The Republican Position on USC T 18 Ch 115 Sec 2383ff

[Trei, Peter]

> From: 	mmotyka at lsil.com[SMTP:mmotyka at lsil.com]
> What a guy!
> Abraham Lincoln :
> 
> "Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can
> exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their
> revolutionary right to dismember or
> overthrow it." 
> 
> President Abraham Lincoln, "First Inaugural Address" (available at
> http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html) 
> 
> "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the
> right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new
> one that suits them
> better. This is a most valuable,---a most sacred right---a right, which
> we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right
> confined to cases in which the
> whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it." 
> 
> (Speech in the United States House of Representatives, Jan. 12, 1848) 
> 
> 
> As far as I am concerned, to the extent that a government restricts
> speech against it, it betrays its weakness and strengthens the
> oppostion. When was the last time we heard one of our current crop of
> political weenies speak so clearly or with such faith in the governed?
> Not in my lifetime.
> Mike
------------
As I said in an earlier post, there is usually a gulf - a huge one, between
what institutions say and what they do

Consider these actions of Lincoln in the light the above quotes:

>From 'Getting Lincoln Right':
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman50.html

[...]
Also, should those who debate the greatness of Lincoln
ignore the fact that he arrested and exiled a US Congressman
from Ohio - Clement Valladingham - who was also running for
governor of Ohio at the time, over anti-war remarks made
during a campaign speech?  Valladingham was arrested in his
bedroom in the middle of the night.

Should one also overlook Lincoln's destruction of the rule
of law in "loyal" Maryland? When Maryland voiced its support
for the CSA and appeared itself ready to secede, Lincoln
arrested 31 Maryland legislators, the mayor of Baltimore
(the nation's 3rd largest city at the time), and a US
Congressman from Maryland, as well as numerous editors and
publishers.

Not only did Lincoln imprison two US Congressmen, he also
wrote out an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the US
Supreme Court, Roger Taney, after Taney wrote the opinion in
Ex Parte Merryman (1861) rebuking Lincoln's illegitimate
suspension of habeas corpus (see Charles Adams, p
46-53). John Marshall, whose opinion in Marbury v. Madison
(1803) famously declared that "It is emphatically the
province and duty of the judicial department to say what the
law is," also wrote the opinion in Ex Parte Bollman and
Swartwout (1807) declaring that suspension of habeas corpus
was a power vested only in the Congress. Lincoln simply
ignored the law. Additionally, US Army troops refused to
release Merryman into the custody of a federal marshal sent
by Taney pursuant to the court order that Merryman be freed.

Lincoln, then, imprisoned members of the federal legislative
branch, and also sought to imprison the chief member of the
federal judiciary. What happened to checks and balances?
Lincoln, with the backing of the army, simply exercised
whatever powers he desired. As noted Lincoln scholar Mark
Neely writes in The Last Best Hope of Earth, Lincoln
arrested the Marylanders "without much agonizing over their
constitutionality" (p 133).
[...]