Lincoln: The man of the hour
The president of the United States has much to do with why the North won the Civil War. By Ned Harrison
Date published: 11/19/2005
Part of a series on why the South lost the Civil War
IN HIS excellent book, "Battle Cry of Freedom," historian James McPherson gives the best explanation possible on why President Abraham Lincoln was the real reason the South lost the Civil War.
Soon after the fighting began, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in parts of Maryland. The suspension was challenged in federal Circuit Court in Baltimore, where the presiding judge was Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.
Taney's ruling on the matter declared the suspension invalid. Lincoln, the soul of reason, sent a message to the Congress in which he declared his primary duty as president was to suppress the rebellion so that the laws of the nation could be applied equally, North and South.
The president considered suspension of the writ a vital weapon against rebellion: "Are all the laws but one [the writ of habeas corpus] to go unexecuted, and the government go to pieces, lest that one be violated?"
In other words, "Fellas, I have a war to run and a nation to unite, and I am going to do whatever has to be done to win the war and save the nation. We can fix the laws later, when we have peace."
Daniel Farber wrote a fine book on the subject. His "Lincoln's Constitution" evaluated the situation this way: "Suspending habeas corpus may have been one of the measures that kept the Union going during this very dangerous period. The suspensions not only allowed thousands of rebels and subversives to be detained without access to judges, many of whom were sympathetic to the Southern cause, but also showed Lincoln to be resolute, indeed ruthless, in the prosecution of the war."
Farber goes on to compare this critical early period of the Civil War with the early days of World War II: "Resoluteness in times of great danger is essential to staving off defeatism; it goes some distance in explaining why Britain withstood the Nazi onslaught in 1940 and France did not."
Date published: 11/19/2005
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