Recently, the account of the warrant to arrest Chief Justice Roger B.Taney, as reported by Jeffry Hummel in his book, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (1996), and mine, When in the Course of Human Events (2000), has come under attack as a fabrication, invented by Ward Hill Lamon, found in his private papers at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California.
First, it is argued, the story is too preposterous to be true, as it would have caused a “political firestorm” throughout the country, consequently, Marshal Lamon must have made up the story; and second, the only corroborative evidence has now been discovered to be an error.
The story first surfaced in our time forty years ago. I use the term “in our time” because I now suspect it was no big secret in the nineteenth century. It was alluded to in Carl Swisher's biography, Roger B. Taney (Conn. 1961), p. 553. Then in a footnote in Professor Harold M. Hyman's lengthy and scholarly book, A More Perfect Union (1973), we learn of more specifics. Commenting upon Taney's well known concern that he might be arrested after rendering his decision in Ex parte Merrryman, Professor Hyman wrote:
This apprehension on Taney's part has appeared to be the overexcited fear of a partisan. But in an unpublished memorandum, Francis Lieber noted that Lincoln contemplated Taney's arrest, and issued Ward Hill Lamon, marshal for the District of Columbia, permission to arrest him. The jurist may have heard rumors of the decision leading to his perturbation. Lieber Paper No. 2422, HL. If it was ever intended or considered, Lincoln did not allow the arrest to occur. Page 84, note 8.
The curator at the library has examined the Lieber papers, and discovered there is nothing in those papers about the warrant to arrest Taney. It is the Lamon papers, not the Lieber papers that contain the account of the warrant, and Professor Hyman got them mixed up. Consequently, there is no corroboration by Frances Lieber, who was the author of the Lieber Code that became the authoritative guide on the Laws of War for Northern armies.
The Lamon papers came to light in 1989. Frederick S. Calhoun, Chief Historian for the United States Marshal's Service at the Department of Justice, Washington D.C., undertook a project to write a 200 year history of the federal marshals, which culminated in the book, The Lawmen: United States Marshals and their Deputies, 1789-1989 (Smithsonian Institute, 1989). Mr. Calhoun examined the records of the federal marshals for the past two hundred years and this led him to the private papers of Ward Hill Lamon, federal marshal for the District of Columbia during Lincoln's administration. He discovered in those papers an account to arrest Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, in a subchapter, “Arrest of Traitors and Suspension of Habeas Corpus.” During the Civil War it was the federal marshals who most often made the arrests and turned the arrestee over to the military, bypassing the civilian justice system. Frederick Calhoun explains the facts concerning the warrant to arrest Chief Justice Taney:
Taney's opinion seriously embarrassed Lincoln and his advisers. Southern sympathizers and Northern opponents of the war praised Taney as a partisan of civil liberties standing alone against military tyranny. Taney's opinion exacerbated the delicate situation in Maryland, a border state yet undecided in its commitment to the Union. According to Marshal Lamon, “After due consider- attain the administration determined upon the arrest of the Chief Justice.” Lincoln issued a presidential arrest warrant for Taney, but “then arose the question of service. Who should make the arrest, and were should Taney be imprisoned? It was finally determined to place the order of arrest in the hands of the United States Marshal for the District of Columbia. Lamon then recalls that Lincoln gave the warrant to him, instructing Lamon to “use his own discretion about making the arrest unless he should receive further orders.”
Giving Marshal Lamon the “discretion” to make the arrest, may appear unusual, and most unlikely, hence Lamon made up the story, or so the critics claim But when Lincoln was pushed into doing something he had doubts about, in the early months of his presidency, this was not an uncommon response. For example, at about the same time, Lincoln was pushed by his military advisers to fire General Harney in Missouri. He sent a note to the Colonial selected to deliver the order of dismissal, but told him he had reservations about the dismissal.and that it should be carried out only if it appeared to him “very urgent” to do so. In fact, the colonel visited Missouri and decided the situation was satisfactory, and refrained from dismissing the general at that time, utilizing the discretion Lincoln had given him.
