Posted on 08/20/2004 5:43:21 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
Imagine that America had a Chief Justice of the United States who actually believed in enforcing the Constitution and, accordingly, issued an opinion that the war in Iraq was unconstitutional because Congress did not fulfill its constitutional duty in declaring war. Imagine also that the neocon media, think tanks, magazines, radio talk shows, and television talking heads then waged a vicious, months-long smear campaign against the chief justice, insinuating that he was guilty of treason and should face the punishment for it. Imagine that he is so demonized that President Bush is emboldened to issue an arrest warrant for the chief justice, effectively destroying the constitutional separation of powers and declaring himself dictator.
An event such as this happened in the first months of the Lincoln administration when Abraham Lincoln issued an arrest warrant for Chief Justice Roger B. Taney after the 84-year-old judge issued an opinion that only Congress, not the president, can suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Lincoln had declared the writ null and void and ordered the military to begin imprisoning thousands of political dissenters. Taney’s opinion, issued as part of his duties as a circuit court judge in Maryland, had to do with the case of Ex Parte Merryman (May 1861). The essence of his opinion was not that habeas corpus could not be suspended, only that the Constitution requires Congress to do it, not the president. In other words, if it was truly in "the public interest" to suspend the writ, the representatives of the people should have no problem doing so and, in fact, it is their constitutional prerogative.
As Charles Adams wrote in his LRC article, "Lincoln’s Presidential Warrant to Arrest Chief Justice Roger B. Taney," there were, at the time of his writing, three corroborating sources for the story that Lincoln actually issued an arrest warrant for the chief justice. It was never served for lack of a federal marshal who would perform the duty of dragging the elderly chief justice out of his chambers and throwing him into the dungeon-like military prison at Fort McHenry. (I present even further evidence below).
All of this infuriates the Lincoln Cult, for such behavior is unquestionably an atrocious act of tyranny and despotism. But it is true. It happened. And it was only one of many similar constitutional atrocities committed by the Lincoln administration in the name of "saving the Constitution."
The first source of the story is a history of the U.S. Marshal’s Service written by Frederick S. Calhoun, chief historian for the Service, entitled The Lawmen: United States Marshals and their Deputies, 1789–1989. Calhoun recounts the words of Lincoln’s former law partner Ward Hill Laman, who also worked in the Lincoln administration.
Upon hearing of Laman’s history of Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and the mass arrest of Northern political opponents, Lincoln cultists immediately sought to discredit Laman by calling him a drunk. (Ulysses S. Grant was also an infamous drunk, but no such discrediting is ever perpetrated on him by the Lincoln "scholars".)
But Adams comes up with two more very reliable accounts of the same story. One is an 1887 book by George W. Brown, the mayor of Baltimore, entitled Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of War (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1887). In it is the transcript of a conversation Mayor Brown had with Taney in which Taney talks of his knowledge that Lincoln had issued an arrest warrant for him.
Yet another source is A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, a former U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Judge Curtis represented President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate; wrote the dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case; and resigned from the court over a dispute with Judge Taney over that case. Nevertheless, in his memoirs he praises the propriety of Justice Taney in upholding the Constitution by opposing Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. He refers to Lincoln’s arrest warrant as a "great crime."
I recently discovered yet additional corroboration of Lincoln’s "great crime." Mr. Phil Magness sent me information suggesting that the intimidation of federal judges was a common practice in the early days of the Lincoln administration (and the later days as well). In October of 1861 Lincoln ordered the District of Columbia Provost Marshal to place armed sentries around the home of a Washington, D.C. Circuit Court judge and place him under house arrest. The reason was that the judge had issued a writ of habeas corpus to a young man being detained by the Provost Marshal, allowing the man to have due process. By placing the judge under house arrest Lincoln prevented the judge from attending the hearing of the case. The documentation of this is found in Murphy v. Porter (1861) and in United States ex re John Murphy v. Andrew Porter, Provost Marshal District of Columbia (2 Hay. & Haz. 395; 1861).
