The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Claremont's smear of DiLorenzo (NR book review)

10/9 | myself

[GOPcapitalist]

As you may know, the Claremonsters launched their latest and probably most widespread attack on Thomas DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln" this week with an article in National Review by Ken Masugi. The article follows the same line taken by the two previous Claremonsters tasked with smearing DiLorenzo by the Abratollah Jaffa - Tom Krannawitter and Richard Ferrier. Rather than appearing on the Claremont or Declaration Foundation websites like the previous attacks, this one made it into a more mainstream conservative publication. I read the review today in the new issue of NR and immediately experienced a sense of disgust that the publication would print such poorly written bilge. To critique DiLorenzo's book is one thing, but Masugi's article is little more than intellectually bankrupt rhetoric. Compared to the old days of NR when Frank Meyer took Lincoln to task and even when the Abratollah actually fought his battles himself, the lack of quality in the present piece is shocking and in need of address. A dissection and rebuttal of the latest and most prominent Claremonster attack on DiLorenzo's book is therefore in order. Excerpts from the NR article are printed in bold:

I. "Fortunately we are not dependent on DiLorenzo for an understanding of Lincoln's political philosophy; Lincoln himself summarized it in the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural. For Lincoln, the preservation of equality of natural rights demands a strong government, but one limited in its powers. This founding principle leads politically to the need for consent of the governed, the basis of our republican government."

Contrary to Masugi's assertions, the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural were not reflections of Lincoln's political philosophy but rather his rhetorical gifts. Above all, Lincoln was a pragmatic politician who played the games of politics with amazing skill and frequency. His asserted devotion to a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" in the Gettysburg speech makes a brilliant rhetorical point, but does not reflect Lincoln's own political behavior in any sense. Lincoln went to war to prevent the formation of a government by a clear majority of the southern people and imposed military reign in its place upon conquest of that region. Such behavior further makes Masugi's claim that Lincoln's political philosophy revolved around principles of "the need for consent of the governed" absurd.

Lincoln did advocate and exercise his power in a strong government, but the limits in its power that Masugi speaks of were severely lacking. One such case happened famously in Lincoln's shunning of a court ruling contrary to his assumed and unconstitutional unilateral suspension of habeas corpus. Following the violation of citizen's equal rights before the law in Maryland, Justice Roger Taney authored the opinion of Ex Parte Merryman for the US Circuit Court and had a copy hand delivered to Lincoln himself. Lincoln shunned the decision, though the court in its proper role had exercised a perfectly legitimate and constitutionally sound limitation on government powers exercised through the executive and military. The incident is but a single of many virtually unrestrained exercises of power by Lincoln during his administration.

II. "DiLorenzo then complains of the war measures Lincoln took after secession: military tribunals, restrictions on civil liberties, and the suppression of newspapers. But he doesn't mention the South's suppression of discussion about abolition"

In this complaint Masugi commits a fallacious line of argument, and perhaps intentionally. He notes DiLorenzo's complaint with Lincoln, responds with the assertion that the south "did it too," and moves on as if the issue has been settled while simultaneously criticizing DiLorenzo for failing to write about the South's shortcomings. Only one problem - DiLorenzo's book was never about the South's shortcomings and never sought to take up that issue in the first place. It was about Lincoln though, and despite Masugi's best efforts to divert attention away from the validity of DiLorenzo's complaints with Lincoln, they remain unaddressed in his supposed critique. Yet again, DiLorenzo's argument remains unaddressed by Masugi.

III. "DiLorenzo also contends that Lincoln violated international law in his "savage" conduct of the war. Not once does DiLorenzo entertain the thought that a disunited America might have become prey for the designs of European imperial powers, which would have put an end to the experiment in self-government"

Masugi employs a clear and apparently intentional distraction tactic to divert attention away from DiLorenzo's original argument - war crimes under Lincoln's command. Notice that his "response" to DiLorenzo on the issue is a wholly unrelated reference to fears of European imperialism in North America - an issue that has very little if anything to do with DiLorenzo's commentary about war crimes and fails to address it in any significant way.

IV. "And for the destruction caused by Sherman's march through Georgia, historian Victor Davis Hanson has observed: 'It is a hard thing for contemporary liberalism to envision war as not always evil, but as sometimes very necessary - and very necessarily brutal if great evil is to disappear.'"

