Center for Civic Education - Lincoln Bicentennial with Supplemental Lesson: Page 6

How did President Lincoln respond in his First Inaugural Address to the secession of states from the Federal Union?

He expressed this constitutional dilemma during his July 4, 1861, speech to Congress. “Is there, in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?” Lincoln chose a course of action, based on necessity, which bordered on being “too strong.” If the government was “too weak” to achieve victory against insurgents, he believed the Constitution, and the liberties it guaranteed, might forever be lost.

At the outset of the war, Lincoln suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and approved military trials for civilians accused of aiding or abetting the Confederacy in certain areas of the country. More than 12,000 civilians were arrested and held by the military during the Civil War.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s opinion, in a District of Maryland Circuit Court case (Ex parte Merryman, 1861), rebuked the president for unconstitutionally suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Lincoln’s decision enabled military commanders to indefinitely imprison persons suspected of disloyalty to the Union without producing evidence in a court of law to justify their detention. Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution says, “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” Taney held that the president did not have authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus without the consent of Congress. The habeas corpus clause, said Taney, appeared within Article 1 of the Constitution, >