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When protests reached Lincoln he turned them aside with a medical analogy, pointing out that a limb must sometimes be amputated to save a life but that a life must never be given to save a limb; he felt, he said, "that measures, however unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation."
-- Civil War, Shelby Foote
And there you have that residual power that exists with any sovereign government - what the founding fathers presumably meant in calling government a "necessary evil." Some governments just use this power more than others, even to the extent that it may fairly characterize the government.
One is still content to think that America has yet to fall into such a dark place, as even our Bush Administration has been handed some checks on its treatment of suspects and prisoners in the War on Terror. Though, this promises to be a challenging issue for us for some time to come...
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Stanton believed in rigorous methods, especially when it came to dealing with whatever seemed to him to smack or hint of treason, and he had been given considerable sway in that regard. Perceiving at the outset that the septuagenaritan Bates was unequal to the task, Lincoln had put Seward in charge of maintaining internal security, which included the power to arrest all persons suspected of disloyalty in those regions where habeas corpus had been suspended despite the protest of the courts, including the Supreme Court itself. The genial New Yorker did an efective job, particularly in Maryland and Kentucky during their periods of attempted neutrality; judges and legislators, among others who seemed to the government or the government's friends to favor the government's enemies, were haled from their benches and chambers, sometimes from their beds, and clapped into prisons, more often than not without being told of the charges or who had preferred them. When protests reached Lincoln he turned them aside with a medical analogy, pointing out that a limb must sometimes be amputated to save a life but that a life must never be given to save a limb; he felt, he said, "that measures, however unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation." After Seward came Stanton, who assumed the security duties soon after he entered the cabinet in early '62. In additon to the fierce delight he took in crushing all advocates of disunion, he enjoyed the exercise of power for its own sake. "If I tap that little bell," he told a visitor, obviously relishing the notion, "I can send you to a place where you will never hear the dogs bark." Apparently the little bell rang often; a postwar search of the records disclosed the names of 13,535 citizens arrested and confined in various military prisons during Stanton's tenure of office under Lincoln, while another survey (not concerned with names, and therefore much less valid) put the total at 38,000 for the whole period of the war.
-- Civil War, Shelby Foote
When protests reached Lincoln he turned them aside with a medical analogy, pointing out that a limb must sometimes be amputated to save a life but that a life must never be given to save a limb; he felt, he said, "that measures, however unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation."
-- Civil War, Shelby Foote
And there you have that residual power that exists with any sovereign government - what the founding fathers presumably meant in calling government a "necessary evil." Some governments just use this power more than others, even to the extent that it may fairly characterize the government.
One is still content to think that America has yet to fall into such a dark place, as even our Bush Administration has been handed some checks on its treatment of suspects and prisoners in the War on Terror. Though, this promises to be a challenging issue for us for some time to come...
___ ___ ___
Stanton believed in rigorous methods, especially when it came to dealing with whatever seemed to him to smack or hint of treason, and he had been given considerable sway in that regard. Perceiving at the outset that the septuagenaritan Bates was unequal to the task, Lincoln had put Seward in charge of maintaining internal security, which included the power to arrest all persons suspected of disloyalty in those regions where habeas corpus had been suspended despite the protest of the courts, including the Supreme Court itself. The genial New Yorker did an efective job, particularly in Maryland and Kentucky during their periods of attempted neutrality; judges and legislators, among others who seemed to the government or the government's friends to favor the government's enemies, were haled from their benches and chambers, sometimes from their beds, and clapped into prisons, more often than not without being told of the charges or who had preferred them. When protests reached Lincoln he turned them aside with a medical analogy, pointing out that a limb must sometimes be amputated to save a life but that a life must never be given to save a limb; he felt, he said, "that measures, however unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation." After Seward came Stanton, who assumed the security duties soon after he entered the cabinet in early '62. In additon to the fierce delight he took in crushing all advocates of disunion, he enjoyed the exercise of power for its own sake. "If I tap that little bell," he told a visitor, obviously relishing the notion, "I can send you to a place where you will never hear the dogs bark." Apparently the little bell rang often; a postwar search of the records disclosed the names of 13,535 citizens arrested and confined in various military prisons during Stanton's tenure of office under Lincoln, while another survey (not concerned with names, and therefore much less valid) put the total at 38,000 for the whole period of the war.
-- Civil War, Shelby Foote
