4/13/61

Civil War begins

4/19/61

20,000 Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore attempt to block Union troops from traveling to DC.

From NYT, 4/20/61: “There was a horrible scene on Pratt-street [in Baltimore], today. The railroad track was taken up, and the troops attempted to march through. They were attacked by a mob with bricks and stones, and were fired upon. The fire was returned. Two of the Seventh Regiment of Pennsylvania were killed and several wounded. It is impossible to say what portion of the troops have been attacked. They bore a white flag as they marched up Pratt-street and were greeted with showers of paving-stones. The Mayor of the city went ahead of them with the police. An immense crowd blocked up the streets. The soldiers finally turned and fired on the mob. Several of the wounded have just gone up the street in carts. At the Washington depot, an immense crowd assembled. The rioters attacked the soldiers, who fired into the mob. Several were wounded, and some fatally. It is said that four of the military and four rioters are killed. The city is in great excitement. Martial law has been proclaimed. The military are rushing to the armories." 24,000 Marylanders fight for Confederacy, 63K for Union. 

4/27/61

Lincoln suspends habeas corpus along Phila-Wash train route after 4/19 incident; suspends it in Florida on May 10

5/25/61

Ex parte Merryman: Marylander John Merryman, alleged to be a lieutenant in a company drilling in a scheme to move South and join the Confederate army, is arrested. He is imprisoned in Fort McHenry and sends Taney a petition asking for a writ of habeas corpus, which Taney issues. Commander George Cadwalader, citing Lincoln’s order, ignores the writ. Taney argues that only Congress, not the President, has power to suspend this privilege. (Grammatically, it is not clear with whom authority lies in the Constitution, yet another reason passive voice is bad: “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.” [I,9] Article I concerns the powers of Congress, so the placement implies, but does not explicitly state, that it's a congressional power.) A US Marshal attempting to serve the writ is denied entry at the fort’s gates. Merryman serves 7 weeks, then is freed and never tried.

Kentucky considers secession but doesn't: believing the state to be a buffer zone, Governor Beriah Magoffin, a Breckinridge Dem. who is pro-slavery, refuses the call for Confederate troops and formally declares the state’s neutrality. In May, state legislature votes 69-26 that “this state and the residents thereof should not take part in the civil war now being waged, except as mediators and friends of the belligerent parties; and that Kentucky should, during the contest, occupy the position of strict neutrality.” Also votes 84-9 not to supply troops to the Union. State senate then votes 13-9 for neutrality.

7/2/61

Lincoln issues an order endowing Lieutenant General Winfield Scott with the power to suspend habeas corpus “at the point where resistance occurs” anywhere between New York and DC. In Missouri, things get complicated: the state secession convention votes 89-1 against secession, but Governor Claiborne Jackson, who ran on an anti-secession platform in 1860, then begins to try to make secession happen anyway. He insists that residents “stand by [their] sister slave-holding states,” but voters reject secession 4-1. Puts state militia under secessionist command and orders it to train outside St. Louis; legislature puts police, militia, sheriff in secessionist hands and takes cannon and ammo delivery May 8, planning to seize St. Louis armory. They are surrounded and captured by loyalist troops May 10, who then march on Jefferson City and force Gov, legislature to flee. In hiding in SW of state, they then approve a secession ordinance. New unionist government declares itself to be the legit government. After Nathaniel Lyon, these forces’ commander, is killed attacking rebel forces in August, General John Fremont puts St. Louis and then the whole state under martial law. By end of month he’s ordering captured rebel guerrillas to be shot and the slaves of rebel masters to be freed. Lincoln publicly directs him to reverse the order, then removes him from command in Nov. Imposition of martial law allows civilians suspected of aiding the rebels to be tried by military courts. Gen. Halleck explains the rationale: those burning bridges or buildings aren't “armed and open enemies” but “pretended quiet citizens living on their farms.” These civilian rebels can't be treated as prisoners of war, but neither can they be entrusted to the local courts, which Halleck deems “very generally unreliable”—not least because so many locals are likely to sympathize with the South.

7/4/61

Congress convenes in special session; only S Senator to remain is Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. Lincoln defends his suspension policy: “Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?”

