To President Bush - From "Honest" Abe

I have written at length about how our current government is butchering our Constitutional rights - destroying many of the sacred principles on which this country was founded. This is not the first time this has happened, nor will it probably be the last. In learning more about this topic, I was reading about Abraham Lincoln; this post by Andrew Sullivan got me started. I began thinking about and discussing some of the notable things that occurred during Lincoln's administration. I will share some of my research and thoughts. Perhaps the current president would care to listen... Abraham Lincoln wrote the letter referenced in the Sullivan post in 1848. The text of the letter is as follows: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, — 'I see no probability of the British invading us;' but he will say to you, 'Be silent: I see it, if you don't.' "The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood," When Lincoln wrote this letter, was a first term congressmen in the House of Representatives. He spoke out passionately against the Mexican-American War, and President Polk's support of it. He said: "God of Heaven has forgotten to defend the weak and innocent, and permitted the strong band of murderers and demons from hell to kill men, women, and children, and lay waste and pillage the land of the just." This Speaks strongly to Lincoln's anti-war sentiments and to his moral viewpoints. The letter above also shows his concern for what we now call the Unitary Executive Theory, supported by Alberto Gonzalez, John Yoo, and others in the President's inner circle. We know from history that this stance was to be severely tested when he became President. Lincoln was inaugurated just 2 weeks after Jefferson Davis became the President of the Confederate States. In his inaugural speech, he said: "Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that— I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." This is an amazing claim by a President that is best remembered for the Emancipation Proclamation. He continued to say: "That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes." (The entire speech can be found here.) The State sanctity he mentions is to be short-lived. From this speech on March 4, 1861, it is less than one month before Lincoln called for the deployment of troops to "preserve the Union." At this point, Lincoln's actions begin to belie his stated convictions from his early days in the house. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, spent money without congressional authorization, and imprisoned thousands of suspected Confederate sympathizers without trial. One of the more famous situations involves Lincoln ignoring a federal court. One week after the war began, a Confederate mob attacks Union regiments in Baltimore. The city’s unrest and secessionist sentiment coupled with its strategic location just north of Washington put the capital at risk. Lincoln authorizes his General-in-Chief to arrest hundreds of Maryland citizens because they were suspected of participating in the rebellion. This included militia officer John Merryman, who was charged with directing acts of sabotage as well as recruiting and training Confederate sympathizers. Merryman’s lawyer petitions for a writ of habeas corpus, requiring this military arrest to be justified in a civilian court. On May 26, the presiding federal circuit judge, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, issues the writ, arguing that the power to suspend civil liberties belongs to Congress, not the president. Lincoln ignored the court, saying that his primary duty as president was to suppress the rebellion so that the laws of the United States could be enforced in the South - Suspension of the writ was a vital weapon against rebellion. Congress later passed the Habeas Corpus Act, essentially endorsing Lincoln's actions, while providing a more limited framework for future suspensions. These facts make Lincoln look quite hypocritical - His 1848 letter warns against the abuses of a powerful executive, but his actions in the 1860's seem to be cut from the Unitary Executive cloth. How can this be explained? I believe the answer lies in Lincoln's overpowering desire to save the Union. He writes to Horace Greely, the editor of the New York Tribune, about his aims in the war: I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it ... I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. This letter shows Lincoln's willingness to set aside his own personal morality - that all men everywhere could be free - to preserve the Union. He writes of it again to Albert Hodges, editor of the Frankfort Commonwealth: "It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. ... I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it." Again, the preservation of the Constitution forces his own morality into a subordinate role. This theme is repeated over and over. Many fascinating letters and speeches by Abraham Lincoln can be viewed here. Check out this VERY cool interactive site, which talks about some of the topics I have discussed, and some additional topics as well. Why do I direct our current president to my paltry analysis? I think it is one of the phrases used in the Hodges letter - "I understood ... this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question ... to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling ..." - the president's job is not to impose his morality on the rest of the country. Rather, it is to uphold the laws laid down in the Constitution. Some applicable commentary: Do you suppose anyone is listening?