Thank you for this post. Just today my anti-cop, anti-Bush, pro-Castro, anti-Ashcroft criminal procedure professor was bitching about Lincoln doing this. She made the comment, "Most everybody will now say that this was a huge mistake my Lincoln." Sometimes I think she and others don't look back at the situation President Lincoln and the Union was facing.
The fact remains that these united States joined in a voluntary union, and the ultimate defence against centralized tyranny was seccesion. The Confederacy chose to secede, and Lincoln destroyed the voluntary union by tyranically preventing that seccesion. So, thanks to "honest" Abe, we have the federal gov't on our backs today.
Thank you for this post. Just today my anti-cop, anti-Bush, pro-Castro, anti-Ashcroft criminal procedure professor was bitching about Lincoln doing this. She made the comment, "Most everybody will now say that this was a huge mistake my Lincoln." Sometimes I think she and others don't look back at the situation President Lincoln and the Union was facing.
Lay this on 'em:
"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 of the United States William Rehnquist, February, 1999
Walt