The date was September 24, 1862, and Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation. (Not the one you’re thinking; the Emancipation Proclamation would come a few months later.)

This proclamation, a prime example of government overreach, suspended habeas corpus throughout the United States and authorized the arrest of any person “guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid and comfort to Rebels against the authority of the United States.” 

What is the meaning of habeas corpus, you ask? It’s Latin for “that you have the body,” but in everyday terms, it’s the legal recourse protecting people from unlawful detention or imprisonment. It’s been part of the law in England since before the Magna Carta; with roots in the Assize of Clarendon in the year 1166, it predates the Magna Carta by almost half a century.

Make no mistake: Habeas corpus is one of the fundamental principles of Western civilization itself.

So, given Lincoln’s modern-day popularity — he has ranked as the best American president ever in three different CSPAN surveys — it’s safe to say that many people nowadays don’t care that Lincoln suspended one of the — again — fundamental principles of Western civilization … or that they don’t know about it.

So I picked up my copy of the biography Lincoln by David Herbert Donald. He compiled both the criticism of Lincoln’s decision and his defense of it, but it all starts with this simple but telling observation from the author: “To the president, [the suspension of habeas corpus] seemed such a routine matter that he did not even mention it to the cabinet.”

Let that sentence sink in for a moment, then let me introduce you, via Donald, to a man named Clement Vallandigham.

Ex parte Vallandigham

A member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 3rd district, Vallandigham was “handsome and articulate,” according to the author. He was also, however, an anti-war Democrat, which made him a political opponent of Lincoln’s. In May of 1863, he gave a speech in which, among other criticisms, he referred to the president as “King Lincoln.”

Four days later, he was arrested — an arrest made possible by Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus — and a military commission found him guilty of “declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions with the object and purpose of weakening the power of the Government in its efforts to suppress an unlawful rebellion.”

He was sentenced to confinement in a U.S. fortress until the war was over. 

Here are some of the specific charges Vallandigham was arrested for:

·  Saying the war was “wicked, cruel, and unnecessary”;

·  Saying the war was “not being waged for the preservation of the Union”;

·  Saying it was a war “for the purpose of crushing out liberty and erecting a despotism”;

You’ll notice: All he did was … say stuff. And saying stuff is not something the government is supposed to have the authority to punish. Not surprisingly, the subsequent uproar over the arrest of a political opponent became a major political problem for Lincoln.

In their own words

Here’s a sampling of comments from politicians in the wake of the arrest of Valladigham, which had echoes, if you look closely, of the recent House GOP proxy vote rebellion:

Senator James Bayard of Delaware said the president was “declaring himself a dictator.”

Senator Willard Saulsbury of Delaware said the president had treated civil liberties with “jocular and criminal indifference.”

Representative S.S. Cox of Ohio demanded the immediate release of all political prisoners and said the arbitrary arrests were a “usurpation of power never given up by the people to their rulers.”

Valladigham himself said, “By repeated and persistent arbitrary arrests, plus the violation of freedom of the mails, of the private house, of the press, and freedom of speech,” Lincoln had made the United States “one of the worst despotisms on earth.”

Lincoln’s response

In one of the first open letters of all time, addressed to the president of the New York Central Railroad, who had organized a protest of the arrest and trial of Vallandigham, Lincoln wrote that the Constitution allowed for the suspension of civil liberties “in cases of Rebellion or Invasion, when the public safety may require it.”

He went on: “Thoroughly imbued with a reverence for the guaranteed rights of individuals,” Lincoln said he had been “slow to adopt the strong measures” and he predicted he would eventually be “blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many.”

He added that the suspension of civil liberties was “constitutional wherever the public safety does require them” and that Vallandigham was jailed not because he was a political opponent but “because he was damaging the army, upon the existence and vigor of which the life of the nation depends.”

Then, he responded to the argument that this new precedent of arbitrary arrests would continue into peacetime. He wrote this was like saying “that a man could contract so strong an appetite for emetics [drugs designed to produce vomiting] during temporary illness as to persist in feeding upon them through the remainder of his healthful life.”

Lincoln was so proud of his letter that he followed it with a second, addressed to delegates to the Ohio State Democratic Convention. They had come to the White House to protest Vallandigham’s arrest, while also nominating him as their gubernatorial candidate in Ohio, even though he was in exile.

In this second letter, Lincoln wrote that Vallandigham was responsible “in a greater degree than any other one man for the desertions from the army, resistance to the draft, and the like.” Lincoln promised to allow him to return to the United States, as long as each member of the delegation signed a pledge to “do all he can to have the officers, soldiers, and seamen of the army and navy … paid, fed, clad and otherwise well provided and supported.”

What do you think?

To me, Lincoln’s response rings hollow — especially the phrase “thoroughly imbued with a reverence for the guaranteed rights of individuals.” And is it just me, or does that second letter sound like a ransom note?

Precisely contrary to Lincoln’s “emetics” analogy, his suspension of habeas corpus did set a precedent for future politicians and presidents to overstep their bounds during wartime (indeed, during any crisis — legitimate or otherwise).

Let us take this story as a lesson: In times of crisis, the freedoms we hold dear — and which the Constitution is designed to protect — should become more impregnable and resistant to the whims of politicians, because that’s when they’re most likely to come under attack.

“Whatever Lincoln’s intent,” writes Donald in a sentence that should’ve been written with caps lock and lots of exclamation points, but instead reads as deadpan, “the new proclamation had a chilling effect on public dissent. Editors feared they would be locked up if they voiced criticism too freely, and even writers of private letters began to guard their language.”

Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus should not only disqualify him from any ranking of great American presidents but should rank with Franklin Roosevelt’s Japanese internment — precisely one of the acts it set a precedent for! — as one of the most heinous, criminal moves in U.S. history.

Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act also comes to mind, but what else would you add to the list? Did Lincoln’s actions, oh, I don’t know, perhaps set a precedent for anything that’s currently in the news? 

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