7/21/61

First Bull Run

7/62

Draft instituted; nationwide resistance leads Secretary of War Stanton, at Lincoln’s request, to decree that anyone “engaged, by act, speech, or writing, in discouraging volunteer enlistments, or in any way giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or in any other disloyal practice against the United States” is subject to arrest and trial “before a military commission.”

Result: a civil liberties disaster. Local sheriffs and constables can decide arbitrarily who is loyal or disloyal, without considering the administration's main goal of enforcing the draft. At least 350 people are arrested in the following month, an all-time high. Some of the accused have done nothing worse than bad-mouth the president. (Also true before Aug. 8. On Aug. 6, for example, Union Gen. Henry Halleck arrested one Missourian for saying, "[I] wouldn't wipe my ass with the stars and stripes.") On Sept. 8, the federal official overseeing these arrests decrees that law enforcement agents are enforcing the orders too stringently. People were being arrested who posed no threat to the public safety. Thereafter, arrests subside. Still, Lincoln himself reiterates the suspension on Sept. 24, and arrests without trial continue. 10,000-15,000 people incarcerated without prompt trial. In Feb. 1862, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton requests and receives an executive order giving him total control of and oversight over all telegraph lines; the order also notes, "all newspapers publishing military news, however obtained and by whatever medium received, not authorized by the official authority mentioned in the preceding paragraph will be excluded thereafter from receiving information by telegraph or from transmitting their papers by railroad." (Think of the recent NSA surveillance revelations.)

9/22/62

Lincoln issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation; takes effect 1/1/63

3/63

Congress passes Habeas Corpus Act, retroactively granting Lincoln the right to do what he has already done and granting it in future as well

7/1-3/63

Battle of Gettysburg; Vicksburg falls 7/4, giving Union control of the Mississippi. Vicksburg residents refuse to celebrate July 4 as a holiday until 1945.

7/13-16/63

NYC Draft Riots

11/19/63

Lincoln delivers Gettsyburg Address

9/1/64

As part of “march to the sea” (300 miles long, 60 wide swath of destruction), General William T. Sherman takes Atlanta, ensuring Lincoln’s re-election in November. (Also munitions center of Confederacy, a major blow.) Lincoln wins 80% of soldiers’ vote, but, nervous over summer about possibility of re-election, had put Jacksonian Democrat Andrew Johnson on ticket to balance it and win moderate vote, with dire consequences for Reconstruction. Johnson replaces Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, who had also been a Jacksonian Democrat before leaving the party over slavery in 1856 and becoming a Republican. He had represented balance in a different direction in 1860, as he encouraged abolitionists and northeasterners to vote for the midwestern Lincoln. From Time's discussion of the worst VPs in US history: "Hamlin's non-existent legislative record as a House Representative, a U.S. Senator and Maine's Governor made him a safe choice. (The man had a short attention span; he served as governor for two months before deciding he preferred the Senate.) Before his nomination, Hamlin had never met Lincoln. During his term the Civil War raged across the country--Hamlin must have barely noticed; he spent most of his time with his family in Maine. Finally, in 1864, he joined the war effort, serving for three months as a cook in the Coast Guard before quitting. Later, Hamlin would complain to his wife that he was 'the most unimportant man in Washington, ignored by the President, the cabinet, and Congress.'"

3/65

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural; war ends 4/9/65, Lincoln assassinated 4/14/65

1864-66

Ex parte Milligan: Lambdin Milligan, part of a paramilitary organization called the Sons of Liberty, has a plan to steal weapons, free prisoners from POW camps in Indiana, then build a guerrilla army and take over Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. They are arrested without a warrant in October 1864 and sentenced to death in December by a military tribunal. Sentence is due to be carried out in May, 1865, allowing Milligan to sue after the war has ended. He does, on the basis that he is not a soldier and should be subject to civil, not military, justice (the accused enjoy many fewer rights in military court: no jury, majority vote can convict [2/3 in death-penalty cases], no right to confront accuser). In 1866, with the Civil War over and Lincoln dead, the Supreme Court agrees, strongly: “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchism or despotism.” He returns to Indiana after the war, is accorded a hero's welcome, and sues the US military for $500,000 for false imprisonment. The army, defended by future President Benjamin Harrison among others, loses the case, but Harrison's argument that Milligan's actions prolonged the war results in an award of only $5.