"I can touch a bell and order an arrest or imprisonment"

Precedents for expanding federal power

[Reprinted from Issues & Views June 2002]

In the 19th century, a great many Abolitionists, who had fought strenuously for an end to slavery, opposed a war between the states. They wisely perceived that such a catastrophe would bring in its wake, not only the corruption of constitutional government, but a set of unpredictable troubles as monumental as those that surrounded slavery. Through the implementation of many of his war tactics, President Abraham Lincoln was to confirm the Abolitionists' worst fears.

In Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, author Jeffrey Rogers Hummel describes the Lincoln Administration's determined attempts to force conscription upon northern citizens. Even the fervently abolitionist newspaper, Liberator, declared that "the right to draft men is as purely imaginary as the right to enslave them," and advised young men to disobey the Enrollment Act--just as Abolitionists had advised citizens to disobey the Fugitive Slave Law. Groups began to form in opposition to other decrees of the Administration, which led to more draconian measures. Hummel writes:

To intimidate and control these groups, the President employed the same techniques that had held the border states within the Union. He extended the suspension of habeas corpus, previously limited to certain areas, throughout the North in September of 1862, just after issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This was a response to the first draft disturbances, but even before this blanket suspension, Union authorities were routinely arresting without trial or charges any Northerners they suspected of disloyalty.

First the State Department and later the War Department loosely coordinated surveillance through a network of special agents, U.S. marshals, Pinkerton detectives, local police, private informers, and above all, military officials. One widely circulated story claimed that Secretary of State William Seward bragged about his arbitrary power to the British Ambassador: "I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio. I can touch a bell again, and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York, and no power on earth, except that of the President of the United States, can release them. Can the Queen of England do as much?" . . .

The federal government simultaneously monitored and censored both the mails and telegraphs, and for the first time demanded passports of those entering and leaving the country. No one eligible for the draft could depart. It also suppressed newspapers. Over three hundred, including the Chicago Times, the New York World, and the Philadelphia Evening Journal, had to cease publication for varying periods. If the Postmaster General banned an antiwar paper from the mail, it had received the kiss of death. Early in the war, a special congressional committee, relying primarily upon anonymous informants, conducted sweeping investigations in order to root out disloyalty among government employees.

Here is an excerpt from an order that was sent on May 18, 1864, from Lincoln to General John Dix: “You will take possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the New York World and Journal of Commerce . . . and prohibit any further publication thereof . . . you are therefore commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison . . . the editors, proprietors and publishers of aforesaid newspapers.” Dix did his work and directed the censoring of hundreds of newspapers.

Lincoln further advised the silencing (perhaps by execution?) of those whose comments or writings might persuade a soldier to change his mind about the war. Hummel quotes a letter in which Lincoln writes:

"Long experience has shown that armies can not be maintained unless desertion shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. . . . Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts," the President asked, "while I must not touch a hair of a wiley agitator who induces him to desert?" Sometimes the agitator's antiwar propaganda might insidiously persuade "a father, or brother, or friend . . . to write the soldier boy, that he is fighting in a bad cause, for a wicked administration of a contemptable government. . . . I think in such a case to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but, withal, a great mercy."

On the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Clement Vallandigham, responding to claims by Lincoln's supporters that the President was being too lenient, declared:

Talk to me, indeed, of the leniency of the Executive! Too few arrests! too much forbearance by those in power! Sir, it is the people who have been too lenient. They have submitted to your oppressions and wrongs as no free people ought ever to submit. . . . Sir, some two hundred years ago, men were burned at the stake, subjected to the horrors of the Inquisition, to all the tortures that the devilish ingenuity of man could invent--for what? For opinions on questions of religion--of man's duty and relation to his God. And now, today, for the opinions on questions political, under a free government, in a country whose liberties were purchased by our fathers by seven years' outpouring of blood, and expenditure of treasure--we have lived to see men, the born heirs of this precious inheritance, subjected to arrest and cruel imprisonment at the caprice of a President or a secretary or a constable.

Vallandigham became reknown when, as a gubernatorial candidate, he again denounced Lincoln's tactics. This time, he was arrested and jailed, but public indignation forced Lincoln to release and exile his testy opponent behind Confederate lines.

Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, published by Open Court/Carus Publishing; Hummel is Professor of History and Economics at Golden Gate University, San Francisco. The book is available in bookstores, on Amazon.com, and at Liberty Tree.

Book Note:

A final, terrible consequence of the War was the first great step in the destruction of the plan of Constitutional Government envisioned by the Founders of the Nation. This was specifically why many Abolitionists opposed the Civil War: They anticipated that a nominal freedom for the slaves could well be bought with real tyranny for everyone. The civil rights abuses during the war itself, in both North and South, were conspicuous enough. But in the long term, the weakness of the Constitution noted by Jefferson, that there was really no means for the States or individuals to enforce it against abuses by the federal government, which previously had been mitigated by the possibility that States might simply leave the Union, was now profoundly exacerbated by the removal of that possibility. Slowly but steadily, even inexorably, all the evils feared by the Abolitionists, and by the original Anti-Federalists, would come to pass. Hence the second half of the title of Hummel's book, "Enslaving Free Men."

-- Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. (full review)

June 2002

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