Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

To: fortheDeclaration
However, though Davis did not use the Writ as often as Lincoln, it does not mean he did not want to, or in fact, should have been restricted from doing so.

As usual you are simply wrong. Per Bensel, "even when granted this power, Davis never used suspension as sweepingly or with as much overt political purpose [as Lincoln]." (p. 142)

The fact is that suspension of the Writ is a necessity in times of war.

Convenient, useful, and sometimes even justified, yes. A necessity for times of war, no.

And Lincoln may have been in most cases justified in using it.

There is no such indication, and in fact Lincoln is widely known to have used it to detain innocents (including some very high profile ones), political opponents, underage minors enlisted in his armies, and newspaper editors who disagreed with him in their editorial policies. In a military sense, suspension of the writ is sometimes justified WHEN DONE THROUGH THE PROPER LEGAL CHANNELS (and Lincoln did not for the first two years of his suspension). It is not proper for dissenting newspaper editors, opposition party officials, judges, and 16 year old kids stuck in the military.

4,341 posted on 04/06/2005 12:51:07 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist ("Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism" - Ludwig von Mises)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4339 | View Replies ]


To: GOPcapitalist
However, though Davis did not use the Writ as often as Lincoln, it does not mean he did not want to, or in fact, should have been restricted from doing so. As usual you are simply wrong. Per Bensel, "even when granted this power, Davis never used suspension as sweepingly or with as much overt political purpose [as Lincoln]." (p. 142)

That sounds like an opinion, not a fact.

The fact is that suspension of the Writ is a necessity in times of war. Convenient, useful, and sometimes even justified, yes. A necessity for times of war, no.

Ofcourse it is a necessity, that is why it is justified.

That is why it was allowed in the Constitution.

And Lincoln may have been in most cases justified in using it. There is no such indication, and in fact Lincoln is widely known to have used it to detain innocents (including some very high profile ones), political opponents, underage minors enlisted in his armies, and newspaper editors who disagreed with him in their editorial policies. In a military sense, suspension of the writ is sometimes justified WHEN DONE THROUGH THE PROPER LEGAL CHANNELS (and Lincoln did not for the first two years of his suspension). It is not proper for dissenting newspaper editors, opposition party officials, judges, and 16 year old kids stuck in the military.

I know that Lincoln's orders many times, were over-zealously carried out.

4,344 posted on 04/06/2005 1:44:28 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4341 | View Replies ]

To: GOPcapitalist; capitan_refugio; M. Espinola; Non-Sequitur
Regarding Bensel, Neely writes,

The most thoroughgoing of the 'moderns'is political scientist Richard Bensel, who carried the argument to the point of saying that 'the all encompassing ecnomic and social controls of the Confederacy were in fact so extensive that they call into question standard interpretations of southern opposition to the expansion of federal power in both the antebellumand post-Reconstruction periods' That statement probed the assumptions of southern historiography boldly, yet Bensel remained substantialy captive to the myth of Confederate conservatism in regard to civil liberties....(p.8)

Neely goes on to note that,

The supposed contrast between the fate of liberty in the North and the South during the Civil War was substantially a construct of southern leaders after the war,as figures once at loggerheads politically-even as odd a couple as Jefferson Davis and Alexander H.Stephens-came to agree on a strategy of contrasting the supposed despotic tendencies of the North with the consistent history of concern for liberty in the South. In the absence of readily available evidence to the contrary from Confederate archives, they managed to fool posterity for a long time. (p.170)

( Southern Rights, Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism, Mark Neely Jr.)

4,959 posted on 04/13/2005 3:40:53 AM PDT by fortheDeclaration
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4341 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson