8: The Rule of Lincoln
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The fundamental problem of the Lincoln Government was the raising
of armies, the sudden conversion of a community which was
essentially industrial into a disciplined military organization.
The accomplishment of so gigantic a transformation taxed the
abilities of two Secretaries of War. The first, Simon Cameron,
owed his place in the Cabinet to the double fact of being one of
the ablest of political bosses and of standing high among
Lincoln's competitors for the Presidential nomination.
Personally honest, he was also a political cynic to whom
tradition ascribes the epigram defining an honest politician as
one who "when he is bought, will stay bought." As Secretary of
War he showed no particular ability.
In 1861, when the tide of enthusiasm was in flood, and volunteers
in hosts were responding to acts of Congress for the raising and
maintenance of a volunteer army, Cameron reported in December
that the Government had on foot 660,971 men and could have had a
million except that Congress had limited the number of volunteers
to be received. When this report was prepared, Lincoln was, so
to speak, in the trough of two seas. The devotion which had been
offered to him in April, 1861, when the North seemed to rise as
one man, had undergone a reaction. Eight months without a single
striking military success, together with the startling defeat at
Bull Run, had had their inevitable effect. Democracies are
mercurial; variability seems to be part of the price of freedom.
With childlike faith in their cause, the Northern people, in
midsummer, were crying, "On to Richmond!" In the autumn, stung
by defeat, they were ready to cry, "Down with Lincoln."
In a subsequent report, the War Department confessed that at the
beginning of hostilities, "nearly all our arms and ammunition"
came from foreign countries. One great reason why no military
successes relieve the gloom of 1861 was that, from a soldier's
point of view, there were no armies. Soldiers, it is true, there
were in myriads; but arms, ammunition, and above all,
organization were lacking. The supplies in the government
arsenals had been provided for an army of but a few thousand.
Strive as they would, all the factories in the country could not
come anywhere near making arms for half a million men; nor did
the facilities of those days make it possible for munition plants
to spring up overnight. Had it not been that the Confederacy was
equally hard pushed, even harder pushed, to find arms and
ammunition, the war would have ended inside Seward's ninety days,
through sheer lack of powder.
Even with the respite given by the unpreparedness of the South,
and while Lincoln hurriedly collected arms and ammunition from
abroad, the startled nation, thus suddenly forced into a
realization of what war meant, lost its head. From its previous
reckless trust in sheer enthusiasm, it reacted to a distrust of
almost everything. Why were the soldiers not armed? Why did not
millions of rounds of cartridges fall like manna out of the sky?
Why did not the crowds of volunteers become armies at a word of
command? One of the darkest pages in American history records
the way in which the crowd, undisciplined to endure strain,
turned upon Lincoln in its desire to find in the conduct of their
leader a pretext for venting upon him the fierceness of their
anxiety. Such a pretext they found in his treatment of Fremont.
The singular episode of Fremont's arrogance in 1861 is part of
the story of the border States whose friendship was eagerly
sought by both sides—Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and those
mountainous counties which in time were to become West Virginia.
To retain Maryland and thus to keep open the connection between
the Capital and the North was one of Lincoln's deepest anxieties.
By degrees the hold of the Government in Maryland was made
secure, and the State never seceded. Kentucky, too, held to the
Union, though, during many anxious months in 1861, Lincoln did
not know whether this State was to be for him or against him.
The Virginia mountains, from the first, seemed a more hopeful
field, for the mountaineers had opposed the Virginia secession
and, as soon as it was accomplished, had begun holding meetings
of protest. In the meantime George B. McClellan, with the rank
of general bestowed upon him by the Federal Government, had been
appointed to command the militia of Ohio. He was sent to assist
the insurgent mountaineers, and with him went the Ohio militia.
From this situation and from the small engagements with
Confederate forces in which McClellan was successful, there
resulted the separate State of West Virginia and the extravagant
popular notion that McClellan was a great general. His successes
were contrasted in the ordinary mind with the crushing defeat at
Bull Run, which happened at about the same time.
The most serious of all these struggles in the border States,
however, was that which took place in Missouri, where, owing to
the strength of both factions and their promptness in organizing,
real war began immediately. A Union army led by General
Nathaniel Lyon attacked the Confederates with great spirit at
Wilson's Creek but was beaten back in a fierce and bloody battle
in which their leader was killed.
