No it's not. You posted
You put forward Taney in Merryman. Will you honor him in the Prize Cases?I did post Taney's opinion. Do you honestly think that after Lincoln refused to abide by Taney's directive in the Merryman case that any justice would rule against the war - while it's still being waged? Who knows, maybe they were scared that Lincoln would have them arrested and killed.
After secession the Confederacy never attempted to invade the Union, never attempted to overthrow Lincoln or anyone else. They exercised there God-given right to self-government and withdrew peacefully after seceding legally, with their legislative act "proven" according to existing federal laws. Lincoln was hell bent on upholding a perceived duty to maintain the union, while trashing other rights and excersing powers not delegated to him. Why is one important and not the other?
If, as some assert, the Confederacy was leaching off the Union, why not let them go in peace? Wouldn't the remaining union be even stronger without them if that were true? What could possibly justify the deaths of over 620,000 men - more American lives lost than all others wars we ever fought? What fool would sacrifice such a huge percentage of the population just to preserve a union? Would beating the Confederacy and destroying her economically, politically and socially do anything to preserve the union? The founders had expressed such sentiments before, and understood that maintaining the union under such circumstances would be pure insanity. Once defeated, the confederates states were held at gunpoint, their state governments overthrown - that's preserving a republican form of government? That's more preferable than a peaceful disunion? That's a more perfect union? It's totally opposite the very principles that were the basis for the founding of our country - the right to self-government.
Why have a written constitution at all, if any President can pick and choose at will what he wants to do? Why have a separation of powers if the President can ignore the judiciary, or assume the powers of congress? Can you see how the Confederacy could liken him to a tyrant or despot? We rail against the illegal actions of Presidents that we dislike but shouldn't we also rail againt those exact same actions in any other President as well? Why would the founders have written a constitution, and debated it for months, if anyone could pervert or usurp it, and assume powers not delegated any time they wished? Why would the states have debated for months or years before adopting it if they were not afraid of losing powers? Why would Madison draft the Bill of Rights in an attempt to encourage the remaining holdouts to ratify the Constitution? The state conventions of New York and two other states expressly resevered the right to terminate their ratification, and to reassume their powers of self-government, so why did the other states accept their ratification unconditionally? Why accept them if they did not agree? How can a union be permanent, if it allows the admission of new states - doesn't that in itself change the union? If New York or Virginia had not ratified, would the President be justified in waging war on them to force them into the union?
As you yourself noted, four justices, including Taney, did exactly that.
Walt
Did you ever see the "Gore Vidal Lincoln" miniseries with Sam Waterston as Lincoln?
There's a scene where a distracted Lincoln is at the war department telegraph office on an evening in July 1863.
The clerk says, "there is a new message from General Meade, Mr. President." Lincoln asks him to read it.
The message says something like, "With God's help, we have driven the enemy from our soil," meaning back into Virginia and across the Potomac.
Lincoln kicks the door and says, "My God! When will they realize it is ALL our soil!"
And no matter how you try and slice it, the attempt by the secessionists to renounce the federal government and haul down Old Glory in the so-called seceded states was a heinous, unlawful and unwarrented revolution against the lawful government. And they were laid low for attempting it.
Long live the United States.
Walt
That statement is simply impossible to support based on well-known historical facts, including some we have been about this very day.
Prominent among these facts, as you may have noticed, is that the Supreme Court of the United States--including a man named Roger Taney (some of whose writings you have seen fit to wield like an evidential blugeon) ruled -unanimously- that the "so-called confederate states" were in rebellion and it was completely within the purview of the federal government to suppress said rebellion and reestablish US law through the national territory.
Now, you need to give up using Taney and his Merryman writings if you won't give equal credence to the -unanimous- ruling of the Court in the Prize Cases.
That would only be fair, wouldn't it?
What is hapening here on FR is that we see these cut in stone statements like "The seceded states tried to go in peace and did not molest the United States in any way," which the writer accepts as gospel, presumably because it fit in with what they heard on their grandpappy's knee, and then I and a few others use the record to show that such a statement is completely ludicrous. And our opposition to your statements is not so much predicated upon a love of country, as it is a dislike for the stench of the BS that you provide by the wagon load.
As Presidenmt Lincoln pointed out in 1861, the nation was in debt, a debt incurred at the name of all. To say, as you do, that the so-called seceded states can just walk away, la-de-da from that -- that they "exercised there [sic] God-given right to self-government and withdrew peacefully" is insulting to anyone with a shred of fairness about them. And in fairness to you, I think that over time, if you are exposed to enough on the record on this, you will not be so sure that the secessionists were right; with reflection, you'll come to realize that they were horribly wrong.
Walt