On this day in 1861 President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, DC, for all military-related cases during the Civil War; the previous April, Lincoln had suspended habeas corpus in Maryland, and also in parts of the Midwest.

In 1862, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the entire country.

In 1863, after the US Supreme Court ruled Lincoln's actions unconstitutional (Lincoln simply ignored the Court's ruling), Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act, formally suspending the writ of habeas corpus in the US.

In an as-of-yet unconfirmed rumor, a relative of Andrew Sullivan flatly stated at the time, "America as we have known it, is over."

At roughly the same time, another unconfirmed report had it that a relative of Keith Olbermann argued, "This war is an exaggerated crisis put forward by President Lincoln's melodramatic fear-mongering. The Lincoln Administration is more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from. I believe that the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was President Lincoln."

Of course, I have no idea whether Sullivan and Olbermann had relatives in the US in the 1860s (mine weren't here yet), and am just being a smart ass by putting their paraphrased words in the mouths of their probably nonexistent American relatives, but I do find it ironic that both Sullivan and Olbermann's rhetoric concerning George Bush and habeas corpus was reflected to a large degree by many holding an antiwar view during the Civil War.

In an excerpt from James McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson describes Lincoln's political problem with antiwar opponents, whose objections to the war included, among other things: opposition to the changing reasons for its prosecution, doubt that it could be won, negative reaction to the cost of the war in both blood and treasure, their belief in the zealotry or 'fanatisism' of the war's proponents, and their willingness to use hyperbole about the 'despotism' of the president, and so on.

McPherson writes (Chap. 20; pp. 591-592):

Despite his preoccupation with military matters, [President] Lincoln told [Massachusetts Senator] Charles Sumner in January 1863 that he feared "'the fire in the rear' -- meaning the Democracy, especially at the Northwest -- more than our military chances." The president had ample reasons for concern. The peace faction of the Democratic party grew stronger with each setback of Union armies. And the enactment of as conscription law in March 1863 gave the antiwar movement additional stimulus.

By 1863 Clement L. Vallandingham had emerged as leader of the Peace Democrats. Only forty-two years old, the handsome Ohio congressman had cut his political eyeteeth on the Jeffersonian philosophy of limited government. "It is the desire of my heart," he declared soon after the outbreak of the war, "to restore the Union, the Federal Union as it was forty years ago." ... Although Ohio Republicans had gerrymandered him to defeat in the 1862 election, Vallandingham went out with a bang rather than a whimper. In a farewell speech to the House on January 14, 1863, and a subsequent tour from New Jersey to Ohio, he set forth his indictment of the war and his proposals for peace.

Vallandingham professed himself a better unionist than the Republicans whose fanatisism had provoked this ruinous war. These same Republicans, he continued, were now fighting not for Union but for abolition. And what had they accomplished? "Let the dead at Fredericksburg and Vicksburg answer." The South could never be conquered; the only trophies of this war were "defeat, debt, taxation, sepulchers ... and the suspension of habeas corpus, the violation ... of freedom of the press and of speech ... which have made this country one of the worst despotisms on earth for the past twenty months." What was the solution? "Stop fighting. Make an armistace ... Withdraw your army from the seceeded States." Start negotiations for reunion. Vallandingham had no use for the "fanatisism and hypocrisy" of the objection that armistace would preserve slavery. "I see more barbarism and sin, a thousand times, in the continuance of war ... and the enslavement of the White race by debt and taxes and arbitrary power" than in Negro slavery. "In considering terms of settlement we [should] look only to the welfare, peace, and safety of the white race, without reference to the effect that settlement may have on the African."

(In addition to being gerrymandered out of his seat, Rep. Clement L. Vallandingham was then arrested for his political rhetoric in opposing Lincoln.)

McPherson continues:

This became the platform for the Peace Democrats for the next two years. During the early months of 1863 this faction commanded the support of a minority of the party -- perhaps even a majority. A mass meeting of New York Democrats resolved that the war "against the South is illegal, being unconstitutional, and should not be sustained." And while Governor Horatio Seymor of New York promised "to make every sacrifice ... for the preservation of this Union," he also denounced emancipation as "bloody, barbarous, revolutionary" and pledged to "maintain and defend the sovereignty" of New York against unconstitutional violations by the federal government.

Like I said, the ironies abound.