Even before these events Fremont had been appointed to chief
command in Missouri, and here he at once began a strange course
of dawdling and posing. His military career must be left to the
military historians—who have not ranked him among the great
generals. Civil history accuses him, if not of using his new
position to make illegitimate profits, at least of showing
reckless favoritism toward those who did. It is hardly unfair to
say that Lincoln, in bearing with Fremont as long as he did,
showed a touch of amiable weakness; and yet, it must be
acknowledged that the President knew that the country was in a
dangerous mood, that Fremont was immensely popular, and that any
change might be misunderstood. Though Lincoln hated to appear
anything but a friend to a fallen political rival, he was at last
forced to act. Frauds in government contracts at St. Louis were
a public scandal, and the reputation of the government had to be
saved by the removal of Fremont in November, 1861. As an
immediate consequence of this action the overstrained nerves of
great numbers of people snapped. Fremont's personal followers,
as well as the abolitionists whom he had actively supported while
in command in Missouri, and all that vast crowd of excitable
people who are unable to stand silent under strain, clamored
against Lincoln in the wildest and most absurd vein. He was
accused of being a "dictator"; he was called an "imbecile"; he
ought to be impeached, and a new party, with Fremont as its
leader, should be formed to prosecute the war. But through all
this clamor Lincoln kept his peace and let the heathen rage.
Toward the end of the year, popular rage turned suddenly on
Cameron, who, as Secretary of War, had taken an active but proper
part in the investigation of Fremont's conduct. It was one of
those tremulous moments when people are desperately eager to have
something done and are ready to believe anything. Though
McClellan, now in chief command of the Union forces, had an
immense army which was fast getting properly equipped, month
faded into month without his advancing against the enemy. Again
the popular cry was raised, "On to Richmond!" It was at this
moment of military inactivity and popular restlessness that
charges of peculation were brought forward against Cameron.
These charges both were and were not well founded. Himself a
rich man, it is not likely that Cameron profited personally by
government contracts, even though the acrimonious Thad Stevens
said of his appointment as Secretary that it would add "another
million to his fortune." There seems little doubt, however, that
Cameron showered lucrative contracts upon his political
retainers. And no boss has ever held the State of Pennsylvania in
a firmer grip. His tenure of the Secretaryship of War was one
means to that end.
The restless alarm of the country at large expressed itself in
such extravagant words as these which Senator Grimes wrote to
Senator Fessenden: "We are going to destruction as fast as
imbecility, corruption, and the wheels of time can carry us." So
dissatisfied, indeed, was Congress with the conduct of the war
that it appointed a committee of investigation. During December,
1861, and January, 1862, the committee was summoning generals
before it, questioning them, listening to all manner of views,
accomplishing nothing, but rendering more and more feverish an
atmosphere already surcharged with anxiety. On the floors of
Congress debate raged as to who was responsible for the military
inaction—for the country's "unpreparedness," we should say today
—-and as to whether Cameron was honest. Eventually the House in
a vote of censure condemned the Secretary of War.
Long before this happened, however, Lincoln had interfered and
very characteristically removed the cause of trouble, while
taking upon himself the responsibility for the situation, by
nominating Cameron minister to Russia, and by praising him for
his "ability, patriotism, and fidelity to the public trust."
Though the President had not sufficient hold upon the House to
prevent the vote of censure, his influence was strong in the
Senate, and the new appointment of Cameron was promptly
confirmed.
There was in Washington at this time that grim man who had served
briefly as Attorney-General in the Cabinet of Buchanan—Edwin M.
Stanton. He despised the President and expressed his opinion in
such words as "the painful imbecility of Lincoln." The two had
one personal recollection in common: long before, in a single
case, at Cincinnati, the awkward Lincoln had been called in as
associate counsel to serve the convenience of Stanton, who was
already a lawyer of national repute. To his less-known associate
Stanton showed a brutal rudeness that was characteristic. It
would have been hard in 1861 to find another man more difficult
to get on with. Headstrong, irascible, rude, he had a sharp
tongue which he delighted in using; but he was known to be
inflexibly honest, and was supposed to have great executive
ability. He was also a friend of McClellan, and if anybody could
rouse that tortoise-like general, Stanton might be supposed to be
the man. He had been a valiant Democrat, and Democratic support
was needed by the government. Lincoln astonished him with his
appointment as Secretary of War in January, 1862. Stanton
justified the President's choice, and under his strong if
ruthless hand the War Department became sternly efficient. The
whole story of Stanton's relations to his chief is packed, like
the Arabian genius in the fisherman's vase, into one remark of
Lincoln's. "Did Stanton tell you I was a fool?" said Lincoln on
one occasion, in the odd, smiling way he had. "Then I expect I
must be one, for he is almost always right, and generally says
what he means."
