"...Whether the President, in fulfilling his duties as Commander-in-chief in suppressing an insurrection, has met with such armed hostile resistance and a civil war of such alarming proportions as will compel him to accord to them the character of belligerents is a question to be decided by him, and this Court must be governed by the decisions and acts of the political department of the Government to which this power was entrusted. "He must determine what degree of force the crisis demands." The proclamation of blockade is itself official and conclusive evidence to the Court that a state of war existed which demanded and authorized a recourse to such a measure under the circumstances peculiar to the case."
It's you who ignores the rule of law.
Walt
Funny. A few weeks ago you were saying that none of the cases of the time meant much of anything because everybody else was entitled to his own interpretation of that document you hate and curse, the U.S. Constitution. You also claimed that precedents aren't really worth anything because a couple of bad rulings like Plessy and Roe v. Wade make all the rest of them worthless.
But now it seems you're back to quoting precedents as long as they support your agenda. I must ask now, what about Bollman? What about Merryman? According to those rulings The Lincoln committed an unconstitutional act when he suspended habeas corpus. Are you content to accept that, Walt, and in doing so concede that your idolatrous false god is flawed? Or, as usual, will you keep your beloved Prize Cases while simultaneously dismissing the rulings you don't like? Either way, you show yourself as a dishonest fraud.
So was Mr. Washington – but you offer up quotes from Mr. Washington. So was every author of the Federalist Papers, but you nevertheless post out-of-context quotes from the Federalist Papers. And so was Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, but you (of course) quote certain carefully selected judicial opinions by that political appointee. But then, no one ever suggested that you were not a hypocrite – did they?
;>)
But there were enough "living, patriotic men" -- better than gold, as President Lincoln said, to preserve the Union -- it was never dissolved.
“Never dissolved?” My, oh my! You are once again completely ignoring the readily available historical documentation:
”The belligerent character of the Southern States was recognized by the United States... The Southerners should be treated as a conquered alien enemy and appropriated to the payment of the national debt. This can be done without violence to the established principles only on the theory that the Southern States were severed from the Union and were an independent government de facto, and an alien enemy to be dealt with according to the laws of war. Absurd to think of trying the leaders for treason. That would be acting under the Constitution...
"No reform can be effected in the Southern States if they have never left the Union... But by treating them as an outside, conquered people, they can be refused admission to the Union unless they voluntarily do what we demand.”
Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, quoted by New York World, September 11, 1865
Looks like the Northern politicians of the era recognized what you do not – the union was in fact “dissolved.”
;>)
All you have to dispute what those men accomplished is sophistry.
It's you who ignores the rule of law.
Actually, ‘all I have to dispute what those men accomplished’ is a written Constitution. (You ought to read it sometime!) Find a constitutional clause that prohibits secession (rather than reserving that right to the States, as the Tenth Amendment clearly does ;>), and you might have an argument. Until then, your arguments do not even amount to “sophistry” – you, my friend, are nothing but a bullsh!t artist...
;>)