As outrageous as it may appear, during those chaotic first months of the Civil War, it would not be so unthinkable to arrest Taney. The military arrested people in all ranks and manufactured laws to deal with the situation – primarily because there were no laws in force that the Lincoln administration could use to deal with secession. Former President Franklin Pierce was also a target for arrest, in what historians have called the “near-arrest of President Pierce.” Someone sent an anomalous letter to the government, without naming Pierce, but suggesting “President P – – – – – – -” was a member of a secret society for the downfall of the country. A letter was sent to Pierce from the Secretary of State asking for an explanation. Pierce, a resident of New Hampshire, replied with a letter to Secretary Seward expressing his outrage for even considering such slander. Congress looked into this and requested all papers on the matter; Seward's letter to Pierce was most embarrassing and was not sent to the Senate until a second demand was made. Seward's initial excuse to the Senate was that some clerk handled the matter, except as it tuned out, he signed the letter to Pierce omitted to the Senate. Seward and Pierce never had a friendly relation going back many years. Pierce had been a bitter opponent of the fanatical Abolitionists (as was Lincoln and Daniel Webster and others who opposed slavery), believing, as Daniel Webster maintained, the fanatics did emancipation more harm than good. And Seward was in their camp.
Another arrest of interest is that of Charles Faulkner, ambassador to France appointed by President Buchanan. He was recalled by Seward, and upon his return home he went to pay his respects to the Secretary of State as would be protocol for all ambassadors. Not a good idea at this time. He was arrested and thrown into prison as a “hostage,” so he was told. Later he was told he was now a prisoner of war, as he was from Virginia, which had recently seceded from the Union. It wasn't until there was a prisoner exchange six months later that he was released and sent back to his home state. Other ambassadors from Southern states suffered the same fate. Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William Henry Seward (Gloucester, 1967), vol. 2, pp. 271-75.
Newspapers were shut down by the hundreds. When it was discovered that people were outraged at having their newspapers shut down, the government found it just as effective to toss the editor in jail, and get a new pro-Union editorial staff and keep the newspaper on the street – much less public outcry. The war against the newspapers was so disgusting, that newspaper boys selling on the street corners were arrested if the papers contained materials the government didn't like. The worst offense was the arrest of a crippled newspaper boy in Connecticut, with a badly deformed spine. Charles W. Smith in his biography, Roger B. Taney, Jacksonian Jurist (N.Y. 1973), gives this account of the scope of the military arrests of civilians:
Without the sanction of law the federal government arrested men by the thousands and confined them in military prisons. The number of such executive arrests was certainly over 13,000, and it has been estimated to have been as high as 38,000 [Columbia Law Review, XXI: 527-28, 1921]. This policy was bitterly criticized in some quarters, but it is generally assumed that the people as a whole supported the arrest policy.
Not only did the people support the policy, but the Congress as we shall see was the most supportive of all. With this public support for a wartime military tyranny, the arrest of Justice Taney would have been easily tolerated. His decision in Ex parte Merryman, if followed by the government would have given comfort to the enemy by letting an accused traitor go free. His decision in Dred Scott in 1857, had aroused angry political protest, with Seward calling Taney from the Senate floor, a criminal conspirator with Southern slavers, which Taney never forgot and created hot blood between them. Taney's Merryman decision was also condemned, “steeped in the crown of treason,” wrote one editor. The New York Times wrote that he used “the powers of his office to serve the cause of traitors ” Northern editors for weeks after the decision enflamed their readers with hate for Justice Taney. Arresting and silencing the old Justice would not have caused any firestorm any more than the internment of over one hundred thousand American citizens of Japanese ancestry in wartime 1942. The first causality of war is not so much the truth, but civil liberties. With the South gone and in rebellion, many Republican newspapers would have praised the administration for his courageousness in silencing the old justice whose judicial rulings aided the traitorous South.