Masugi's comment here comes as if an arbitrary rhetorical expression constitutes enough to dismiss a factually formulated argument. It doesn't, and Masugi's chosen quote conveys little more than excuse making of an "ends justify means" variety.  By implication of his quote, Masugi seems to be attempting to cast DiLorenzo's critique of Lincoln's style of warfare as a view of "contemporary liberalism." Nothing could be further from the truth, as the distinction of justly waged war and unjustly waged war comes directly from traditional conservative Christian moral absolutism, not modern liberalism.

Thomas Aquinas, a famed Christian philosopher and ethicist of the scholastic age, set forth the qualifications of a morally waged war. Aquinas reasoned that a war may be justly waged when three conditions are met: that of sovereign authority to do so, that of a just cause for its being waged, and thirdly "it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil" Aquinas cites St. Augustine in giving examples of the wicked waging of war: "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war." Many such elements, including drives for vengeance and harm and the lust for power exhibited their ugly heads in the brand of warfare waged against civilians by northern troops.

Even if one believes that the North had fought for the just end of freeing the slaves (it did not do so according to no less a source than Lincoln himself), and even if the North's war was waged duly under proper authority, its immoral waging renders the war unjust. Aquinas states this clearly in his writings: "For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention." DiLorenzo also readily admits in his book that had the war been waged to free the slaves, had it been properly conducted, and had it been waged in a moral way, it would have been justified. His argument, which he supports by citing the rampant Northern war crimes, demonstrates that this was simply not the case, therefore making the North's waging of war unjust and immoral. Yet again, this argument of DiLorenzo remains unaddressed by Masugi.

V. "But why would Lincoln indulge in these criminal actions? Since he was a racist and had no great interest in freeing the slaves, DiLorenzo concludes, his "real agenda" must have been the imposition of a "mercantilist/Whig" high tariff economic system"

Masugi's assertion here is a clear case of scarecrow construction, but first let us examine the conclusions he attributes to DiLorenzo but apparently disputes himself. The fact of Lincoln's racism (racism being defined by the belief that a certain skin color instills qualifies conditions of superiority in that skin color over another)  is thoroughly supported by Lincoln's statements. Among them are the following:

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position." - Lincoln at Ottowa, August 21, 1858

"Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?" - Lincoln, speech fragments, circa 1859

Next we may turn to Lincoln's position on the issue of freeing the slaves. I have recognized many times before that Lincoln very clearly had a passive moral opposition to slavery. Politically, he took a fairly firm stance in opposition to its expansion into the territories. Beyond that, Lincoln played politics, which led him to adopt positions opposed to the abolition of slavery and even engage in efforts to prolong the institution's existence. One such case of the latter came in 1861 when Lincoln endorsed - in his inaugural address of all places - a recently passed constitutional amendment that stated

"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

The measure would have effectively prevented any future amendment abolishing slavery, likely extending the institution years if not decades beyond what would otherwise have been its fate had the measure been ratified. Lincoln's involvement in this constitutional amendment extended far beyond simply endorsing it though. Lincoln himself was the motivation behind its introduction in committee several months earlier, as is indicated by the senator who introduced it, William Seward. Following the proposal's introduction, Seward wrote to Lincoln to inform him of his actions stating "I offered three propositions which seemed to me to cover the ground of the suggestion made by you, through Mr. Weed, as I understand it." In other words, Seward introduced the measure after being informed of it by Thurlow Weed, who conveyed it as a message from Lincoln, who he met with in Springfield a few days earlier. When the amendment passed Congress two months later on the eve of Lincoln's inauguration, his support of the measure was further cited as the main reason for its success. Eyewitness Henry Adams wrote of the event, "some careful manipulation, as well as the direct influence of the new President, was needed before this measure...could be passed."

