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How 'No Kings' rallies fit into America's history - David Lockmiller - 04-04-2026 10:35 AM
Apr 2, 2026
PBS News Hour
Judy Woodruff: “Over the years, many presidents have been depicted as kings, including Abraham Lincoln, who during the Civil War suspended habeas corpus, a person's right to challenge their own detention.”
News and Announcements -- The chief justice takes a swipe at JD Vance (1-2-2025)
President Abraham Lincoln defied the Supreme Court, and most importantly the Chief Justice:
Team of Rivals, page 354-55:
Receiving word that the mobs intended to destroy the train tracks between Annapolis and Philadelphia in order to prevent the long-awaited troops from reaching the beleaguered capital, Lincoln made the controversial decision. If resistance along the military line between Washington and Philadelphia made it "necessary to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus for the public safety," Lincoln authorized General Scott to do so. In Lincoln's words, General Scott could "arrest, and detain, without resort to the ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to public safety." Seward later claimed that he had urged a wavering Lincoln to take this step, convincing him that "perdition was the the sure penalty of further hesitation."
Lincoln had not issued a sweeping order but a directive confined to this single route. Still, by rescinding the basic constitutional protection against arbitrary arrest, he aroused the wrath of Chief Justice Taney, who . . . blasted Lincoln and maintained that only Congress could suspend the writ.
Lincoln later defended his decision in his first message to Congress. As chief executive, he was responsible for ensuring "that the laws be faithfully executed." An insurrection "in nearly one-third of the States" had subverted the "whole of the laws . . . are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?"
"So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history." -- Plutarch