The second ruling contained a letter from Judge W.M. Merrick, the judge of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, explaining how, after issuing the writ of habeas corpus to the young man, he was placed under house arrest. Here is the final paragraph of the letter:
After dinner I visited my brother Judges in Georgetown, and returning home between half past seven and eight o’clock found an armed sentinel stationed at my door by order of the Provost-Marshal. I learned that this guard had been placed at my door as early as five o’clock. Armed sentries from that time continuously until now have been stationed in front of my house. Thus it appears that a military officer against whom a writ in the appointed form of law has first threatened with and afterwards arrested and imprisoned the attorney who rightfully served the writ upon him. He continued, and still continues, in contempt and disregard of the mandate of the law, and has ignominiously placed an armed guard to insult and intimidate by its presence the Judge who ordered the writ to issue, and still keeps up this armed array at his door, in defiance and contempt of the justice of the land. Under the circumstances I respectfully request the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court to cause this memorandum to be read in open Court, to show the reasons for my absence from my place upon the bench, and that he will cause this paper to be entered at length on the minutes of the Court . . . W.M. Merrick Assistant Judge of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia
As Adams writes, the Lincoln Cult is terrified that this truth will become public knowledge, for it if does, it means that Lincoln "destroyed the separation of powers; destroyed the place of the Supreme Court in the Constitutional scheme of government. It would have made the executive power supreme, over all others, and put the president, the military, and the executive branch of government, in total control of American society. The Constitution would have been at an end."
Exactly right.
August 19, 2004
Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is the author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, (Three Rivers Press/Random House). His latest book is How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold Story of Our Country’s History, from the Pilgrims to the Present (Crown Forum/Random House, August 2004).
Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com
North Carolina and Rhode Island, who were no part of the new nation, or government of the new nation, when it was formed and for some time thereafter, dissenting.
I'll take your word that your Brigade Commander is your hero and soul mate.
Like I said before, you can claim whatever you want. Someone, somewhere will believe you.
Besides, I give you an opportunity to whip out, so to speak, that crap you love to post about Lincoln being homosexual and you get all hissy. I thought you would appreciate a chance to vent your phobia.
I said the Brigade Commander was your intimate soul-mate. However it is not that difficult to keep Lincoln's activities straight... I mean organized.
Was Lincoln Gay?
By W. Scott Thompson
Mr. Thompson is a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
In his early thirties, before either he or his love-object Joshua Speed married, they lived together in cramped circumstances over four full years; not to put too fine a point on it, "the young men slept in the same bed every night," according to a very straight and conventional source. [1] Perhaps we are meant to accept this habit precisely for its openness--since it is not covered up--as necessitated by frontier privation rather than erotic preference: an inference more in the category of the anxious denial of the historian rather than the compelling illogic of the evidence--a memorable avoidance indeed, since it does not even pass the straight-face test.[1] Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (1982), p. 284.
In "Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years" (1926), Carl Sandberg wrote that their relationship had "a streak of lavender and spots soft as May violets," which some have taken as a veiled reference to homosexuality. In 1995, just after Bob Dole rejected campaign contributions from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, Log Cabin member W. Scott Thompson was quoted in the New York Times as saying that gays should feel welcome in the party, "given that the founder was gay." Indeed, Abe has been called the original Log Cabin Republican.
David Herbert Donald, the author of the Lincoln Prize-winning, best-selling biography, Lincoln (1995), found during his book tour the question, "was Lincoln gay," the most commonly asked. I myself have been queried about his sexual orientation, from as far away as ABC of Australia.
Of course, as president it was a whole nother thing.
Captain [David V.] Derickson, in particular, advanced so far in the President's confidence and esteem that, in Mrs. Lincoln's absence, he frequently spent the night at his cottage, sleeping in the same bed with him, and-it is said-making use of His excellency's night-shirts! Thus began an intimacy which continued unbroken until the following spring.. . .
