How does the cover look like Confederate propaganda? That actually happened in my county. Union troops pistol whipped Judge Richard Bennett Carmichael, dragged from the stands and imprisoned him for 6months. His crime? Protesting it was illegal for the US Army to arrest civilians without cause. I went to school with the author. He was a Marine Corps fighter pilot, worked for the Airline industry and is a good human being.
You don't believe Yankees roughed up civilians, that a large number of Maryland's leading citizens were put in jail. My local county a militia unit drilling on the courthouse green had its weapons seized. I have a rare book that describes how Federal troops interfered with the 1862 election in Delaware. Same thing happened in Maryland. This is an excellent book that is well documented. One can argue that Lincoln's handling of Maryland's civilians caused a large amount to head South to fight for the Confederacy. I guess anything that paints Lincoln or the Federal government in a bad light is automatically labeled confederate propaganda. How about you read the book before you "judge a book by its cover." One can understand why Lincoln did what he did with Maryland's Geographic position. This is not a "The South was Right" kind of book, it's an intellectual look at what transpired in Maryland.
@Bruce Vail
These issues have a lot of tentacles. For example, the guy involved in the habeas corpus legal battle between Lincoln and C.J. Taney (sitting as a circuit judge) in the Ex Parte Merryman decision may have been involved in actual plans to stop the transportation of troops and military supplies. We also know that a mob in Baltimore attacked the 19th Massachusetts in April as it was transferring trains on the way to Washington. To give Lincoln his due, no President has had to confront the unique challenges of a civil war - especially in a state that just happened to be a key transit point to the capital. And he isn't the only one who took questionable domestic steps in wartime. John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR did, as well.
I'm responding only to this point. Simply put, it's far more complicated than that. The starting point is that Taney's ruling in Ex Parte Merryman was not a SCOTUS decision. He issued it in his separate capacity sitting as a circuit judge. The decision was not appealed to the SCOTUS. In addition, Taney used statements made in Ex Parte Bollman, 8 US (4 Cranch) 75 (1807) that are clearly dicta. Moreover, Bollman involved a congressional grant of authority to the SCOTUS in the Judiciary Act of 1789, not the constitutional provision. There's also a popular misunderstanding that Ex Parte Milligan, 71 US (4 Wall.) 2 (1866) addressed suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus, as opposed to the writ (process) itself and the possible liability of officials for acting. The issue was directly addressed in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 US 507 (2004), but only in a dissent by Scalia joined in by Stevens. One of the many unresolved sub-issues is presidential authority to suspend in an emergency when Congress is not in session - which in the 19th century was the case for broad swaths of time.
I figured your legal mind would weigh in, which is why I mentioned it. Is there any constitutional justification for presidential rule by decree in an emergency?
These things and many more are mentioned in the book. The author's main contention is that Maryland and most of its populace were Constitutional Unionists. This meant they did not want to secede, but they also wanted the Constitution obeyed and intact. This led some to try and assume a strictly neutral stance, a position that the president would not allow them to take. I also find it interesting that General Dix realized in 1861 what Lee pursued in 1862, i.e., prying Maryland out of the Union to deal a nearly fatal blow to the federal war effort.
Trust me - that is a "whole other" legal morass that in several respects is still evolving and would occupy a lot more space, time, and analysis...
Does it seem to you to have been a tad bit of an overreaction by Lincoln to have authorized the arrest of a Supreme Court Justice for expressing concern about constitutional violations? I can't even imagine how explosive such a move would be today.Trust me - that is a "whole other" legal morass that in several respects is still evolving and would occupy a lot more space, time, and analysis...
I avoided getting into the technical issue of whether Taney's in-chambers Merryman opinion was even a binding circuit court decision at that level. It may not have been.
Viewed in isolation, that's a reasonable viewpoint. But nothing is viewed in isolation. I think it's difficult to fully put ourselves in his position, with the capital in the immediate presence of armed enemy forces, narrow and critical lines of supply and reinforcement, threats of violent interference with those lines, the fact that a violent mob had actually attempted to interfere with the passage of troops to the capital, etc. For example, there is evidence that Brother Merryman was in fact intent on taking explosives to key rail lines. Taney to some extent injected himself into this arena, not just with a decision in 1857 that went further than it had to and gratuitously walked into what he knew was a powder keg issue, but exacerbated by Taney effectively shopping the decision with Buchanan. Taney's views that secession was lawful and that the war was caused by Lincoln were also no secret. My own opinion - and it's an opinion - is that assessing actions by a President in the unprecedented context of a civil war is complicated, and a lot easier in hindsight.
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