Whereas, It has become necessary to call into service, not only volunteers, but also portions of the militia of the States by draft, in order to suppress the insurrection existing in the United States, and disloyal persona are not adequately restrained by the ordinary processes of law from hindering this measure, and from giving aid and comfort in various ways to the insurrection Now, therefore, be it ordered, that during the existing insurrection, and as a necessary measure for suppressing the same, all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persona discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to the rebels against the authority of the United States, shall be subject to martial law, and liable to trial and punishment by courts-martial or military commission. DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE
A PROCLAMATION
By the President of the United States of America:
Second: That the writ of habeus corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested, or who are now, or hereafter during the rebellion shall be, imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prison, or other place of confinement, by any military authority or by the sentence of any court-martial or military commission.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Twenty-fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President.
William H. Seward, Secretary of State.
Returning to reality ....
My impression of Lincoln is about as close to a ‘love/hate’ thing as one can achieve.
I have no doubt that Lincoln suspended the Constitution (and that he did, despite revisionist historians’ protests to the contrary) because of his deep love for our republic, and his burning desire to preserve the unraveling union. But, in doing so, he set a precedent that, 150 or so years later, may very well set the foundation for the destruction of our republican form of government.
When I first read the Patriot Act, one of my initial reactions was, ‘How long will it be before an American President (not necessarily Bush, but the remote possibility exists) invokes a Lincoln-like suspension of the writ of Hapeas Corpus, in the name of homeland security? That vision made me weak in the knees, because the right to individual life and liberty that is the cornerstone of our Constitution, and our republican foundation, would be dealt a blow possibly commensurate to that which any threat of terrorism from outside our borders could ever achieve.
And I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time.
I have a nine-volume set of books, published in 1907, called ‘Works of Abraham Lincoln.’ Volumes VII, VIII and IX are entitled ‘Letters and Telegrams,’ and they contain fascinating inner glimpses into Lincoln via hundreds of personal writings, many of which he labeled ‘personal and confidential.’ (After purchasing this set of books many years ago, I recall spending several days reading all of these letters, and feeling as if I learned more from them than from all of my previous study of Lincoln).
In one that was written on June 12, 1863 to ‘Corning, Erastus and others’ -- labeled ‘personal and confidential’ -- he writes, of the suspension of the writ (brackets are mine):
And here I ought to close this letter, and would close it if there were no apprehension that more injurious consequences than any merely personal to myself might follow the censures systematically cast upon me for doing what, in my view of duty, I could not forebear .... but the meeting, by their resolutions, assert and argue that certain military arrests .... for which I am ultimately responsible, are unconstitutional ....
Would not the demonstration have been better if it could truly have been said that these safeguards had been adopted and applied during the civil wars [meaning those that occurred in England] and during our revolution, instead of after the one and at the close of the other?
I, too, am devotedly for them after civil war, and before civil war, and at all times, except when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require their suspension. The resolutions [adopted by those who were protesting Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus] proceed to tell us that these safeguards ‘have stood the test of seventy-six years of trial under our republican system, under circumstances which show that while they constitute the foundation of all free government, they are elements of the enduring stability of the republic.’
The deadly problem with Lincoln’s philosophy is, very simply put, that the Constitutional safeguards regarding life and liberty which were deemed immutable (except for the unfortunate loophole they left in Article I) by our founders, were deemed temporarily suspendable by Lincoln. Although his motives were purely noble, his actions in declaring the removal of liberty as circumstantial set a dangerous precedent.
Surely neither our Founders, when penning Article I, section 9, Clause 2 (The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it), or Lincoln when he saw fit to suspend H.C., never envisioned a central government which would someday envision itself as just as deadly an enemy of individual liberty as any invasionary force from outside our borders might.
It may be the unknowing ‘loophole’ in clause 2, combined with the precedent that Lincoln set (no matter his good intentions), that lays the groundwork for future deadly attacks on our individual liberties -- and the future of republican government, in the name of (either bogus or genuine) homeland security.
Homegrown tyrants are prone to take maximum advantage of loopholes and precedents, and they’ll not let these two fall by the wayside unused. It’s not a matter of if, but when, they will be invoked to their best advantage.
The people of the South, who fought to preserve what they were certain, were the Constitutional foundations upon which the United States had been formed from the united states, might respectfully disagree with your "beginning," in that, they saw it coming in the decade up to the outbreak of the Civil War.
The Civil War attracts so much attention, the preceding "cultural civil war" remains largely un-noticed as the hotbed for the rebellion against the government's trend to play Scrabble with the foundations of our liberty.
Of special note, is that the Senators to the Congress, who were from the South, were largely self-interested and given to voting for measures harmful to the South.
Not much attention was every paid to ending the severe bias of creditors in the North, who refused capital for the industrialization of the South.
Without some breadth and depth to expand the Southern economy, how could they alter the landscape such that industry and other development would gain value on some par with agriculture-based-upon-slavery?
What Northern industrialists, sitting on the board of a bank in Philadelphia, would sanction loans to a Southern industrialist competing against the North?
What were the possiblities that industrialization of the South, using slave labor, would lead to "cheap labor's" economic growth and then "new-found democratic" freedoms?
It's a marvel that nowadays, the sanctimonious who decry slavery in the South, antebellum, cannot bring themselves to decry slavery anywhere, here, or "over there."
Unless, in the spirit of skewering Martha Stewart, we fail to ridicule Kathy Lee and Frank Gifford for using "slave labor" in the Pacific Rim.