The Taney Arrest Warrant theory is a controversial story of recent discovery in Abraham Lincoln scholarship. The standard version of the story alleges that in late May or early June of 1861 President Lincoln secretly ordered an arrest warrant for Roger Brooke Taney, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, that was quickly abandoned. The alleged arrest order is said to have been a retaliatory measure against Taney in response to his ruling of Ex Parte Merryman, which found that Lincoln's suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus was unconstitutional.

The severity of the allegation that Lincoln would attempt to arrest the sitting Chief Justice and the relatively scant corroborating evidence (the main details of the story come mostly from a single document written in the 1880's) have caused some Lincoln scholars to question its authenticity, though the question remains unsettled and some new evidence has been discovered in recent years.

Contents

1 History and Evidence 2 Controversy 3 Current Research 4 External Links

History and Evidence

The arrest warrant story was a recent "rediscovery" in Lincoln lore, though early references to it appear in documents contemporaneous to the Merryman case. The primary source document on the alleged warrant is a single manuscript written in the 1880's by Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's friend, bodyguard, and United States Marshal for the District of Columbia during his administration. According to the manuscript, which is a brief history of Ex Parte Merryman by Lamon:

After due consideration the administration determined upon the arrest of the Chief Justice. A warrant or order was issued for his arrest. Then arose the question of service. Who should make the arrest and where the imprisonment should be? This was done by the President with instructions to use his own discretion about making the arrest unless he should receive further orders from him.

The warrant was never served according to Lamon for reasons that are not stated. The manuscript dates from the 1880's and resides in the collection of Lamon papers at the Huntington Library.

During the Merryman case Justice Taney is also known to have communicated knowledge of an unnamed "consultation" for his arrest to George William Brown, the mayor of Baltimore who was present in his courtroom at the time of the verdict. Brown revealed the conversation in a later book -

"Mr. Brown, I am an old man, a very old man, but perhaps I was preserved for this occasion." I replied, "Sir, I thank God that you were." He then told me that he knew his own imprisonment had been a matter of consultation, but the danger had passed, and he warned me from information he had received, that my time would come.

Another period memoir by former Taney colleague and Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis refers to a "great crime" that was almost committed against Taney by Lincoln, evidently a reference to the arrest warrant.

After being virtually unknown for more than a century, Lamon's story reemerged during the early 1970's in A More Perfect Union by Harold Hyman . Some recent scholars have treated the story as credible including Jeffrey Rogers Hummel in Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men and Charles Adams in When in the Course of Human Events. For a brief period from the 1980's to the late 1990's it was believed that a second corroborating document by Francis Lieber referred to the warrant. This was the result of a mistaken numerical citation in an earlier work though. The error was reportedly discovered by John Rodehamel , a manuscripts librarian at the Huntington Library.

Controversy

Though there has been relatively little published scholarship challenging the story's validity, its controversial nature is acknowledged by proponents and critics alike and several critiques by amateur historians and hobbyists have appeared on the internet. One criticism is that Lamon alone is an unreliable source, infamous for lending his name to a ghost-written 1872 biography of Lincoln by Chauncey Black . The biography was received unfavorably and has been subject to much historical derision for alleged factual errors and fabrications. On the other hand, the habeas corpus manuscript was written in the mid 1880's around the time that Lamon was working on his second book, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, that was incomplete when he died (Lamon's daughter edited the completed portions of it for posthumous publication). This second book is highly regarded among Lincoln scholars and is the main source for many well known Lincoln anecdotes and quotes. Another criticism is that no copy of the warrant or other documentation has been found to support Lamon's story. Some internet critics have also questioned the likelihood of placing such an important task in Lamon's hands, though Lincoln often sent Lamon on important political tasks including a famous 1865 mission to Virginia that resulted in his absence as a bodyguard on the night of Lincoln's assassination.

The most common reason given to doubt the story is that it simply sounds too outlandish - the President's arrest of the Chief Justice would be unprecedented and, in the minds of many, unthinkable.

Lincoln biographer and economist Thomas DiLorenzo responded to this criticism by showing that Lincoln ordered the arrest of several high profile political opponents including Congressman Clement Vallandigham and placed at least one other federal judge - William Matthew Merrick of the United States Circuit Court for the District of Columbia - under house arrest for ruling against the administration in another habeas corpus case. Several northern newspapers also publicly called for Taney's arrest after the Merryman ruling. Given these other precedents, it is argued, the arrest of the Chief Justice is not nearly as unthinkable as it might seem.

Current Research

The Taney arrest warrant theory remains a hotly debated item of Lincoln scholarship with divergent opinions speaking in favor of and against its authenticity. The relatively recent discovery or rediscovery of the Lamon manuscript itself and subsequent evidence indicate that the verdict is still out. Though the controversy wages, both sides agree that it will probably take further research and discoveries to settle the issue if indeed it is ever settled at all.

External Links

• Lincoln’s Presidential Warrant to Arrest Chief Justice Roger B. Taney 'A Great Crime' or a Fabrication? by Charles Adams [1]
• Lincoln's Great Crime: the Arrest Warrant for the Chief Justice by Thomas DiLorenzo [2]
• Newsgroup Discussion of the Arrest Warrant evidence [3]