In spite of his efficiency and personal force, Stanton was unable
to move his friend McClellan, with whom he soon quarreled. Each
now sought in his own way to control the President, though
neither understood Lincoln's character. From McClellan, Lincoln
endured much condescension of a kind perilously near
impertinence. To Stanton, Lincoln's patience seemed a mystery;
to McClellan—a vain man, full of himself—the President who
would merely smile at this bullyragging on the part of one of his
subordinates seemed indeed a spiritless creature. Meanwhile
Lincoln, apparently devoid of sensibility, was seeking during the
anxious months of 1862, in one case, merely how to keep his
petulant Secretary in harness; in the other, how to quicken his
tortoise of a general.
Stanton made at least one great blunder. Though he had been
three months in office, and McClellan was still inactive, there
were already several successes to the credit of the Union arms.
The Monitor and Virginia (Merrimac) had fought their famous duel,
and Grant had taken Fort Donelson. The latter success broke
through the long gloom of the North and caused, as Holmes wrote,
"a delirium of excitement." Stanton rashly concluded that he now
had the game in his hands, and that a sufficient number of men
had volunteered. This civilian Secretary of War, who had still
much to learn of military matters, issued an order putting a stop
to recruiting. Shortly afterwards great disaster befell the
Union arms. McClellan, before Richmond, was checked in May.
Early in July, his peninsula campaign ended disastrously in the
terrible "Seven Days' Battle."
Anticipating McClellan's failure, Lincoln had already determined
to call for more troops. On July 1st, he called upon the
Governors of the States to provide him with 300,000 men to serve
three years. But the volunteering enthusiasm-—explain it as you
will—-had suffered a check. The psychological moment had passed.
So slow was the response to the call of July 1st, that another
appeal was made early in August, this time for 300,000 men to
serve only nine months. But this also failed to rouse the
country. A reinforcement of only 87,000 men was raised in
response to this emergency call. The able lawyer in the War
Department had still much to learn about men and nations.
After this check, terrible incidents of war came thick and fast
—-the defeat at Second Manassas, in late August; the horrible
drawn battle of Antietam-Sharpsburg, in September;
Fredericksburg, that carnival of slaughter, in December; the
dearly bought victory of Murfreesboro, which opened 1863. There
were other disastrous events at least as serious. Foreign
affairs2 were at their darkest. Within the political coalition
supporting Lincoln, contention was the order of the day. There
was general distrust of the President. Most alarming of all,
that ebb of the wave of enthusiasm which began in midsummer,
1861, reached in the autumn of 1862 perhaps its lowest point.
The measure of the reaction against Lincoln was given in the
Congressional election, in which, though the Government still
retained a working majority, the Democrats gained thirty-three
seats.
If there could be such a thing as a true psychological history of
the war, one of its most interesting pages would determine just
how far Stanton was responsible, through his strange blunder over
recruiting, for the check to enthusiasm among the Northern
people. With this speculation there is connected a still unsolved
problem in statistics. To what extent did the anti-Lincoln vote,
in 1862, stand for sympathy with the South, and how far was it
the hopeless surrender of Unionists who felt that their cause was
lost? Though certainty on this point is apparently impossible,
there can be no doubt that at the opening of 1863, the Government
felt it must apply pressure to the flagging spirits of its
supporters. In order to reenforce the armies and to push the war
through, there was plainly but one course to be
followed—conscription.
The government leaders in Congress brought in a Conscription Act
early in the year. The hot debates upon this issue dragged
through a month's time, and now make instructive reading for the
present generation that has watched the Great War3. The Act of
1863 was not the work of soldiers, but was literally "made in
Congress." Stanton grimly made the best of it, though he
unwaveringly condemned some of its most conspicuous provisions.
His business was to retrieve his blunder of the previous year,
and he was successful. Imperfect as it was, the Conscription
Act, with later supplementary legislation, enabled him to replace
the wastage of the Union armies and steadily to augment them. At
the close of the war, the Union had on foot a million men with an
enrolled reserve of two millions and a half, subject to call.
