Mr Maher's List: James Madison Seminar

• • example of the excess power of the railraods
• There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope, upon the chances of being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes all men, black as well as white; and forth-with he boldly denies that it includes Negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with Negroes! He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
• But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing blood by the white and black races: agreed for once—a thousand times agreed

  • This is Lincoln using data to show that Stephen Douglas's approach to slavery will not reduce the number of mixed-race children, but Lincn's wil!

1 more annotation...

• • US Supreme Court Constitutionality of greenbacks

• • Legal tender case - constituionality of greenbacks

• • Profiteers in the US Civil War

• • First independent auditor from the federal government. IT audits national banks, but is paid for by fees paid by member banks as a requirement for them to get a federal charter. Indepdent auditory agence.

• • Explanation as to how New Dealers used the experience of World War I as a basis for the expansion of federal power

• Clement Vallandigham

• • Moreno notes that Lincolns did suspend the writ broadly, but for reasons that wer legitimnate

• • Used by Licoln to empower his call for militia
• That whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, the same being notified to the President of the United States, by an associate justice or the district judge, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such state to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. And if the militia of a state, where such combinations may happen, shall refuse, or be insufficient to suppress the same, it shall be lawful for the President, if the legislature of the United States be not in session, to call forth and employ such numbers of the militia of any other state or states most convenient thereto, as may be necessary, and the use of militia, so to be called forth, may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the ensuing session.

• • Cited by Moreno - though no real evidence exists that Lincoln would arrest Taney

• HABEAS CORPUSPOWER TO SUSPEND IN TIME OF WAR;

• The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

  • Compare against Federalist 84

• • Moreno points out that this is an argument against the Bill of Rights. This Pederalists explains that - if Congress is not explicitly given the power to do something, it cannot do it anyway.

• • Notes by Moreno at James Madison Seminar - does not buy idea that Lincoln was the first 2oth C president, but did stay within the Constitution

• They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.

  • Moreno points out that this is the most often misquoted portions of the opinion. Most people think this is "have" no rights. But rather he is saying that they did not have rights as part of history. But, then again, it is wrong

• nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.

  • which can be compared to FDR trying ot pack the Court - Linoln more straightforward - just going to overturn it

  • Lincoln on Dred scott saying that the decision will not be a precedent