The Civil War and Executive Power

When Abraham Lincoln entered the Oval Office in March of 1861, he confronted the most serious crisis in American history. Seven southern states had already seceded from the Union and had formed the Confederacy. The following month, Confederate forces fired on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, initiating four years of bloody civil war. Four more southern states quickly seceded, moving the border between the Union and the Confederacy to the Potomac River, separating Maryland and Virginia. This was also the location of Washington, DC, which was now under threat of attack from Confederate forces. President Lincoln issued a call for volunteers to defend the nation's capital.

Thousands of northerners responded to Lincoln's request and boarded the railroads bound for Washington, DC. However, all of the rail lines leading into the capital passed through Baltimore, Maryland. Although located in Union territory, Baltimore was home to many Confederate sympathizers, who blew up several railroad bridges north of the city. Faced with the prospect of having troops use a difficult and circuitous route to reach Washington, President Lincoln authorized his Army Commander, General Scott, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus anywhere along the rail line between Philadelphia and Washington if Scott felt doing so was necessary to protect troop movements.

One of those arrested for dynamiting the railroad bridges leading into Baltimore was John Merryman, a Maryland farmer and Confederate sympathizer. Jailed at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Merryman petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, which was issued the following day by Roger Taney, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. When the commander of Fort McHenry refused to obey the writ, Taney ordered him arrested. This order was also ignored, prompting Taney to issue a judicial opinion declaring that only Congress, not the president, had the authority to suspend habeas corpus.

President Lincoln refused to obey Taney's decision and defended his actions in an address to a special session of Congress in July 1861. By asking whether "all the laws but one [are] to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated," Lincoln highlighted the inherent tension between civil liberties and national security present during periods of military crisis. On two additional occasions, Lincoln issued proclamations suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Over the duration of the Civil War, at least 10,000 people accused of disloyalty were placed in military custody without charges ever being brought against them; none of them were allowed to invoke the "Great Writ."