Inter arma enim silent leges: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties in Civil War Maryland

Abstract

Abraham Lincoln is widely regarded as one of the nation's greatest Presidents. He is the subject of at least 15,000 books. A popular poem (later set to music) responded to Lincoln's call for troops in biblical terms: We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.… Upon Lincoln's death, Bishop Horatio Potter wrote that [a] glorious career of service and devotion is crowned with a martyr's death. Lithographs in the aftermath of the assassination depicted the apotheosis of Lincoln. In short, Lincoln has been venerated among both scholars and the public. Despite the mostly reverent treatment, little has been written about Lincoln's treatment of civil liberties during the Civil War. Even then, the few full-length scholarly works have generally excused Lincoln's conduct or otherwise justified his actions as necessary to conduct the war. One historian admitted [t]he skimpiness of the serious literature suggests that historians have been more or less embarrassed by Lincoln's record on the Constitution. As a result, there is a gap in the scholarly work regarding President Lincoln's role regarding civil liberties. This paper seeks to fill that gap by examining Lincoln's conduct as he tried to keep Maryland in the Union in 1861. Ultimately, Abraham Lincoln succeeded through a deliberate campaign to suppress civil liberties, including the illegal suspension of habeas corpus, arbitrary arrests of elected officials, interference in Maryland's elections, and the shuttering of newspapers sympathetic to the Confederacy. Whether Maryland would have seceded may never well be known, but Lincoln's calculated conduct ensured that it would not happen.