Having exposed the error in these assumptions about Lincoln that had been contradicted by DiLorenzo though denied by the Claremonsters, we may now turn to Masugi's argument in this statement. In the simplest of terms Masugi is asserting that, holding the other two assertions to be true, DiLorenzo concludes by default that Lincoln's real motivation was the Whig economic agenda. This assertion is a straw man, as DiLorenzo's argument on Lincoln's economic beliefs is based upon Lincoln's espousal of those beliefs throughout his career - not some random conclusion that since it wasn't X and Y, it must by default be Z. Extensive passages of DiLorenzo's book are devoted to Lincoln's career as a proponent of protectionism, and Lincoln's own words right up to the war indicate he held this belief strongly:

"I was an old Henry Clay tariff whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject, than on any other. I have not since changed my views." - Lincoln to Edward Wallace, October 11, 1859

Lincoln espoused his tariff views strongly in a speech given only weeks before of his inauguration. It pertained to the Morrill tariff bill, which had long since passed the House and was up for debate in the Senate. In the plainest of language and on the eve of the war, Lincoln told his audience that the tariff, which the South vehemently opposed, was a top priority:

"According to my political education, I am inclined to believe that the people in the various sections of the country should have their own views carried out through their representatives in Congress, and if the consideration of the Tariff bill should be postponed until the next session of the National Legislature, no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff."- Lincoln at Pittsburgh, February 15, 1861

VI. "The South's call for low tariffs became a demand for preserving an agricultural economy based on slavery. To view the conflict between North and South as primarily one of two incompatible economic systems obscures the central place of slavery."

Masugi fails to substantiate his first assertion and proceeds as if it were fact upon his statement. In reality, common sense economics dictate that Southern opposition to the tariff stemmed from the economic detriments incurred by the South by the presence of protectionist industrial tariffs. A protectionist tariff functions by raising the price of a foreign import by way of the tax imposed upon it. When raised by a tariff, a comparatively cheap foreign good's price may become equal to or higher than an otherwise more expensive but protected domestically produced substitute. Accordingly the market shifts to favor the protected domestic good, which is, thanks to the tariff, the cheaper of the two. That domestic good will still cost more than the foreign substitute absent the tariff, therefore persons who stand to gain from the presence of a cheaper foreign good will oppose the tariff while the protected industries will support it. That is exactly what the South faced in 1861. Tariffs benefited northern industries by shifting the market to them and denying persons outside of the northern industries the benefits of free trade.

Masugi's second assertion is itself ironic, as it better applies to his own position when flipped than to any tariff-oriented argument - To view the conflict between North and South as one of slavery and virtually nothing else, as Masugi does, obscures the complexity of the conflict itself by denying even the simplest consideration of any factor beyond that narrow pre-set parameter. To be sure, reducing the entirety of the war to a tariff difference is not without its own fallacy, but just as much if not more is true of slavery reductionism, and the latter is firmly adhered to as an immovable doctrine by many in the Claremonster school. Rather than objecting to attempts of another to interpret the conflict as exclusively economic, they seem to object to any interpretation of the conflict that is not exclusively slavery.

VII. "Progressivism was based on the same historical-evolutionary brand of thought, dating back to Rousseau, that justified black slavery as the cornerstone of Confederate civilization. And Progressivism begat modern megastate liberalism."

Masugi's argument in this case, that leftism emerged out of the same strain of thought as the confederacy, is not only bizarre but wholly unsubstantiated in his article. He simply asserts it to be so, accepts his self-assertion as fact, and moves on as if it were the case. The entirety of his statement may be rejected as quickly as the whim in which it was made. Quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur.

If one does, however, investigate this assertion further, its falsehoods are similarly evident. Masugi's assertion is presumably based upon the writings of the Abratollah, which basically attempt to force a bizarre theory on the evolution of liberalism from John C. Calhoun to the Confederacy to both Adolph Hitler and modern leftism. Jaffa's attempted connection is uneasy, if not wholly unsubstantiated. Any honest examination of the political evolution that led to Hitler and National Socialism traces its origins to the synthesis of Germanic nationalism and Hegelian Marxism by a group of relatively obscure far-left political philosophers who wrote in Germany during the first world war. All of these writers were direct products of various communist movements drawn upon what their writings asserted, Marx und Hegel. The theory of national socialism, as with its counterpart theory of socialism that still dominates modern leftism, emerged heavily out of the life breathed into it by Karl Marx and his successors. As evidenced by the writings of Marx himself, the marxist movement's interpretation of the War Between the States has been thoroughly aligned with the North, not the South, since the very first shot was fired in 1861. They saw the Northern cause, albeit through shaded glasses, as being purely a struggle of liberation for the working man and sung praises of that which came out of it under Lincoln's guidance. Marx himself expressed this interpretation in a letter to Lincoln in 1864:

"The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world." - Marx, November 29, 1864

Contrary to Masugi's interpretation, Marx, in the plainest of terms, saw his leftist cause advanced into a new stage of historical evolution by the Northern victory over the Confederacy he detested and spent his time attacking throughout the war.

