One of the many problems President Abraham Lincoln faced in the summer of 1861 was the location of Washington, D.C.; it was surrounded by states in or sympathetic to the confederacy. To help counter this precarious position, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus. This suspension allowed military authorities to arrest and indefinitely hold suspects without indictment or judicial hearing. Lincoln ignored an order issued by Chief Justice Taney to release or try a suspect the military had arrested. Lincoln ignored Taney’s ruling. And Taney responded by calling Lincoln “lawless” and opining that “the people of the U.S. was no longer living under a government of laws.”
Lincoln’s “unlawful” action suggests that there is a path between upholding our democracy and allowing a fascist takeover. That path is the temporary suspension of some Constitutional protections, if necessary, to save our democracy. The notion that we must allow fascists to use the privileges of our democracy and permanently end those privileges is folly. It is a folly that none of the slave-owning Founding Fathers would ever abide.
Lincoln’s “unlawful” action suggests that there is a path between upholding our democracy and allowing a fascist takeover. That path is the temporary suspension of some Constitutional protections, if necessary, to save our democracy. The notion that we must allow fascists to use the privileges of our democracy and permanently end those privileges is folly. It is a folly that none of the slave-owning Founding Fathers would ever abide.