have resolved that the annexation of Louisiana was unconstitutional, and, as it created a new confederation, Massachusetts, as a party to the old compact, was absolved from adhering to the latter. There was the action of Massachusetts, whose legislature in 1844-45 resolved that the annexation of Texas would have no binding effect upon Massachusetts -another case of nullification. There was the Hartford convention of 1814, which resolved in the very language of the Kentucky resolutions of Jefferson, that a state, both in duty and in right, might interpose to protect its sovereignty, and that "states which have no common umpire must be their own judges, and execute their own decisions." Nathan Dane signed his name to this resolution, he who had drawn the Ordinance of 1787, for the government of the Northwest Territory.
If this were a work devoted only to this subject more time might be spent on the Resolutions of the Senate of December 28, 1837, the first of which was, that, "in the adoption of the Constitution, the states adopting the same acted, severally, as free, independent and sovereign states," which passed that body by a vote of 32 to 13, with 18 states voting for it and 6 against it. This was high legislative interpretation of the Constitution and by juridical rules must be respected. This review may end with the words of Montesquieu: "Several sovereign and independent states may unite themselves together by a perpetual confederacy, without ceasing to be, each, individually, a perfect state. They will together constitute a federal republic; their joint deliberations will not impair the sovereignty of each member, though they may, in certain respects, put some restraint on the exercise of it in virtue of voluntary engagements."
The recognition of these principles would have saved tens of thousands of lives and great treasure. That is desirable, if there be not something more desirable, like the triumph of God's truth as divined by fanatics and abetted by money and power. It was among the workable solutions of the strife between the North and the South for Lincoln to have accepted the Crittenden Compromise. He might have recognized the independence of the seceding states, as George III recognized the independence of the original thirteen states. If the South had won the war, he would have been compelled to have done so. What then would have become of his doctrine that "in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the union of these states is perpetual"?

SOURCE: Edgar Lee Masters, Lincoln: The Man, Copr 1931, Reprint 1997, pp. 341-4.

The line was at 34 degrees north. The Missouri Compromise line was 36 degree 30 minutes north. I wonder was the basis of the claim was?

Here's what Kerby says. Sounds like a miniature version of North vs South in the US as a whole:

The Territory of New Mexico (the states of New Mexico and Arizona, plus the southern tip of Nevada) was theoretically subject to a government that had been established at Santa Fe in 1850. In actual fact, the appointed executive and the elective legislature, in which the northeastern portions of the Territory were disproportionally represented, were habitually ignored by the southern and western sections. Those areas were isolated from Santa Fe by miles of desert and wasteland, and resented the legislature's propensity for concentrating troops around the capital while leaving the rest of New Mexico to the mercies of the dread Apache. As a protest against Congress' refusal to establish a separate government for them, the people of "Arizona" (the present state plus New Mexico below the Jornado del Muerto desert) had established a de facto Territory of Arizona before South Carolina's secession.
Economic differences intensified the regional conflicts. While Santa Fe was dependent on Missouri, Arizona was tied to nearby Texas. ...

As you'll remember, Congress, or more particularly the Northern members of Congress, refused to reimburse Texas for the expenses they expended fighting the Indians when the Federal efforts weren't sufficient. That was one of the reasons Texas seceded.

Here is a description of the sort of Indian depredation that both Texas and the Territory of Arizona were concerned about. From an 1861 report of the State Gazette of Austin, Texas:

The party of Indians committing these massacres and depredations are represented to be Lipans, with some other tribes, about one hundred fifty in number, with pack mules, &c., very deliberate in their movements, indicating great confidence in their strength.
1st. In Uvalde county, on the Rio Frio, killed Henry M. Adams and Henry Robinson, wounded and scalped Miss Kelsey, aged twelve years. Miss Kelsey has been found, and will probably recover from her wounds. Wounded also, a youth named Robinson.
2d. This party subsequently met with and killed a party of toradoras, while on there way from San Antonio to Eagle Pass, at a place near the Chicon. The number of this party was not ascertained.
3d. In Atascosa county, on the Nueces, killed Mr. Eastwood, and wounded Mr. Spears.
4th. On the Rio Frio killed old Mr. Sanders, mutilating very much the body, besides removing the very long white beard worn by the gentleman.
5th. On the Sabinal, killed Mr. McFarland. In Atascosa county, on the Laguniellas, twenty or more families are forted at the house of Mr. Odom, and such has been the extent of robbery, that throughout the region of country traversed by this party, the men are nearly all afoot, because of their horses having been driven off. Cattle have also been killed in great numbers.

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