The Act provided for a complete military census, for which
purpose the country was divided into enrollment districts. Every
able-bodied male citizen, or intending citizen, between the ages
of twenty and forty-five, unless exempted for certain specified
reasons, was to be enrolled as a member of the national forces;
these forces were to be called to the colors—"drafted," the term
was—as the Government found need of them; each successive draft
was to be apportioned among the districts in the ratio of the
military population, and the number required was to be drawn by
lot; if the district raised its quota voluntarily, no draft would
be made; any drafted man could offer a substitute or could
purchase his discharge for three hundred dollars. The latter
provision especially was condemned by Stanton. It was seized
upon by demagogues as a device for giving rich men an advantage
over poor men.
American politics during the war form a wildly confused story, so
intricate that it cannot be made clear in a brief statement. But
this central fact may be insisted upon: in the North, there were
two political groups that were the poles around which various
other groups revolved and combined, only to fly asunder and
recombine, with all the maddening inconstancy of a kaleidoscope.
The two irreconcilable elements were the "war party" made up of
determined men resolved to see things through, and the
"copperheads"
4See Chapter IX. who for one reason or another united in a faithful
struggle for peace at any price. Around the copperheads gathered
the various and singular groups who helped to make up the ever
fluctuating "peace party." It is an error to assume that this
peace party was animated throughout by fondness for the
Confederacy. Though many of its members were so actuated, the
core of the party seems to have been that strange type of man who
sustained political evasion in the old days, who thought that
sweet words can stop bullets, whose programme in 1863 called for
a cessation of hostilities and a general convention of all the
States, and who promised as the speedy result of a debauch of
talk a carnival of bright eyes glistening with the tears of
revived affection. With these strange people in 1863 there
combined a number of different types: the still stranger, still
less creditable visionary, of whom much hereafter; the avowed
friends of the principle of state rights; all those who
distrusted the Government because of its anti-slavery sympathies;
Quakers and others with moral scruples against war; and finally,
sincere legalists to whom the Conscription Act appeared
unconstitutional. In the spring of 1863 the issue of conscription
drew the line fairly sharply between the two political
coalitions, though each continued to fluctuate, more or less, to
the end of the war.
The peace party of 1863 has been denounced hastily rather than
carefully studied. Its precise machinations are not fully known,
but the ugly fact stands forth that a portion of the foreign
population of the North was roused in 1863 to rebellion. The
occasion was the beginning of the first draft under the new law,
in July, 1863, and the scene of the rebellion was the City of New
York. The opponents of conscription had already made
inflammatory attacks on the Government. Conspicuous among them
was Horatio Seymour, who had been elected Governor of New York in
that wave of reaction in the autumn of 1862. Several New York
papers joined the crusade. In Congress, the Government had
already been threatened with civil war if the act was enforced.
Nevertheless, the public drawing by lot began on the days
announced. In New York the first drawing took place on Saturday,
July 12th, and the lists were published in the Sunday papers. As
might be expected, many of the men drawn were of foreign birth,
and all day Sunday, the foreign quarter of New York was a
cauldron boiling.
On Monday, the resumption of the drawing was the signal for
revolt. A mob invaded one of the conscription offices, drove off
the men in charge, and set fire to the building. In a short
while, the streets were filled with dense crowds of foreignborn
workmen shouting, "Down with the rich men," and singing, "We'll
hang Horace Greeley on a sour apple tree." Houses of prominent
citizens were attacked and set on fire, and several drafting
offices were burned. Many negroes who were seized were either
clubbed to death or hanged to lamp posts. Even an orphan asylum
for colored children was burned. The office of the "Tribune" was
raided, gutted, and set on fire. Finally a dispatch to Stanton,
early in the night, reported that the mob had taken possession of
the city.
The events of the next day were no less shocking. The city was
almost stripped of soldiers, as all available reserves had
already been hurried south when Lee was advancing toward
Gettysburg. But such militia as could be mustered, with a small
force of federal troops, fought the mob in the streets.
Barricades were carried by storm; blood was freely shed. It was
not, however, until the fourth day that the rebellion was finally
quelled, chiefly by New York regiments, hurried north by
Stanton—among them the famous Seventh—which swept the streets
with cannon.