VIII. "Some libertarians would not see a paradox in a liberty to own slaves and thus to enslave oneself: This is precisely DiLorenzo's position stripped of all its pretensions"

This attempt to characterize a position of DiLorenzo is yet another unsupported assertion of Masugi's, made on a whim and inserted as if it were so by its very presence alone. Masugi offers no evidence though that anything of DiLorenzo's even remotely approaches that position. Any honest reading of The Real Lincoln recognizes that, when applicable, DiLorenzo is harshly critical of slavery itself as an institution and even acknowledges that fighting a war to end it could be justice, if it were truly the reason for that war. This however was not the case with Lincoln.

IX. "Others on the right, such as Russell Kirk, Robert Bork, and Robert Kraynak have criticized the Declaration for being French, nihilistic, or irreligious."

Masugi's assertion here is aimed at a branch of conservatives who have taken Constitution-oriented views of proper American government, citing the Declaration as an important however somewhat problematic document. The Abratollah and his followers tend to hold otherwise, forwarding an argument that orients American government around the Declaration and asserts the document to have been perfected by the ideals embodied in Abraham Lincoln. In actuality, the major traditional conservative criticism of the DoI relates to its thoroughly Lockean philosophical base. Instead they turn to the much more solid and traditional philosophical bases found elsewhere in the founding documents. The Jaffa school has instead long tried to reconcile and rectify the Lockean problem, often through Lincoln as mentioned above. As a side note, for those who wonder what problems Locke, a figure frequently embraced by many conservatives, presents - read the logical fulfillment of his ideas as expressed in David Hume's Enquiry. From there it will become fairly obvious how post-modern leftism emerged in later centuries and the empiricist predecessors out of which it stems.

X. "But in two magnificent works, Crisis of the House Divided and A New Birth of Freedom, Harry V. Jaffa captured Lincoln's teaching about our founding principles. Jaffa demonstrated how tradition, majoritarianism, revelation, and latter-day states' rights arguments cannot provide for liberty, human excellence, and republican limited government as well as the natural-rights teaching of the Declaration as sublimely articulated by Abraham Lincoln"

In this concluding sentence, Masugi inadvertently concedes what this is really all about - a combination plug for the Abratollah's books and an intellectually light weight trashing of a major opposition, found in DiLorenzo. At least this statement of Masugi's is consistent with the rest of his book "review" - it consists of nothing more than a blind assertion of whim. Nowhere does Masugi bother to explain how Jaffa "demonstrated" all the things he alleges, nor does he even elaborate upon them. He simply asserts them to be true. The conclusion gives an appearance of an intention that the reader, at this point, to accept the Abratollah's word on faith, conclude the error of contrary positions by default, and join the Claremonster in its practice of genuflecting toward their worldly leader, his secular deity of Lincoln, and the glorious concept of "The Union" embodied in all three. As with all false gods though, their fraudulence is immediately revealed by exposure to a simple dose of truth and common sense.

[WhiskeyPapa]

So smoke on that fact for a while......

Smoke on the fact that he predicted the loyal Union people would kick the bejesus out of the so-called CSA, which is exactly what they did.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

What'shisname is clever enough to stick to his opinion. He doesn't cite many facts, because he has none to cite that favor his interpretation.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Davis, on the other hand, never once won an election where he had an opponent. Not for congress, not senate, not president of the confederacy.

That is interesting. I believe that Lincoln actually lost more elections than he won. But consider:

"But there were limits to what Lincoln would do to secure a second term.

He did not even consider canceling or postponing the election. Even had that been constitutionally possible, "the election was a necessity." "We can not have free government without elections," he explained; "and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us." He did not postpone the September draft call, even though Republican politicians from all across the North entreated him to do so. Because Indiana failed to permit its soldiers to vote in the field, he was entirely willing to furlough Sherman's regiments so that they could go home and vote in the October state elections -but he made a point of telling Sherman, "They need not remain for the Presidential election, but may return to you at once."

