Most people consider anything on the Circuit Court and up, of which there were three against Lincoln - Merryman, Murphy, and a case on the Boston circuit court. Also, cases directly involving a major national official in the government (i.e. a president, senator, congressman, or cabinet official) tend to qualify as being of major importance all the way down to the district court level for obvious reasons of their high profile.
What is a minor federal court ruling?
Normally your average district court ruling, exempting of course the aforementioned cases.
And how do you come to your conclusion on "major" or some other ranking?
On the basis that (1) 3 out of the 5 were circuit court and (2) 5 out of the 5 involved a high level national official.
Just for the record, they were ...?
Vallandigham and a congressman from Maryland (i'll have to look up his name) detained in 1861.
The "Long Convention" of Missouri citizens tossed the rascals out, because the rump legislature were traitors, and abdicated their positions.
Unsubstantiated garbage. The claim that the second convention was a continuation of the first is wholly specious as a substantial part of the membership of the first, including its president, were in Neosho.
You are certainly reaching on this one! If an income tax lowers your take home pay, it is not to say that it diminished your compensation. Your gross pay remained the same.
Mindless sophistry to justify government enforced robbery. If compensation after a new tax is less than compensation before that tax then compensation has diminished, especially if it is the dispenser of compensation itself that is retaining the tax.
Taney had a prepared opinion on that issue too, in the event a case ever came his way!
So I take it you believe that judges are not allowed to do legal writings? You are incorrect, BTW, as to having a "prepared" opinion. Taney voiced the issue in a letter to Congress.
Sherman's march through the deep south was a military offensive designed to break the back of the confederate war-making capability and destroy the will of the people of the CSA to resist superior moral and military force.
Mindless sophistry to justify a tyrant. The fact still remains that Sherman's troops robbed and plundered from the civilian population.
I would agree that if the secessionists and the Union came to blows, the federal armies would have invaded through Virginia. You need to provide a little bit more proof than your gratuitous accusation.
Nothing gratuitous about it. You know as well as anyone about the 75,000-whatever man army that Lincoln raised in April. He called them to Washington for a prepared assault on Virginia even though Virginia did not secede for another month.
The good people of western Virginia wanted nothing to do with their traitorous eastern brethren.
Wrong. A small rump convention of people concentrated in half a dozen or so counties around Wheeling wanted nothing to do with the confederacy. They claimed themselves to represent the government of Virginia then voted their own separation, taking a third of the rest of the state with them unwillingly.
The great irony about the secessionist gripes concerning the creation of West Virgina is that they hypocritically would have denied those people the "right to unilateral secession" they divined for themselves.
Bullsh*t. Many in Virginia would have been happy to let Wheeling go. The gripe came from the fact that the Wheeling radicals weren't content to take care of themselves. Instead they reached down south and claimed two or three dozen other counties for themselves. Substantial majorities in several of the counties they claimed were supportive of the confederacy and had voted with the rest of the state to secede.
Inaccurate and baseless. The treasonable Governor and his fellow travelers skedaddled in the face of moral authority.
Oh, so now it was a "moral authority"? Cause I'm virtually certain that those legislators looked out over the hills and saw a large hostile army.
GOPc - "Vallandigham and a congressman from Maryland (i'll have to look up his name) detained in 1861."
Vallandigham had not been re-elected in 1862. He was no longer a sitting congressman when he was arrested by order of Gen. Burnside in May 1863. Vallandigham was a candidate for the Democrat nomination for Governor at the time. His campaign was not going so well and he courted arrest for the publicity. It seems he forgot the old saying, "Be careful what you ask for. You may get it."
"The claim that the second convention was a continuation of the first is wholly specious as a substantial part of the membership of the first, including its president, were in Neosho."
The second meeting of the Missouri convention had a quorum of the members who attended the first session. When the Convention met on July 22, it declared the renegade government null and void. The renegade legislature would not meet in Neosho until October, and, even if they could claim legitimacy, never achieve quorum (at least, no official records exist to show that was the case, nor that the special session was lawfully called by the Governor).
"Mindless sophistry to justify government enforced robbery. If compensation after a new tax is less than compensation before that tax then compensation has diminished, especially if it is the dispenser of compensation itself that is retaining the tax."
If your ... uhhhh ... "reasoning" were valid, then it could be concluded that Federal judges don't have to pay income taxes, or tax increases, because it would decrease their "compensation." Sorry, "that dawg don't hunt."
"So I take it you believe that judges are not allowed to do legal writings? You are incorrect, BTW, as to having a "prepared" opinion. Taney voiced the issue in a letter to Congress."
Taney had prepared several opinions during the war dealing with issues ranging from the legality of income tax to conscription. They were all designed to thwart the Lincoln Administration, because Taney was, fundamentally, a disloyal southerner.
"Nothing gratuitous about it. You know as well as anyone about the 75,000-whatever man army that Lincoln raised in April. He called them to Washington for a prepared assault on Virginia even though Virginia did not secede for another month."
Still, no substantiation on your part.
Lincoln called for the raising of troops on April 15, 1861. They were to be stationed and utilized all over the Union, not just in Washington, D.C. or Virginia. On April 17, the Virginia legislature passed a secession ordinance, subject to a popular referendum. On April 18, Virginia militia under the direction of secessionist former Virginia Governor Wise unlawfully seized the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. On April 19th, secessionist forces attacked the Gosport naval yard.
These, and similar acts all preceded the May 23rd referendum. Armed insurrection was present in Virgina well before it seceded. In fact, secessionist activity preceeded the arrival of the first federal troops (6th Massaachusetts) in Washington on April 19-20. If Lincoln had aimed the entirety of the new, asembling army at Virginia, he would have been wholly justified. But the fact was, he did not.