The aftermath of the New York riots was a correspondence between
Lincoln and Seymour. The latter had demanded a suspension of the
draft until the courts could decide on the constitutionality of
the Conscription Act. Lincoln refused. With ten thousand troops
now assembled in New York, the draft was resumed, and there was
no further trouble.
The resistance to the Government in New York was but the most
terrible episode in a protracted contention which involves, as
Americans are beginning to see, one of the most fundamental and
permanent questions of Lincoln's rule: how can the exercise of
necessary war powers by the President be reconciled with the
guarantees of liberty in the Constitution? It is unfortunate
that Lincoln did not draw up a fully rounded statement of his own
theory regarding this problem, instead of leaving it to be
inferred from detached observations and from his actions.
Apparently, he felt there was nothing to do but to follow the
Roman precedent and, in a case of emergency, frankly permit the
use of extraordinary power. We may attribute to him that point
of view expressed by a distinguished Democrat of our own day:
"Democracy has to learn how to use the dictator as a necessary
war tool."5 Whether Lincoln set a good model for democracy in
this perilous business is still to be determined. His actions
have been freely labeled usurpation. The first notorious
instance occurred in 1861, during the troubles in Maryland, when
he authorized military arrests of suspected persons. For the
release of one of these, a certain Merryman, Chief Justice Taney
issued a writ of habeas corpus6. Lincoln authorized his
military representatives to disregard the writ. In 1862 he
issued a proclamation suspending the privileges of the writ of
habeas corpus in cases of persons charged with "discouraging
volunteer enlistments, resisting military drafts, or guilty of
any disloyal practice...." Such persons were to be tried by
military commissions.
There can be little doubt that this proclamation caused something
like a panic in many minds, filled them with the dread of
military despotism, and contributed to the reaction against
Lincoln in the autumn of 1862. Under this proclamation many
arrests were made and many victims were sent to prison. So
violent was the opposition that on March 3, 1863, Congress passed
an act which attempted to bring the military and civil courts
into cooperation, though it did not take away from the President
all the dictatorial power which he had assumed. The act seems;
however, to have had little general effect, and it was
disregarded in the most celebrated of the cases of military
arrest, that of Clement L. Vallandigham.
A representative from Ohio and one of the most vituperative
anti-Lincoln men in Congress, Vallandigham in a sensational
speech applied to the existing situation Chatham's words, "My
lords, you cannot conquer America." He professed to see before
him in the future nothing "but universal political and social
revolution, anarchy, and bloodshed, compared with which the Reign
of Terror in France was a merciful visitation." To escape such a
future, he demanded an armistice, to be followed by a friendly
peace established through foreign mediation.
Returning to Ohio after the adjournment of Congress, Vallandigham
spoke to a mass-meeting in a way that was construed as rank
treason by General Burnside who was in command at Cincinnati.
Vallandigham was arrested, tried by court martial, and condemned
to imprisonment. There was an immediate hue and cry, in
consequence of which Burnside, who reported the affair, felt
called upon also to offer to resign. Lincoln's reply was
characteristic: "When I shall wish to supersede you I shall let
you know. All the Cabinet regretted the necessity for arresting,
for instance, Vallandigham, some perhaps doubting there was a
real necessity for it; but being done, all were for seeing you
through with it." Lincoln, however, commuted the sentence to
banishment and had Vallandigham sent through the lines into the
Confederacy.
It seems quite plain that the condemnation of Lincoln on this
issue of usurpation was not confined to the friends of the
Confederacy, nor has it been confined to his enemies in later
days. One of Lincoln's most ardent admirers, the historian
Rhodes, condemns his course unqualifiedly. "There can be no
question," he writes, "that from the legal point of view the
President should have rescinded the sentence and released
Vallandigham." Lincoln, he adds, "stands responsible for the
casting into prison of citizens of the United States on orders as
arbitrary as the lettres-de-cachet of Louis XIV." Since Mr.
Rhodes, uncompromising Unionist, can write as he does upon this
issue, it is plain that the opposition party cannot be dismissed
as through and through disunionist.
The trial of Vallandigham made him a martyr and brought him the
Democratic nomination for Governor of Ohio1. His followers
sought to make the issue of the campaign the acceptance or
rejection of military despotism. In defense of his course
Lincoln wrote two public letters in which he gave evidence of the
skill which he had acquired as a lawyer before a jury by the way
in which he played upon the emotions of his readers.
