“It has been wisely said that while the Constitution was designed to handle an enormous range of issues, it was not designed to handle a civil war.”
Yes, it was. It was desinged for everything. Hence the lack of a “civil war” or “emergency” clause saying, “In the event you don’t want to bother with the rest of this document, aw hell, do whatever feels right.”
“That is, of course, why the Founders allowed for suspension of civil liberties in cases of insurrection or invasion. It is notable that this is permitted by simple majority vote of Congress. The courts cannot overrule it.”
You’re talking about the suspension of habeas corpus I presume. Well, that is not specified as being permitted by simple majority vote. We only infer that given how the Constitution says it can only be suspended in so and so a situation. The Constitution is incomplete in that way.
That being said, I see no reason why the courts can’t overrule it. Say there was no insurrection, for instance.
That also being said, Lincoln did not get Congress to suspend habeas corpus for him. He did that all on his own, without any clause to point to for justification. He did a great many unprecedented things unilaterally, all based on the emergency and his so-called war powers. Most of which in my opinion were unjustified, and which aren’t even implied in the Constitution.
“If the body politic is permanently destroyed, so are the liberties it was designed to protect”
First of all, who said the body politic was in danger of being destroyed? Where? When? Did somehow the volley on Ft. Sumter land on freedom of speech?
More importantly, this is the old “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” argument. Yes, it is. There is no way out. You cannot save it by breaking it like Bush the Younger saved capitalism by abandoning it for socialism. The country ceasing to exist is a better outcome than the government ruling outside the Constitution.
“If the body politic is permanently destroyed, so are the liberties it was designed to protect.”
We’ll never know what relation to liberty the seperate North and South would’ve had. What we do know is that the North, on its own, during the war abandoned it. We know one of the reasons the South pulled the eject lever was because it was upset with the liberties already trampled upon and the fear of further trampling in future by the more numerous North. What I also know is that the North and South under the Constitution is not liberty itself. Liberty can exist with or without it.
I also know that we lost our liberty and our Constitution nominally under it eventually.
“This is well shown by the original Roman institution of the dictatorship. In extreme existential emergency the Senate appointed a dictator to exercise all functions of the state for a limited period. When this period was over he reverted to ordinary status.”
I trust you’re aware we are not Rome and never had such an institution. I’ve heard a great many justify Lincoln this way, and it is refreshingly honest. It’s just that a lot of us, you must understand, do not hear the word “dictator” and smile. A lot of us think it’s a bad thing to be. A lot of us think Caesar, for instance, killed the republic.
A lot us us see Cincinattus as the model of the temporary git-r-done-and-get out dictator.
As for Julius Caesar, he was not appointed dictator in the traditional Roman way. Ordered to Rome to stand trial, he instead marched his legions against the government and siezed power, eventually coercing the disempowered senate into proclaiming him dictator for life, a title without precedent.
So yes, he did destroy the Republic, but not by accepting the normal Roman temporary dictatorship.
As for Julius Caesar, he was not appointed dictator in the traditional Roman way. Ordered to Rome to stand trial, he instead marched his legions against the government and seized power, eventually coercing the disempowered senate into proclaiming him dictator for life, a title without precedent.
So yes, he did destroy the Republic, but not by accepting the normal Roman temporary dictatorship.
Whatever else he did, Lincoln did not rise to the level of a 19th C AD Cincinattus.
You are quite correct that Caesar killed the Republic. Except it had already been dead for a century or so and JC just put it out of its misery. The late Republic resembles a mafia state more than anything else.
The institution of the dictatorship had worked reasonably well for several centuries till Sulla perverted it.
Let me try to be clear on what I mean by an existential threat. I mean it quite literally. Had the Romans lost certain wars, they would have ceased to exist as a nation and as a people. Their government would have been destroyed and they would have all have been sold into slavery. The END of Rome. With the exception of the Cold War the US has never faced such a threat.
The Romans were quite clear on this point, as they had done the same to numerous other peoples, most notably the Carthaginians.
So given the choice of utter destruction or six months to a year of restricted freedoms, which do you think it is reasonable to choose?
This is not addressing the modern perversion of the word and original concept of dictatorship, the essence of which was that it was time-limited and emergency in nature.
Also not addressing the fact that many think a true emergency is a great opportunity to advance what you wanted to do anyway.