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
lol
Holy cow bat fans...
No. You wrote: "It was the ante-bellum(?)". Usually a ? indicates uncertainly about spelling or definition. I posted both the definition of each part of the composite, along with the proper spelling without the hyphen. No complaints, no slight intended.
Legalized slavery, bigotry and racism exited in these United States for decades before the Confederacy was formed. It was not then limited to the Confederate states. After the war it was not limited to the Confederate states. Today it is not limited to the Confederate states.
Blacks - free or slave - were prevented from entering several northern states, were denied access to hospitals, schools, churches, businesses, denied the right to vote, denied the right to have a jury trial or serve on a jury , were held as "indentured servants" (slavery) for failing to pay a fine, and myriad other injustices. Spare me your overweening, myopic view of yankees.
Sentence 1: Smear Gianni and others with Hitler.
Sentence 2: Turn around and claim it was them.
You've done it repeatedly. It is hypocritical. Your other tactic is claiming that others are engaging in ad hominem in the same post where you are the one so engaged.
Why don't you explain yourself?
I just did.
A couple of you claim some level of Christian belief. Hitler, too, claimed he was acting in behalf of the will of God and according to Biblical sanctions. In Mein Kampf he quotes from the Bible hundreds of times. By the exact same analogy used by GOPcapitalist, would it be fair for me to say that because you are Christian who believes the Bible, you are also an adherent to Hitler?
False analogy. It was capitan refugio who said that Lincoln was justified in using invented and unconstitutional emergency powers. When it was pointed out that others made the same claim to grab their power and overthrow the civil authority, rather than explain what protections were in place to prevent any such end in the case of Lincoln, you started trying to paint us as Nazis.
I am willing to put the question to Jim and see what he thinks.
Ping him if you wish, I will not since I suppose he is a rather busy man.
Wrong. The 13th Amendment did not grant blacks citizenship. They might have been freed, but they were not citizens of the US. Refer back to the Natualization Acts enacted since the first federal congress. Black suffrage - if that were the intent of the 14th - was not enacted until 1870 by the 15th Amendment.
15 states refused to ratify the 14th Amendment. In response 28 Senators were unconstitutionally denied a seat in Congress. At which point Congress illegally overthrew the legimate, duly-elected republican governments of most of the Confederate states via the Reconstruction Acts (see their ratification of the 13th Amendment for proof of republican govenments). New military governments were instituted (another violation of the republican guarantee), and these puppet governments ratified the 14th.
The 14th also prevented (ex post facto) former Confederates the right of suffrage. So much for yankee visions of equality.
Wrong. The 13th Amendment did not grant blacks citizenship. They might have been freed, but they were not citizens of the US. Refer back to the Natualization Acts enacted since the first federal congress. Black suffrage - if that were the intent of the 14th - was not enacted until 1870 by the 15th Amendment.
15 states refused to ratify the 14th Amendment. In response 28 Senators were unconstitutionally denied a seat in Congress. At which point Congress illegally overthrew the legimate, duly-elected republican governments of most of the Confederate states via the Reconstruction Acts (see their ratification of the 13th Amendment for proof of republican govenments). New military governments were instituted (another violation of the republican guarantee), and these puppet governments ratified the 14th.
The 14th also prevented (ex post facto) former Confederates the right of suffrage. So much for yankee visions of equality.
You are not understanding a key matter here, capitan. When YOU appeal to an authority as your argument, to wit an argumentum ad verecundiam, and that authority is NOT a credentialed and recognized expert and/or that authority espouses an unconventional view that goes against the overwhelming scholarly position on the same subject, it is NOT argumentum ad hominem to point out the said lack of credentials, recognition, and/or universality as a means of demonstrating the fallacy of your original argumentum ad verecundiam.
Can't attack the message? No problem. Attack the messenger!
Bullsh*t. I've made well over a hundred posts on other forums and this one making salient and valid criticisms of the messages you posted from the likes of Farber and Jaffa, virtually all of which you have ignored in favor of ad verecundiam appeals to their names.
I think, also, you'll see that I quote Finkelman once to give you a taste of a real left-winger
IIRC you quoted Finkelman three or four times including one with the suggestion that I should read him before I exposed the fact that he was a left wing kook. I also see that you are still defiantly displaying your heavily egged face from that little incident with this unproven claim that you intended to post a left wing nut job all along.
as compared the the gratuitous left-wing smears you paint on my other sources - including Jaffa and Rehnquist!
I've never called Rehnquist a liberal. I have stated that Jaffa professes to be a conservative and generally aligns that way, yet has an abnormally large number of connections and shared positions with the left for somebody who is supposedly a conservative leader. Beyond that, your sources are the likes of Finkelman and Farber - bona fide leftists with undisputed credentials on that side of the political spectrum.
I distinctly recall lengthy excerpts from him over at least three or four posts until I slapped egg on your face by exposing him as a left wing nut. I also distinctly recall that you gave a ringing endorsement to his work and suggested I should read more of it, again before you discovered that he was a left wing nut.
Farber's style is to present opposing views on the issues and analyze them for strengths and weaknesses.