Though it was clear that the election was going to be a very close one, Lincoln did not try to increase the Republican electoral vote by rushing the admission of new states like Colorado and Nebraska, both of which would surely have voted for his reelection. On October 31, in accordance with an act of Congress, he did proclaim Nevada a state, but he showed little interest in the legislation admitting the new state. Despite the suspicion of both Democrats and Radicals, he made no effort to force the readmission of Louisiana, Tennessee, and other Southern states, partially reconstructed but still under military control, so that they could cast their electoral votes for him. He reminded a delegation from Tennessee that it was the Congress, not the Chief Executive, that had the power to decide whether a state's electoral votes were to be counted and announced firmly, “Except it be to give protection against violence, I decline to interfere in any way with the presidential election.”

"Lincoln", pp. 539-40 by David H. Donald

Don't forget though:

Lincoln opposed slavery, so he is attacked. Davis favored slavery, so he gets a free pass.

Walt

[stainlessbanner]

Thank you. Davis asked (Lincoln never did) the Confederate Congress to suspend the hapeas corpus 3 times - twice it was granted; the final time, I believe they denied suspension.

[TexConfederate1861]

Just as I predict that you may suffer the same fate if you show your scalawag backside to any LOYAL Southerner.

What a waste....

[TexConfederate1861]

Davis didn't have to throw the entire legislative body of a state
into JAIL....unlike Lincoln did in Maryland.
Dare to find a justification for that.

[TexConfederate1861]

Lincoln could not have given a tinker's damn about slaves one way or another. He was a politician....

[Non-Sequitur]

Davis didn't have to throw the entire legislative body of a state into JAIL....unlike Lincoln did in Maryland. Dare to find a justification for that.

Lincoln never threw the entire legislature of any state in jail. Dare to find the evidence of that.

[Non-Sequitur]

I believe that Lincoln actually lost more elections than he won.

But on the other hand, Lincoln actually can say he beat people in elections. Davis can't.

[William McKinley]

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[TexConfederate1861]

You prove me wrong..!

[Non-Sequitur]

Well, it's hard to prove something that didn't happen, didn't happen. But the timelines are there for anyone to see. Maryland held a secession convention and delegates voted secession down 53 to 13. Maryland followed this with a vote in the legislature against secession and proposing neutrality on April 29, 1861. None of the members of the Maryland legislature were thrown in prison for this. During the summer of 1861, some members of the legislature who still advocated secession and support for the cause of rebellion were jailed at Fort McHenry. The total number of legislators was 31, far less than the entrie Maryland legislature that you claim.

[WhiskeyPapa]

You prove me wrong..!

The whole legislature was not arrested. Thirtyone of about seventy legislators were arrested. That was only those with secessionist feelings. It should be noted that the police Chief of Baltimore was arrested and then released. He was later an officer in the army of the so-called CSA.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

The total number of legislators was 31, far less than the entrie Maryland legislature that you claim.

You're a big supporter of states' rights, aren't you?

"Arrests and arrests alone saved Maryland... I approved them then, I approve them now, and the only thing for which I criticize the government... is that they let some of these men out!"

-- Governor Hicks of Maryland.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Following the violation of citizen's equal rights before the law in Maryland, Justice Roger Taney authored the opinion of Ex Parte Merryman for the US Circuit Court and had a copy hand delivered to Lincoln himself. Lincoln shunned the decision, though the court in its proper role had exercised a perfectly legitimate and constitutionally sound limitation on government powers exercised through the executive and military.

That is your opinion.

Here is the opinion of the current Chief Justice:

"Lincoln, with his usual incisiveness, put his finger on the debate that inevitably surrounds issues of civil liberties in wartime. If the country itself is in mortal danger, must we enforce every provision safeguarding individual liberties even though to do so will endanger the very government which is created by the Constitution? The question of whether only Congress may suspend it has never been authoritatively answered to this day, but the Lincoln administration proceeded to arrest and detain persons suspected of disloyal activities, including the mayor of Baltimore and the chief of police."

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, February, 1999

Walt

[GOPcapitalist]

No, you never do want to take up the south's shortcommings, do you?

