REPORT ABUSIVE REPLY
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Message Subject
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Abraham Lincoln was a Tyrant
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Poster Handle
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Anonymous Coward |
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Quoting: Anonymous Coward 31096725 Ok let me clarify, sometimes you find a jewel in the dust. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 27627548 Here's a jewel: Of course he was a tyrant; he was a Republican after all. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 31096725 Lincoln's Crackdown Suspects jailed. No charges filed. Sound familiar?By David Greenberg|Posted Friday, Nov. 30, 2001, at 11:58 AM ET If Lincoln's Maryland actions were dubious, a wave of arrests the following summer under another habeas corpus suspension was downright indefensible. The wave began after Congress instituted the first-ever military draft in July 1862. Because the draft proved highly unpopular and hard to enforce, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, at Lincoln's behest, issued sweeping orders on Aug. 8 suspending habeas corpus nationwide—the first time the writ was suspended beyond a narrowly defined emergency area. Stanton decreed 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" was subject to arrest and trial "before a military commission." The exceedingly broad mandate precipitated a civil liberties disaster. It allowed local sheriffs and constables to decide arbitrarily who was loyal or disloyal, without even considering the administration's main goal of enforcing the draft. At least 350 people were arrested in the following month, an all-time high. Some of the accused had done nothing worse than bad-mouth the president. (That was also true before Aug. 8. On Aug. 6, for example, Union Gen. Henry Halleck arrested one Missourian for saying, " wouldn't wipe my ass with the stars and stripes.")
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