Allegedly, though (a) you have a bad tendency to truncate his quotations in a way that leaves out material that is critical to your side, and (b) of the material that Farber has supporting Lincoln's side, the bulk of it is extremely weak and specious as I have shown in many thorough deconstructions of his text on FR.
Your friend nolu chan has also quoted "extensively" from Farber.
Yeah, and in case you haven't figured it out yet, he's mocking you, mocking Farber, and pointing out that you cannot seem to consistently present Farber nor can Farber, in many cases, consistently present himself.
Slothful documentation from a slothful, narrow mind.
Did that projector you bought come with a rebate form? Cause it seems as though you've invested the savings in a parrot.
Yeah, and so was Hitler's nordic fantasy about Sir Parzifal.
Mein Kampf is evil incarnate.
Happy to see you finally admit it.
For the brain-dead who have a perverse desire to know what I think about Hitler and his writings, and what I think about posting gratuitous Hitler quotations, can I make it any more clear?
It's good that you are expanding your vocabulary, capitan, however you should take a moment to familiarize yourself with the words you employ. Gratuitous has a specific meaning, generally entailing arbitrariness and being without proof or basis. Attaching it on to the phrase "Hitler quotations" as a modifier makes no sense, as those quotations are very real, very much proven to have originated from Hitler's pen, and very much relevant to a discussion in which the very same vulgar theories espoused in them are being used to justify Lincoln's actions.
Again, I'm happy to find that you've decided to expand your vocabulary. You should use greater precision in your word choice though. A syllogism is necessarily a logical construct containing, at minimum, two associated premises and a conclusion drawn upon them. Simply noting resemblence between two very similar statements is not a syllogism for the reason that it lacks a conclusion drawn upon the premise of that associations and another. Rather it is a descriptive observation and nothing more.
I am quite aware of the discussion. Do you not know sarcasm when you see it? Your post's look suspiciously like WLAT's? Are you related or something?
I must have stepped over this little dogleg on the sidewalk without noticing it. You can withdraw it now. I share none of the views you unwarrantably ascribe to me .
And by the way, where was my courtesy ping? Oh, right -- you don't do courtesy.
The "Who Said It: Walt or Karl Marx?" Quiz
You present your "quiz" in a fairly light-hearted vein, but it actually has strong expository value.
It serves as a reminder -- especially the quote from Hitler at the end -- that Marx, Engels, Lenin, and all the German National Socialists were all alike men of the Left. The German NSDAP was the "National Socialst German Workers' Party" -- liberals like to leave out the part about "socialist" and "workers" because failure to do so correctly isolates capitalist small-"l" liberal democracy, i.e. conservatism, as the true enemy of all forms of Left tyranny.
Liberals could stand, for the longest time until Stalin's crimes started to become public, thanks to Nikita Khruschev, to keep kissing the pig of socialism and calling it beautiful. The stench of dead bodies forced them to attempt a divorcement of Nazism from socialism, which was one of the cheesier, and more successful, historiographic hustles of the last 500 years.
Conservative intellectuals like Frank Meyer and Ludwig von Mises have killed entire forests showing that the spirit of compulsion at the core of socialism -- it goes for communitarianism, too, indeed any form of collectivism -- is morally corrupt and inevitably leads to great crimes, the kind that are transacted at the level of policy.
The Soviet Communists and the German National Socialists have given us two huge confirmations of this insight, and that is the problem that rankles Abraham Lincoln's defenders. They realize now that Lincoln was of a piece with the parties of vanguard government and lumpen, "follower" societies, and that his Civil War may be morally indictable in kind with the murderous adventures of 20th-century totalitarianism.
Concurring bump. The formal term for his sources' problem is "subverted authority", the establishment of which on your part by argument and exposition is not ad hominem. I suppose you could gratuitously throw in a few ad hominem's, but inasmuch as they would be fallacious, they would neither add to, nor detract from, the value of your argument, which has to stand on its merits.
Capitan is within his rights to adduce Eric Foner, say, and point to his chair at Columbia as a sign that he is doing something right. But it isn't as strong an argument as exposition of the facts from documents, and Foner's Marxist construction of the thematic argument between Lincoln's party and the secessionists isn't that. And at that point you are within the bounds of fair play to show that Foner has a tendency, and to show by exposition whence that tendency comes and whither it tends, and why -- and that is not an ad hominem, but a review of the authority.
If you said, "Eric Foner is a Communist, and therefore his statement that Nathaniel Banks's Red River campaign was not really a failure must be suspect" (I posit this hypothetically, not knowing whether Foner ever said such a thing), then that would be ad hominem. Your statement wouldn't tell us anything about whether what Foner said was true. Foner could be the biggest Communist since Trotsky, and yet even stopped clocks are right twice a day, and so your statement would not elucidate. We should still be at sea concerning Foner's claim for Banks.
Now that #3 is gone, I'm not sure who to ping for an authoratative opinion on what a person with half a brain might think!
Non and x will be disappointed they didn't make the roll.
You can add Held_to_Ransom and Mortin_Sult to that list as well. They're both the same guy, but different names that joined the Wlat Brigade at different times. He also had a couple others that got banned
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