"Long experience [he wrote] has shown that armies cannot be
maintained unless desertion shall be punished by the severe
penalty of death. The case requires, and the law and the
Constitution sanction, this punishment. Must I shoot a
simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a
hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? This is none
the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or brother,
or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his
feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is
fighting in a bad cause for a wicked administration and a
contemptible government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he
shall desert. I think that in such a case to silence the
agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but,
withal, a great mercy."
His real argument may be summed up in these words of his:
"You ask, in substance, whether I really claim that I may
override all the guaranteed rights of individuals, on the plea of
conserving the public safety—when I may choose to say the public
safety requires it. This question, divested of the phraseology
calculated to represent me as struggling for an arbitrary
prerogative, is either simply a question who shall decide, or an
affirmation that nobody shall decide, what the public safety does
require in cases of rebellion or invasion.
"The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur
for decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide
it. By necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes,
the decision is to be made, from time to time; and I think the
man, whom for the time, the people have under the Constitution,
made the commander-in-chief of their army and navy, is the man
who holds the power and bears the responsibility of making it.
If he uses the power justly, the same people will probably
justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands to be dealt
with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves in the
Constitution."
Lincoln virtually appealed to the Northern people to secure
efficiency by setting him momentarily above all civil authority.
He asked them in substance, to interpret their Constitution by a
show of hands. No thoughtful person can doubt the risks of such
a method; yet in Ohio, in 1863, the great majority—perhaps
everyone who believed in the war—accepted Lincoln's position.
Between their traditional system of legal juries and the new
system of military tribunals the Ohio voters made their choice
without hesitation. They rejected Vallandigham and sustained the
Lincoln candidate by a majority of over a hundred thousand. That
same year in New York the anti-Lincoln candidate for Secretary of
State was defeated by twenty-nine thousand votes.
Though these elections in 1863 can hardly be called the
turning-point in the history of the Lincoln Government, yet it
was clear that the tide of popularity which had ebbed so far away
from Lincoln in the autumn of 1862 was again in the flood.
Another phase of his stormy course may be thought of as having
ended. And in accounting for this turn of the tide it must not
be forgotten that between the nomination and the defeat of a
Vallandigham the bloody rebellion in New York had taken place,
Gettysburg had been fought, and Grant had captured Vicksburg.
The autumn of 1863 formed a breathing space for the war party of
the North.
1 Edward Everett Hale's famous story "The Man Without a Country",
though it got into print too late to affect the election, was
aimed at Vallandigham. That quaint allegory on the lack of
patriotism became a temporary classic.
2See Chapter IX.
3The battle over conscription in England was anticipated in
America sixty-four years ago. Bagot says that the average
British point of view may be expressed thus: "What I am sayin' is
this here as I was a sayin' yesterday." The Anglo-Saxon mind is
much the same the world over. In America, today, the enemies of
effective military organization would do well to search the
arguments of their skillful predecessors in 1888, who fought to
the last ditch for a military system that would make inescapable
"peace at any price." For the modern believers in conscription,
one of their best bits of political thunder is still the defense
of it by Lincoln.
6The Constitution permits the suspension of the privileges of
the writ of habeas corpus "when in cases of rebellion or invasion
the public safety may require it," but fails to provide a method
of suspension. Taney held that the power to suspend lay with
Congress. Five years afterward, when Chase was Chief Justice,
the Supreme Court, in ex parte Milligan, took the same view and
further declared that even Congress could not deprive a citizen
of his right to trial by jury so long as the local civil courts
are in operation. The Confederate experience differed from the
Federal inasmuch as Congress kept control of the power to suspend
the writ. But both governments made use of such suspension to
set up martial law in districts where the local courts were open
but where, from one cause or another, the Administration had not
confidence in their effectiveness. Under ex parte Milligan,
both Presidents and both Congresses were guilty of usurpation.
The mere layman waits for the next great hour of trial to learn
whether this interpretation will stand. In the Milligan case the
Chief Justice and three others dissented.
4See Chapter IX.The term arose, it has been said, from the use of the copper
cent with its head of Liberty as a peace button. But a more
plausible explanation associates the peace advocates with the
deadly copperhead snake.
5President Edwin A. Alderman, of the University of Virginia.
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