By Jonathan W. White
Within the spring of 1861, Union army specialists arrested Maryland farmer John Merryman on fees of treason opposed to the USA for burning railroad bridges round Baltimore in order to hinder northern infantrymen from achieving the capital. From his criminal telephone at fortress McHenry, Merryman petitioned leader Justice of the preferrred courtroom Roger B. Taney for unlock via a writ of habeas corpus. Taney issued the writ, yet President Abraham Lincoln missed it. In mid-July Merryman was once published, purely to be indicted for treason in a Baltimore federal courtroom. His case, even though, by no means went to trial and federal prosecutors eventually brushed aside it in 1867.In Abraham Lincoln and Treason within the Civil conflict, Jonathan White unearths how the arrest and prosecution of this little-known Baltimore farmer had an enduring influence at the Lincoln management and Congress as they struggled to strengthen rules to house either northern traitors and southern rebels. His paintings sheds major new mild on numerous perennially arguable criminal and constitutional concerns in American heritage, together with the character and volume of presidential struggle powers, the advance of nationwide regulations for facing disloyalty and treason, and the security of civil liberties in wartime.
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Additional resources for Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War: The Trials of John Merryman (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War)
The Crisis, in Columbus, Ohio, argued that the military should interfere in civilian affairs only if the judiciary had failed to do its duty. ” Its editors pointed out that the writ was not intended to protect the loyal only, but also those accused of treason: The remark of one of the New York papers that the writ was “originally intended to secure the liberty of loyal men,” and that “it would be a gross perversion of its powers to employ it as the protecting shield of rebels,” is a specimen of the very tyranny which the writ of habeas corpus is designed to overcome.
In his written opinion, which the chief justice delivered to a “crowded” courtroom on June 1, Taney argued that Merryman’s arrest and detention were illegal because they had been done without a warrant or any specific charges. He censured Lincoln for never declaring martial law or officially suspending the writ of habeas corpus, but he also argued that only Congress could lawfully suspend the writ. ” Taney chastised the military authorities for “thrust[ing] aside” the judicial powers in Maryland when there was no danger of obstruction of justice by the civil authorities (although Taney must have been aware that the civil authorities had ordered the burning of the railroad bridges).
The purpose for which military forces of the United States may pass through Maryland cannot be rightfully questioned by her people, or by her government,” wrote the judge. “She ceded the present district of Columbia to the United States as the seat of their Government. 19 Americans raised on tales of the Revolution noted the “curious coincidence” and the “significant augury” of Massachusetts men being murdered in city streets on April 19. S. senator Nathaniel P. Tallmadge. “She is the first in the field, and will be the last to leave it.
Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War: The Trials of John Merryman (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War) by Jonathan W. White