Posted on 12/29/2002 3:01:54 AM PST by GOPcapitalist
And timely.
I look for a redux some time in the next couple of years.
When the traitors of the loyal state of Maryland were concocting their grand scheme to hurl the organized power of that state against the government, probably not a handful of them was known to be guilty of any act for which he could ever have been arrested by civil process. And whatever their offenses against the laws might have been, and whatever the fidelity of the courts in that jurisdictlon, the process of civil law would have been far too slow to prevent the consummation of the gigantic treason which would have added another state to the rebellion.... Courts could not have suppressed this unholy work, but the summary imprisonment of those few men saved the state of Maryland to the Union cause.Republicans would later enjoy substantial bipartisan agreement on the necessity of the early arrests in Maryland.
The earliest days of the Lincoln administration taught the president and his cabinet lessons they never forgot. In fact, these days left fiercely indelible marks on them. This was especially true of Seward. in 1864, when the artist Francis B. Carpenter unveiled his huge historical canvas commemorating the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet, the secretary of state scoffed at It. He told the artist, at a party given at Gideon Welles's residence, that he had been wrong to choose emancipation as "the great feature of the Administration."
Seward told him [Welles recalled] to go back to the firing on Sumter, or to a much more exciting one than even that, the Sunday following the Baltimore massacre, when the Cabinet assembled or gathered in the Navy Department and, with the vast responsibility that was thrown upon them, met the emergency and its awful consequences, put in force the war power of the government, and issued papers and did acts that might have brought them all to the scaffold.The first suspension of the writ of habeas corpus occurred the very week after that fateful Sunday cabinet meeting. Gideon Welles, the secretary of the navy, did not care for Seward, but he remembered those days just as the secretary of state did:
Few, comparatively, know or can appreciate the actual condition of things and state of feeling of the members of the Administration In those days. Nearly sixty years of peace had unfitted us for any war, but the most terrible of all wars, a civil one, was upon us, and it had to be met. Congress had adjourned without making any provision for the storm, though aware that it was at hand and soon to burst upon the country. A new administration, scarely acquainted with each other, and differing essentially in the past, was compelled to act, promptly and decisively.And act they did."
-- "Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberty" by Mark Neely.
Walt
And nowhere is it denied the president; the Constitution is silent on presidential power to suspend the Writ.
And no case ever came before the Supreme Court to test the issue during the ACW.
Walt
That is your opinion. You are welcome to it.
Of course, it won't do much to establish your objectivity.
Walt
"After the battle of New Orleans, and while the fact that the treaty of peace had been concluded, was well known in the city, but before official knowledge had arrived, Gen. Jackson still maintained martial or military law. Now, that it could be said the war was over, the clamor against martial law,, which had existed from the first, grew more furious. Among other things, a Mr. Louiallier published a denunciatory newspaper article. Gen. Jackson arrested him.
A lawyer by the name of Morel procured the United States Judge Hall to issue a writ of hebeus corpus to release Loualier. Gen. Jackson arreted both the lawyer and the judge. A Mr. Holander ventured to say of some part of the mater that "it was a dirty trick." Gen. Jackson arrested him. When the officer undertook to serve the writ Gen. Jackson took it from him, and sent him away with a copy. Holding the judge in custody for a few days, the general sent him beyond the limits of his encampment, and set him at liberty with an order to remain till the ratification of peace should regularly be announced, or until the British should have left the coast.
A day or two elapsed, the ratification of a treaty of peace was regularly announced and the judge and the others were fully liberated. A few days more and the judge called Gen. Jackson into court and fined him $1,000. The general paid the fine, and there the matter rested for nearly thirty years, when Congress refunded principal and interest. The late Senator Douglas then in the House of Representatives, took a leading part in the debates, in which the constitutional question was much discussed. I am not prepared to say whom the journals would show to have voted for the measure.
It may be remarked: First, that we had the same Constitution then as now; secondly, that we then had a case of invasion, and now a case of rebellion; and thirdly, that the permanent right of of the people to Public Discussion, the liberty of speech and the Press, the trial by jury, the law of evidence, and the Habeus Corpus, suffered no detriment whatever by that conduct of Gen. Jackson, or its subsequent approval by the American Congress."
A. Lincoln, 1863
How did you happen to miss this part of the history of habeas corpus?
Walt
All this comes down to is GOPcap's opinion 140 years after the fact.
Walt
Yawn. You really should learn the central role that intrinsic evaluation plays in judging the merits of an argument. It will help you avoid fallacious non-responses in the future.
As is usually the case, you missed it. It is designated as Argument 2 in section VI.
A law granting ex post facto consent to the circumstances of a previous act is unconstitutional per Article I, Section 9.
William K. Seward thought they worked, too
Again you completely miss the issue. The debate is not over the effectiveness or efficiency of the suspension, but rather its constitutionality. Like it or not, the overwhelming bulk of historical evidence makes it certain that Lincoln's suspension was unconstitutional.
One key point in judging the merits of an arguement is judging the qualifications of the person arguing. Chief Justice Rehnquist has degrees from Stanford and Harvard, as well as 31 years experience on the Supreme Court. You are an unknown. On the one hand the Chief Justice says that the constitutionality of the issue has not yet been definitively decided. On the other hand you claim he's full of it. Let's see...who to believe...Chief Justice or bag of wind...sorry, I still have to go with Chief Justice Rehnquist on this one.
Considering that Article I, Section 1 states the suspension clause to be with the legislature, the logic of consistency within the document of the Constitution entails that it cannot also be with the president. If I have the only apple orchard and give an apple to you but not to Non-Sequitur, Non-Sequitur finds himself without an apple and no ammount of wishing he had that apple will give him one so long as I do not extend it to him. Theoretically he could attempt to steal it from you though, and that is what Lincoln did to congress.
And no case ever came before the Supreme Court to test the issue during the ACW.
Only because Lincoln failed in his constitutional duty to appeal the case dealing with the issue, Ex Parte Merryman. The Declaration of Independence makes the grievous nature of his refusal to appeal it very clear: "HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power"
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