Not necessarily. If Bush's party controlled congress they may let it slide. Alternatively, if Bush started using his military to round up and imprison the opposition's leaders they probably wouldn't impeach him either.
Bills fail all the time, many times due to wording the Congress does not like
...and you have offered absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Congress was simply upset at the "wording" of Lincoln's bill when they killed it. Much to the contrary, the congressional record is full of stated objections to the bill's intent itself to the point that members specifically sought out assurances that other military bills did not try to slip in a habeas corpus suspension through the back door.
There's no way around it, ftD. Lincoln went to congress and used his joint address to ask congress for a habeas corpus suspension. His habeas corpus bill was then designated S. 1 as the most important piece of legislation of the session. In a clear and direct rejection of Lincoln's request, Congress killed the very same bill he explicitly and publicly pled with them to pass.
You are such a phoney.
What Congressional leader did Lincoln put into prison for attempting to impeach him?
So the Republican Congress would 'let it slide' an act of tyranny?
After defeating the bill, they would let Bush go ahead and do it anyway and not lift a finger to stop him?
Bills fail all the time, many times due to wording the Congress does not like ...and you have offered absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Congress was simply upset at the "wording" of Lincoln's bill when they killed it. Much to the contrary, the congressional record is full of stated objections to the bill's intent itself to the point that members specifically sought out assurances that other military bills did not try to slip in a habeas corpus suspension through the back door.
I am sure there was opposition and yet, none of the men opposed were arrested so the bill could get passed.
Yet, the opposition was not enough to bring forth any attempts to impeach?
So, there could a vocal outcry against the bill, but when the President goes ahead and acts anyway, not a peep from Congress?
If the act was criminal, it would have been impeached or at least an attempt to impeach.
Lincoln did not attack anyone for attacking him, he attacked those who hindered the war effort.
There's no way around it, ftD. Lincoln went to congress and used his joint address to ask congress for a habeas corpus suspension. His habeas corpus bill was then designated S. 1 as the most important piece of legislation of the session. In a clear and direct rejection of Lincoln's request, Congress killed the very same bill he explicitly and publicly pled with them to pass.
And no doubt about it, Lincoln still suspended the writ as he thought necessary and the Congress did nothing to stop him with any impeachment precedings.
Now, a way to stop getting in deeper is simply to stop digging.
Lincoln had the support of Congress, many of which thought he was being too conservative.
No impeachment was ever attempted.
And it was not due to any fear of imprisonment by Lincoln.
By the way, I do not have to show the reasons why the bill was defeated.
You have to show why a man who you regard as a tyrant was allowed to run roughshod over the Congress, the same congress who still had enough independence to kill his bill.
http://www.vectorsite.net/twcw03.html#m2
3.2] THE 37TH CONGRESS CONVENES
* In fact, while Mr. Lincoln may have been hopeful that the Confederacy would fall over at the first push, he wasn't counting on it, as he made publicly clear early in July.
The first session of the 37th Congress of the United States met in Washington on Thursday, the 4th of July 1861, having been called to special session by the President after the fall of Fort Sumter. 80 days grace had been provided to the President to conduct military actions as he saw fit, and now the time was up.
Congress was no longer the place it had been with the secessionist fire-eaters gone. A newspaper editor wondered: "What will our New England brethren do without an opportunity of denouncing the peculiar institution in the presence of its devotees?" There were in fact still some Congressmen present defending State's Rights and slavery, the most prominent of them being John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, who many suspected of being a de facto agent of the Confederacy. Another was a Democratic Congressman from Ohio named Clement Laird Vallandigham, who attempted to introduce measures to send commissioners along with the Union Army in the field to receive Confederate peace overtures, and to censure President Lincoln for measures taken by the administration before Congress had met.
Vallandigham's measures went nowhere. The Southern sympathizers were a small minority. The Republicans had complete control of both houses of Congress. Of the 48 senators, 32 were Republicans, and of the 176 representatives, 106 were Republicans. The House quickly elected a pro-war speaker, Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania.
