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
Did Jesus ever state that blacks or Jews were inferior? Did he ever state that one race was superior? Name redacted might have quoted the Bible, but it was for political purposes, he certainly wasn't a believer.
It is one thing to disagree with the politics, or supposed politics, of a source. It is another thing entirely to make comparisons to recognized evil.
I have posted nothing - NOTHING - that can be construed as hate-filled by any person with half a brain. You may not like the content because it is contrary to your own beliefs; you may not like some academic affiliation of the source author; you may not even understand the point being made; but, don't even try to suggest that I quote from "left-wing haters" without documenting your accusation.
PUT UP OR SHUT UP.
Those comments being ...?
Bump. Changed to "Ark of the Covenant" for a movie starring Harrison Ford.
Now you're on the right track. He did a lot of thing for propaganda value.
BTTT
I'm pretty sure it has been reprinted by Crown, so that people like you can maintain the facade of sanctimonious Southern morality. No doubt nolu chan, collector of similar literature, can provide you with a copy. Read it to understand the foundation of your beliefs.
That recognized evil became pertinent to this discussion the moment you responded to LG's documentation of the Fuehrerprinzip argument with a gratuitous slur against him for associating the common elements of that argument with the Lincoln one. You chose this course of debate. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
I have posted nothing - NOTHING - that can be construed as hate-filled by any person with half a brain.
You have made slanders upon other posters with unfounded accusations of bigotry and hate though, AND you have remained curiously silent as to whether you agree with Hitler's position while simultaneously demanding that everybody else denounce him. While I do not explicitly decry you as a bigot, enough reason exists for it to have crossed my mind and for me to make a fair inquiry about your beliefs, to which you have yet to respond.
You may not like the content because it is contrary to your own beliefs; you may not like some academic affiliation of the source author; you may not even understand the point being made; but, don't even try to suggest that I quote from "left-wing haters" without documenting your accusation. PUT UP OR SHUT UP.
Documentation #1: You extensively quoted and defended Finkelman, a left wing reparationist best known for being the SPLC's hired gun in the ten commandments lawsuit.
Documentation #2: You extensively quoted and defended Farber, a left of center loose constructionist law professor at Berkeley.
I "put up" this evidence here just as I put it up a long time ago. Now it's time for you to shut up and answer the question: do you agree or disagree with Hitler?
Your snide remark likening the fact that he raised a perfectly valid and intellectually accurate point about the Fuehrerprinzip's role in the Lincolnian unionism argument to a shrill blanket accusation of nazism.
Are you two going to produce a Cliff Notes version of your discussion? Please include a preface from each of you stating your position on what exactly Lincoln did or didn't do to America, Americans and the Constitution. lol
No kidding! I witnessed the same exact thing in the last few moments of #3's presence here. He started sliding into the neo-nazi hole he dug himself and it really turned to desparation. I kept nudging him to the point that he couldn't escape from it and he started reaching for everything and anything he could throw at me to keep his secret covered.
All from one blood brother...
"At the same time, one must put aside the curious notion that Taney was at heart an antislavery man - a notion that has a long history and retains surprising vitality. The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1857, condemning abusive attacks on the Chief Justice [for his "dreadful" decision], declared, "Mr. Taney, personally, is opposed to slavery in principle and practice.' Frank H. Hodder agreed in 1929. 'Taney,' he wrote, 'was opposed to slavery .... The position he took in the Dred Scott case was the result of a mistaken sense of duty and not of any partiality for slavery.' Charles W. Smith, Jr., asserted in 1936 that Taney, like Jefferson, 'believed slavery wrong and favored gradual emancipation.' According to Walker lewis, in his 1965 biography, 'Slavery violated his conscience. His opposition to abolition was not because he wished to perpetuate slavery but because he believed the abolitionist misguided.' In 1971, Robert M. Spector said of Taney: 'From the standpoint of morality he hated slavery as much as any abolitionist.' This legend of the antislavery Taney rest almost entirely upon two actions taken nearly forty years before the Dred Scott decision. In 1818, he served as a defense attorney for an abolitionist minister and in the process denounced slavery as an evil that must be 'gradually wiped away.' Beginning the same year, Taney emancipated his own slaves to the number of at least weight. Whatever moral conviction may have encouraged these actions, it does not appear again in his public record or his private correspondence. His attitude on the bench was consistently and solicitously proslavery. By 1857 he had become as fanatical in his determination to protect the institution [of slavery] as Garrison was in his determination to destroy it."
Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case, pg 560
I equate Hitlerism and Nazism with Satanism. If that's the stuff you enjoy, have at it.
Never read it but I can guess. The analysis is that Hebrews were allowed to sell their own children into slavery, or themselves to pay for their debts. These slaves were freed in the year of Jubilee. The restriction between their slavery, and others (captives of war) was that they were admonished by God not to rule over another "with rigor" (harshness). I asked #3Fan repeatedly to provide a verse, any verse, whereby God condemns slavery. Jesus healed the centurion's slave, yet never condemned him, in fact He praised him.
I'm pretty sure it has been reprinted by Crown, so that people like you can maintain the facade of sanctimonious Southern morality.
I've found much of what Crown sells in our local library. The truth is not sanctimonius. What was sanctimonious was yankee flesh peddlers siling the oceans blue for thier filthy lucre, making billions in profits, and then demanding and end to the practice once the monies changed hands. First the money, then the morals.
No doubt nolu chan, collector of similar literature, can provide you with a copy. Read it to understand the foundation of your beliefs.
Sorry, I have a brain, and can use it without anyone else telling me what I need to know or belive. Even then, nolu chan and I, or others, do not tell each other what to think. Nor is it provided by any single book. It comes from decades of reseach and study.
Almost 4400 posts - months of posting and research, and he has the unmitigated gall to flame out when I left to go home. Have some people no shame? ;o)
Exactly.
ROTF! I see the problem already. Fehrenbacher.
The whole problem with Fehrenbacher is that per the Constitution the federal government had no authority to end slavery. As I've posted several times now, the first Congress, second Congress etc all limited citizenship to WHITES only. Numerous state and federal court decisions held that slaves were property and/or could not be citizens. If Chief Justice Taney and 6 others on that court had ruled otherwise, they would have been guilty of judicial activism.
I despise all three, please quit projecting. I take it you never watch the History Channel, and never saw "Raiders of the Lost Lance Ark"?
"Your source on Taney is even more bizarre - he's a left wing reparationist crackpot who is employed by the SPLC and whose "history" comes across as the ramblings of an agenda-driven hack (which he is) when compared to virtually any other source on Taney, be it positive (like Curtis) or negative (like Fehrenbacher)."
Ad hominem attacks that do not refute the accuracy of the author's views. Can't attack the message? No problem. Attack the messenger! I think, also, you'll see that I quote Finkelman once to give you a taste of a real left-winger - as compared the the gratuitous left-wing smears you paint on my other sources - including Jaffa and Rehnquist! Outside of Bledsoe, J. Davis, Stephens, and Hitler, I have no idea who is on your approved list of pro-southern sources.
Post script - "Reparations" for slavery is a despicable idea. There are no living ex-slaves; there are no living ex-slave holders. Present day society is not responsible for the past evils. There are many citizens of this country who never had a slave-holding ancestor, or whose family may have come to the country well after the demise of slavery. Reparations belong to those who have been wronged and made by those who committed the wrong.
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