Source: Gabor Boritt, The Lincoln Enigma, 2001, p. xv.
In November 1862, Lincoln wrote that "Captain Derrickson [sic]... and his Company are very agreeable to me; and while it is deemed proper for any guard to remain, none would be more satisfactory to me than Cpt. D and his company." So it was to be, the Company remained the presidential guard until the end of the war, but its Captain was appointed provost marshall in Pennsylvania the following spring.
"Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers' Home."
Oxford University Press
by Matthew Pinsker
Among the more interesting and little-known aspects of Lincoln's life at the home was his relationship with Capt. David Derickson. Described as "the president's favorite new companion," Derickson was captain of Company K of the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry. In September 1862, Companies K and D were detached from the defenses of Washington and sent to guard the president's cottage at the Soldiers' Home. According to Mr. Pinsker, Lincoln often shared his dinner table with Derickson and Capt. Henry Crotzer (of Company D) when Mary Lincoln was away.
In addition, Derickson shared a bed with the president, at Lincoln's invitation. The bed-sharing eventually made its way into the regimental history that received little attention until recently. Contemporary views thought little of men sleeping together in the same bed, a common practice of the period.
That an Army captain would share the bed of president of the United States on multiple occasions might seem unusual and hard for some to understand. Mr. Pinsker, however, describes the situation more fully than has been the case, and places it in is proper historical context. Even so, the story will undoubtedly gain prominence now.
What is truly disturbing about the bedtime stories of Lincoln and Derickson is that, as we are assured by the Lincolnistas, this was simply common practice for the President of the United States to have an Army officer in his bed. What is truly disgusting is the manner in which they only talk about the Army officer in Lincoln's bed. We know it was common practice, and that they all did it, but we never read about the Army officer in the bed of Washington, or Adams, or Jefferson, or Madison, or Monroe. There is an obvious bias in the reporting.
Now there's the usual Nolu-Chan POS post that we've all come to know!
It is good to see you showing that respect to the holy and annointed one.
And you go on believing that if you want. Like I've said several times so far this morning, you can make any claim you want about anything you care to comment on and you can rest assured that that someone, somewhere will believe you.
Of course, the Government was essentially run by Commons, as now, and the ministers and representatives with whom the American legation met (actually three men) were representatives in the Crown in the sense that all the ministers created by Commons were the King's ministers. Whenever George's signature went on the Treaty of Paris, of course the entire British Government approved, and so the transference of sovereign power was imbued with all the authority of that Government.
Suppose for a moment, that George III did convey sovereignty. Where did George get it? From George II. And where did George II get it? And so on. ....At some distant point, you will find it claimed as a "divine right" - which is not dissimilar in concept from a natural right (from a metaphysical standpoint!).
Well, of course America received the same model of a theologically-based, "mystical body" model of government as the rest of Europe, which was described by, among others, the ninth-century Byzantine lexicographer, professor, theologian, patriarch of Constantinople, and sometime president of the imperial chancellery, Photius. In this mystical body, the King was the head, and other organs of society corresponded to other body parts, and all in turn were associated with various humors (bile, etc.). That was the theoretical basis of "divine right" as opposed to other merely seigneurial rights: the intermediation of the King (and Pope) between heaven and earth. When this intermediation was disturbed, as by the impending death of a powerful prince, the event was heralded by portents, such as the powerful thunderstorms referred to in the opening act of Julius Caesar, and by dreams and other portents. "The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes", et cetera.
It was this organum that the rationalists of the Age of Enlightenment were attempting to overhaul, but in terms of the politics of the immediate moment, it was the human understanding of society that Europe had received and the Founders had to deal with, and a formal investiture of the new United States went a very great distance to integrating the independence and sovereignty of the United States to the opinion of mankind. It was a huge step.
There it is again -- naked appeal to force. You put it in the passive voice to make it seem more impersonal, but it is the code of the highwayman, the same one the United States had repudiated after the odious Ostend Manifesto appeared.
