Identifier: americanbastileh00mars_0 (find matches)
Title: American bastile. A history of the illegal arrests and imprisonment of American citizens in the northern and border states ... during the late civil war
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Marshall, John A
Subjects: Martial law
Publisher: Philadelphia, T.W. Hartley & Co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
al from the decisions emanatingfrom these grand centres of power. Statesmen and patriots,like Aristides and Pericles and Cicero, were exiled, andcontinued in exile, until the storms of persecution and pro-scription exhausted themselves, and were then either recalledby the demand of the people, or voluntarily returned to re-sume the leadership in the affairs of State. In modern times, however, with experiments in govern-ment for more than two thousand years before us, and withour jurisprudence keeping pace with the civilization andprogress of the age, it was not even mooted that a citizen ofthe United States could be subjected to banishment andexile from a State of which he was a citizen by a simploedict from Washington, especially when that State was notin rebellion against the Federal Government. There is noclause in the Constitution which would justify such an exer-cise or usurpation of power. Under monarchical govern-ments, where centralization still prevails, — as in Austria 712
Text Appearing After Image:
CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM. 713 and Russia, where the political power of the nation is con-centred in Vienna and St. Petersburg,--such despotismhas been and is tolerated ; but in the United States, whereall power is inherent in the people, and where each State hasentire control over her own citizens, except when by anyovert act a State, as a State, opposes the laws of the FederalGovernment, the banishment of a citizen from his nativeState is such an act of usurpation and despotism as wouldjustify the impeachment and deposition of the official guiltyof the crime. The principle, as to the rights of citizens in States not inrebellion, is fully enunciated in the decision of the SupremeCourt of the United States in the Milligan case, where it isbroadly and expressly stated that a citizen residing in aState not in rebellion, and where the courts are open to hearcomplaints, cannot be tried by a military commission or court-martial, and that the writ of habeas corpus, in such State,cannot be sus

Note About Images