[lentulusgracchus]

[You, quoting Judge Dunlop] "The President, charged by the Constitution to take care that the laws be executed, has seen fit to arrest the process of this Court, and to forbid the Deputy Marshal to execute it."

I thought President Lincoln predicated his declaration of war, by blockade, on the as-yet unseceded States of Virginia and North Carolina on the premise that those States were insurrectionary because the federal courts and marshals could no longer discharge their functions?

[Non-Sequitur]

I thought President Lincoln predicated his declaration of war, by blockade, on the as-yet unseceded States of Virginia and North Carolina on the premise that those States were insurrectionary because the federal courts and marshals could no longer discharge their functions?

Judge Merrick is supposed to have been detained in October 1861, long after the rebellion had begun. Also, Judge Merrick was a judge in the District of Columbia. So what did any of this have to do with Virginia and North Carolina?

[4CJ]

Obviously it didn't matter to Lincoln either way, after secession the US federal courts had no jurisdiction in the seceded states, and Lincoln himself helped obstruct the remaining courts.