Sorry if the idea isn't sensitive enough for you. I'm talking about a state of nature. I'm not trying to make debate points.
Please support your argument with a citation from the Constitution abridging the power of the States to convene the People to deliberate the future of the Union.
You can't, but the operative phrase is you don't want to because you can't afford to. You absolutely have to keep lying, in order to keep covering up for Lincoln.
The People who ratified the Constitution never gave an express consent -- a one-time, now-we've-got-you, "suitors of Penelope/the doors are locked!" kind of consent. As in, "Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated!"
Power junkie. The Constitution was written to wreck the lives of guys like you.
Secession is the antithesis of providing government.
Flatly not true. State government continued uninterrupted, and the Confederacy organized a provisional government at once.
And we both know that when put to the test, the "right" of secession was denied by the Courts.
Matters not within the jurisdiction of the court system at any level, state or federal. Can you spell ultra vires? Does the phrase have any meaning for you?
You have been refuted on that point. You speak only to the South's reasons for leaving -- which were broader than you allege, repeatedly and in the face of documentary refutation.
I was speaking to the North's, and specifically Lincoln's, reasons for waging war -- which were about forcing the South to remain in the Union for reasons that had nothing to do with slavery, and everything to do with dominating the South politically -- and all the other agrarian States, including those that were too slow-witted to perceive their real adversary, thanks to the wedge issue of slavery.
The bicameral Congress, with the House of Representatives and Senate, is not the same as the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Nor is the executive branch of the American government, containing the Cabinet and the Departments of the Government, the same as the the British Cabinet. The British Cabinet is comprised primarily of the members of the House of Commons, and to a lesser extent, Lords. These Cabinet members remain part of the their respective Houses. The Prime Minister forms the Cabinet, which both acts as an advisor to the Crown and performs the executive functions of the government.
As the power to suspend habeas rested traditionally with the Parliament in British jurisprudence, and because the Parliament contained executive functions of the British government, it can not be said that, based on the British traditional and model, the executive Branch of the American government has no role in suspending habeas.
Europe failed to immediately recognize the paradigm change. The United States was the first fruit of the Enlightenment.
Oh, really?
Intent follows the bullet, pal. Even when the charge is oppression under color of authority.
Or invasion, war, and conquest.
As hard as you try to delink cause and effect, you can't require us, with a bluff denial, to blink the evidence of the million bayonets that Lincoln sent into the South, that he did indeed try to do something, or that the prostration that followed in the wake of the war wasn't exactly what he had in mind for the South all along.
You can't expect anyone to believe you, if you pull that lame-assed defense attorney's trick, who stood up and tried to defend the Eight Trey Gangsta Crips' bloody assault and attempted murder of truck driver Reginald Denny by declaiming, exculpatorily, "....a riot happened!" It happened? Who are you kidding?
With respect to the war, Lincoln was right, and obligated by the duties of his office, to conduct it.
No, he wasn't. He wasn't impelled by Northern public opinion, either, until he engineered the confrontation over Fort Sumter. He was no longer responsible for the seceded States, and never justified in attacking them, or in fomenting a war. Which he did for ideological and political, "business reasons" -- the tariff, imposition of the old Whiggish American System, and the abolition of slavery in the South, contrary his numerous campaign protestations.
Rhode Island, on the other hand, was in a state of virtual anarchy. They were perilously close to becoming a failed state and breaking apart.
You should think of him getting around on Mary like Bubba got around on Hillary -- but in his own Lincolnian fashion.
Maybe we could make old Abe an honorary Brigadeer.
Your #2729 wasn't addressed to me. Your #2772 is consequently non-sense. Since your insist on crypto-speak, and can not make yourself intelligible, I see no point in continuing on this "John Wilkes Booth" non-sense.
I suggest you double up on your lithium today.
Correct. "Great Britain" is to the United Kingdom as "America" is to the United States. I should have been more precise.
Try posting in English.
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