Lincoln unilaterally decided in April 1861 that he had the power to suspend
the writ of habeas corpus, and ordered it. He then had almost the entire
Maryland legislature arrested and thrown into jail at Ft. McHenry (along with
closing down almost 300 newspapers who criticized him). John Merryman, one of
the MD legislators, filed a writ of habeas corpus with Chief Justice Roger B.
Taney. In Ex Parte Merryman, Taney found that Lincoln had violated the
Constitution since only the Congress had the power to suspend habeas corpus. He
ordered Lincoln to release Merryman and sent his order over to the White
House. Lincoln's response was that he didn't care what the Supreme Court thought
and issued an order for the arrest and imprisonment of Chief Justice Taney
at Ft. McHenry. Fortunately, the federal Marshall in DC hesitated to carry
out the arrest order and it was never done (the document is in the National
Archives). Lincoln, who swore before Taney to uphold the Constitution when
inaugurated, had decided that he, not the Supreme Court, was the final arbiter of
the Constitution. He routinely took such actions during the war putting his
supposed goal of "saving the Union" ahead of his sworn oath to uphold the
Constitution and the law of the US.
After the war, in 1866, in Ex Parte Milligan, the US Supreme Court found
that Lincoln's military tribunals, which tried people during the war in place of
civil courts, were unconstitutional. This included the court which
convicted the so-called assassination conspirators, who unfortunately had already
been hung. The court found that Lincoln's policies, as in the case of Ex Parte
Merryman, had totally usurped the power given to the judiciary under the
Constitution.
Many refer to Lincoln as the American Ceasar due to his dictatorial actions
in these regards.
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