Subject:  Can you get thunderstorm thingies?? |
Author:
Checkerpaw
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Date Posted: 09:31:10 05/21/01 Mon
Quoting from the book: In the Course of Human Events:
The Republican administration began making arrests based on unfounded rumors. Some officials with a tinge of paranoia came to see traitors behind every bush. Arbitrary arrests and trials before military commissions were not uncommon.
The Supreme Court made a valiant effort to check this reign of tyranny in the case of Ex Parte Merryman (1861), a citizen of Maryland, John Merryman, was arrested at night in his home and imprisoned at Fort McHenry, under the orders of General George Cadwallader, commander of the fort. From his prison, Merryman petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus to Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, whose circuit included Maryland. Taney granted the writ and set a date for a hearing, but neither the general or Merryman showed up. Instead, the general sent a letter to the Chief Jutsice explaining his actions and citing the decree of President Lincoln suspending the writ, which meant that Marryman could languish in prison forever, if the general so decided, with no right to trial or an inquiry into whatever charges the general decided to make.
The writ of habeas corpus is probably the most important provision of the Bill of Rights. It can be traced to the Magna Cart . .if Lincoln and his generals could get away with this kind of imprisonment, the liberties of all Americans would be at the whim of the generals.
Taney had no other recourse to but to write his opinion and send a copy to tPres. Lincoln who ignored the writ, Merryman remained in prison.
Lincoln had taken the postition that he had the right to suspend the writ with out Congressional apporval, and that also had the final say on Consitiuitonal question, not the court, and his power to make such a determination was a higher power than the Supreme Court. Lincoln thus put himself about Congress, above the Supreme Court, and about the Constituition. He was an absolute ruler, like the tryants of Greece and the Caesars of Rome.
Lincoln not only ignored the Supreme Court's ruling, he then wrote an order for the arrest of the Chief Justice, who was then in his eighties. The arrest was never made, which was just as well for Lincoln.
The account of the plan to arrest the Chief Justice and the execution of his order for his arrest is confirmed by two trustworthy independant sources of information: Federal Marshal Ward Hill Lamon, in his personal papers in the Huntington Library's rare book and manuscript collection, and Prof. Francis Liever, author of the Lieber Code, which Lincoln endorsed, by the way.
OK, I've run out of time for the moment. Later on I'll post another message with some more interesting things, such as that under Lincoln's support, over three hundred newspapers were shut down, and how slavery had nothing to do with the War of Northern Aggression..
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