New Englanders now controlled the four powerful Senate committees that influenced war policy. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, still scarred from the murderous caning given him by Senator Brooks, was chairman of Foreign Relations, and his colleague, Henry Wilson, presided over Military Affairs. John P. Hale of New Hampshire was in charge of Naval Affairs, and William P. Fessenden of Maine led the Finance committee. These men and their associates, most prominently Senator Ben Wade of Ohio and Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, were all radical Republicans, determined to punish the South and put an end to slavery once and for all. In the House, clubfooted old Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, a bitter enemy of the South and its "peculiar institution", ran the powerful Committee on Ways and Means, which exerted control on government appropriations.
* On the first day of the 37th Congress, 4 July, President Lincoln addressed the body in a joint session. The president listed the actions he had taken on his own authority: he had called up the militia; declared a blockade of the Confederacy; increased the regular military forces; suspended the writ habeas corpus; and committed the government to great expenditures. All this had been done without Congressional approval, and Lincoln needed that approval to proceed further.
He justified his actions by citing recent events: secession; seizure of Federal property; attacks on Fort Sumter, Harper's Ferry, and Norfolk; and the creation of an "insurrectionary government"; all events intended to destroy Federal authority. Lincoln expressed his intent to deal with the rebel government, as well as to recognize the new Unionist state government in western Virginia as the legitimate authority for that state. He denied the right of secession, and denied that the border states had a right to be neutral. This, he said, was "treason in effect". This last remark clearly meant Kentucky. Lincoln was not being as cautious as he had been, since Congressional elections in that state on June 30 had revealed overwhelming Unionist support among the voters.
Then the president dropped his bombshell: he requested 400,000 soldiers and $400,000,000 in funds to prosecute the conflict. Lincoln clearly expected a hard war. Finally, Lincoln expressed his hope that the Unionist majorities he believed, against all evidence, were lying quietly in the South would assert themselves, and spoke his belief that the Union could be reconstructed into an order directed by the Constitution and no different than that which existed before hostilities.
Reconciliation was unlikely. The mood of Congress was for war. The body did pass by an overwhelming majority a resolution proposed by Senator Andrew Johnson, a tough east Tennessee Unionist who had stayed in the Senate even though his state had left the Union. Johnson's resolution stated that the war had been forced by Southern secessionists, and that the Federal government would prosecute the war simply to restore the Union and uphold the Constitution. The resolution stated there was no intent to either subjugate the South or to interfere with slavery.
However, Congress still supported the drastic steps Lincoln had taken, voting him the resources he required, and resolutions providing reassurances to the South were meaningless in the face of measures taken towards making war on it. Southern sympathizers in and out of Congress were hobbled by the unilateral actions of the secessionists. The polarization was irreversible.
Despite the weakness of the pro-Southern antiwar faction, the dominance of the Republicans, and the hot rhetoric of the pro-war radicals, a bill to allow the government to seize the property of rebels led to intense dispute. At issue was one section in the bill that stated that slaves used in the Confederate war effort should be declared free. The border-state Congressmen protested angrily, calling this measure unconstitutional and a de facto proclamation of general emancipation in the rebel states. Republicans replied that it was simply a practical measure against rebels themselves, a formal endorsement of Ben Butler's policy concerning contrabands. The radicals used the opportunity to blast their opponents, Thaddeus Stevens angrily responding:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Who pleads the Constitution against our proposed action? Who says the Constitution must come in, in bar of our action? It is the advocates of rebels, of rebels who have sought to overthrow the Constitution and trample it in the dust ... I deny that they have any right to invoke this Constitution ... I deny that they can be permitted to come here and tell us we must be loyal to the Constitution.
END QUOTE
The measure was adopted.
The bill was designated "S-1" beause it was the first proposed bill of its type for the session.
About this subject, Professor Phillip Shaw Paludan writes:
"But certain aspects of the conflict required congressional action and the legislators reclaimed authority that Lincoln had temporarily assumed. Congress ratified most of the President's acts taken between 15 April and 4 July.... The Senate began discussing a joint resolution [note: S-1] that recited Lincoln's actions - calling the militia, blockading Southern ports, calling for volunteers, increasing the army and the navy, suspending the writ - and declared them lawful.