Its got its time and place, but it is also wholly irrelevant as a rebuttal to the documentation of Lincoln's violations. The Claremonsters saw DiLorenzo taking Lincoln to task over his abuses, couldn't handle facts like that being spread about their false god, and responded not by countering or addressing them, but with the Clintonesque line you so often tout: "the all did it."

[GOPcapitalist]

Sam Houston, as you know -- as you responded to my post where I quoted him: "I believe a large majority of our Southern people are opposed to secession, and if the secession leaders would permit our people to take ample time to consider secession and then hold fair elections the secession movement would be defeated by an overwhelming majority." -- Sam Houston, 1861

That's nice, Walt, but as I also noted, there is some question as to the validity of that quotation and its dating, which you have not established to be authentic.

That aside, even if those were Houston's words, they fly in the face of the reality around him. Texas held an election on secession and Houston lost it in a landslide. Tennessee and Virginia also voted with similar results. North Carolina voted before the blockade and it narrowly lost, but after the blockade they joined the secessionist column.

"It may well be questioned whether there is, to-day, a majority of the legally qualified voters of any State, except South Carolina, in favor of disunion. There is much reason to believe that the Union men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called seceded States."

That is called delusion, Walt. Secession carried three state referendums in a landslide.

[GOPcapitalist]

See #8. He presented something as fact that is not fact.

To the contrary, Walt. It cannot be disputed that the South solidly favored secession and expressed this position repeatedly. I know you like to live in your little fantasy world of southern unionism - after all, Lincoln said it was there, didn't he? But in the end you are arguing against history, Walt, when you assert this. You are arguing against landslide referendums, against public outcry for secession, against the citizenry of towns and counties passing their own secession resolutions because they thought their states weren't acting fast enough. One of Lincoln's biggest mistakes in the war was to severely underestimate the Southern people. He thought, and many in his cabinet concurred, it would be a quick march to Richmond and the whole thing would be over in a few weeks. William Seward explicitly predicted this in his private correspondence. It was not to be, as the South fought Lincoln's invasion for four long and bloody years.

[GOPcapitalist]

Lincoln never threw the entire legislature of any state in jail.

No, only the ones who opposed him politically.

[GOPcapitalist]

"Following the violation of citizen's equal rights before the law in Maryland, Justice Roger Taney authored the opinion of Ex Parte Merryman for the US Circuit Court and had a copy hand delivered to Lincoln himself. Lincoln shunned the decision, though the court in its proper role had exercised a perfectly legitimate and constitutionally sound limitation on government powers exercised through the executive and military." (me)

That is your opinion. (walt)

No Walt. It is actually how our government works. If the executive does something and somebody challenges it in court and wins, the court typically issues a ruling correcting the executive's action. The executive may either abide by the ruling, or he may challenge that ruling to a higher court if he doesn't like it. Lincoln did not abide by the court's ruling nor did he challenge it any higher. He simply ignored it, and ignoring it was not an option within the proper separation of powers in American government.

Now, as for the order itself, my opinion that Lincoln had no right to suspend habeas corpus on his own is also the current standing precedent decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.

"The decision that the individual shall be imprisoned must always precede the application for a writ of habeas corpus, and this writ must always be for the purpose of revision that decision, and therefore appellate in its nature. But this point also is decided in Hamilton's case and in Burford's case. If at any time the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the legislature to say so. That question depends on political considerations, on which the legislature is to decide." - Chief Justice John Marshall writing for the majority, Ex Parte Bollman and Swarwout (1807) 4 Cranch 75

Here is the opinion of the current Chief Justice: "Lincoln, with his usual incisiveness, put his finger on the debate that inevitably surrounds issues of civil liberties in wartime. If the country itself is in mortal danger, must we enforce every provision safeguarding individual liberties even though to do so will endanger the very government which is created by the Constitution? The question of whether only Congress may suspend it has never been authoritatively answered to this day, but the Lincoln administration proceeded to arrest and detain persons suspected of disloyal activities, including the mayor of Baltimore and the chief of police."

Rehnquist is no doubt entitled to his opinion, but it is nothing more than just that. His is not supported by the court's precedent unlike the opposite position. Nor does he even state it in a court ruling or dissent of any form on any level. As of right now, his opinion directly contradicts the court's decision on this matter giving you at best another person who shares your erronious view on habeas corpus.