"Almost all Republicans supported this resolution in principle, but they had different views on validation, especially on the matter of the habeas corpus writ and the blockade. Action on those issues were set aside for the moment. Unwilling to divide themselves over the means of responding to the rebellion when the response itself was what really mattered, Congress debated and passed laws that raised up to 500,000 three-year troops, gave Lincoln power to close ports by proclamation, authorized the increase of men and ships for the Navy, endorsed the issuance of hundreds of millions in federal bonds, levied a direct tax on the states and territories of $20 million, increased the tariff, and passed an income tax. Finally, on 5 August, the day before adjournment, they returned to the authorization issue. With only five Democrats voting 'no,' Congress declared that 'all acts, proclamations and orders of the President ... (after 4 March 1861) respecting the army and the navy of the United States, and calling out or relating to the militia or volunteers from the States, are hereby approved and in all respects legalized and made valid ... as if they had been issued and done under previous express authority and direction of the Congress of the United States.'
"With one omission Congress had endorsed Lincoln's emergency actions. It did so in the greatest crisis in this nation's history - a war on American soil, directly threatening the electoral process, the constitutional system, and the loss of almost half of the nation's territory with its resources and the major ports of entry of the entire Middle West. it is hardly surprising that Congress said 'yes;' that body had said yes with far less provocation.
"The one omission concerned the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Here was an act that clearly reflected the difference in the nation's experience with foreign and domestic war. Congress had agreed to Lincoln's warmaking - his marshaling of men and materials of war, his power to kill the nation;s enemies. Yet they refused to endorse his authority to jail those enemies. Accounting for the irony was the contrast between the clear dangers of Confederate soldiers shooting Union officials and the ambiguous and more covert dangers of civilian opponents attacking with words and less obvious weapons. Still, congress did nothing to stop Lincoln from carrying out his plan. Politics was important here: Americans were sensitive about their liberties; better to stay quiet on the subject and let Lincoln take the heat. Most important, however, their inaction showed that congressmen agreed with Lincoln. They were willing to let him do whatever it was that the Constitution allowed him to do."
From The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln by Phillip Shaw Paludan, p 81-82
With regard to the habeas corpus issue in 1861, Congress took the course of acquiescense until such time as the situation demanded action. Rejection of the terms of the proposed bill are not the same as condemnation of Lincoln's actions. Paludan makes this very clear.
You focus on what was deferred, rather than on what was endorsed, both by Congress and by the Supreme Court.
Again, from Paludan (pg 80-81):
"Gathering Congress on the symbolic Fourth of July, Lincoln explained that 'public necessity' and 'popular demand' had called forth his action. In the absence of Congress and with rebellion a reality, it hardly seemed likely that the Framers would have opposed action to save the republic. He further explained that he had done 'nothing beyond the constitutional competency' of Congress, and he therefore expected that the legislature would ratify his actions....
"Still, Lincoln was asking Congress to validate what he had done; he did not claim authority to act arbitrarily in cases where the Constitution spoke delphically. His request was for Congressional endorsement offered to share authority, to involve both branches of government in meeting the crisis. Lincoln wanted a constitutional process in dialogue, not in conflict.
"In instances where the Constitution clearly granted authority Lincoln grasped it boldly and to its limits. He was commander in chief of the armed forces and involved himself actively into matters of strategy. He helped establish rules for governing the army, determined the nature of restored governments in reconquered territory, and his actions against slavery had significant meaning for the soldiers as well as the slaves. Resting his power on the office and the obligation to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,' Lincoln claimed 'war power' authority to use his office to the limits and to do whatever might reasonably be implied from his oath to 'preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States' and the Union it established. As Attorney General Bates pointed out in justifying the suspension of the writ, the President had the means to execute the ends that the Constitution set forth, and 'he is ... thrown upon his own discretion as to the manner in which he will use his means to meet the varying exigencies as they arise.'
The Supreme Court agreed with the general principle. In the Prize Cases (1863) the justices were asked to decide if Lincoln's actions, taken before Congress met and declared war, were constitutional. The specific events of these cases focused on the legality of the blockade, but the principle that the Court announced ... had a wider application.... Throughout the war, the Court supported Lincoln's war making.