The Merryman decision loomed as a serious obstacle to the government's policy of stamping out secessionists and secessionist sympathizers. Taney's opinion, if respected
by the administration at that time, may have been a greater danger to the war effort than Confederate armies. If Lincoln had obeyed the Court's order, thousands of those arrested would have been freed. Lincoln, the Congress and most Northerners, during the war, accepted the Machiavellian doctrine that the end justifies the means, when the end was to preserve national unity and was to be achieved regardless of the Constitution and the rulings of the Court. Lincoln expressed that policy to a Chicago clergyman:
…as commander in chief of the army and navy, in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy.
“To Bring in the Body”
The right to habeas corpus (literally meaning “to bring in the body”) has been said to be our most important civil liberty, the “ark of the covenant in the Anglo-American conception of freedom.” For without this right, people can be detained forever, and left to rot in prison as happens today in many countries. The writ works like this, as in John Merryman's case, Merryman was arrested in the middle of the night in his home and taken to the military prison at Fort McHenry. He immediately got in touch with his lawyer who filed a petition in the federal court in Maryland for a writ of habeas corpus. This was the circuit for Chief Justice Roger Taney, who issued the writ, ordering General Cadwallader to bring in John Merryman to the Court to legally justify the imprisonment. The writ was given to deputy federal Marshal Vance, who went to the Fort and served it on General Cadwallader. The general did not comply with the Court's order, i.e. bring in Merryman to the Court. Instead, he sent one of his junior officers, an aide-de-camp who arrived at the Court resplendent with red sash and sword. He advised the Court that the writ would be ignored by order of the President of the United States, who had John Merryman arrested for treason and suspended his right to habeas corpus.
Justice Taney then issued a writ of attachment, essentially an arrest warrant for Marshal Washington Bonifant to go to the Fort and bring in the General with John Merryman to answer a charge of contempt for refusing to obey the writ. When the marshal went to the Fort he was barred from entering. He returned to the Court to advise the Chief Justice. Now the story really gets interesting. For when an enforcing officer of a court, like federal Marshal Bonifant, is barred from enforcing a court order, he then organizes a posse of deputies to enforce the court order with force of arms if necessary.
In our time, the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of the high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, which was resisted by the governor and local law enforcement. The federal marshals did what Marshal Bonifant should have tried to do. In Little Rock, the federal marshals brought in a posse in the form of the national guard to enforce the court order for desegregation. In the Merryman case, it may have taken hundreds of armed deputies to arrest General Cadwallader, and bring him and Merryman to the Court. Cadwallader could have been fined or even jailed for refusing to obey the court order, even if the Court would have ruled in Lincoln's favor. Would the soldiers have fired on the marshals enforcing a court order to bring in the general and Merryman? I think not. Taney would have been in the right, because the General should have obeyed the writ and showed up with Merryman, and to plead his case, he should have brought along the Attorney General. That would have been what the law demands. Even if Taney would have ruled against the General and Lincoln, the Lincoln administration could have appealed the matter to the full Supreme Court for review. In the meantime, Lincoln could have, indeed should have, called Congress into session as required by the Constitution (Article ll, Section 3) and they could have suspended the right of habeas corpus, just as Taney maintained in his opinion. If handled wisely, it was a win-win situation for Lincoln. By failing to follow the law, and common sense no less, it was at this moment that Lincoln's government ceased to be a government of law and became a government of executive power.
On the other side, Instead of trying to make a serious effort to enforce the Court order – to appeal to the bench and bar – to appeal to public opinion – to appeal to the Congress – Taney chose to discharge the federal marshal without any further effort, and then write his opinion in Ex parte Merryman, and send a copy to the President. That was, as it turned out, a mistake in judgment from a master of the law, but an ignoramus about public opinion as was so evident in his decision in Dred Scott. He should have insisted on the enforcement of the court order, and he should have made every effort to do so Being in the right on that point of procedure, if handled astutely, most likely it would have been the Lincoln administration that would have blinked. They were in the wrong on this point of procedure and knew it, and yet, they had the ultimate control of the situation and didn't have to thumb their nose at the Supreme Court, something never done before or since in our 200+ years. But, that is speculating on what “might have been.” In a sense, this was just one more example of the “blundering generation” that got America into a Civil War. Both Taney and Lincoln blundered.
Taney's opinion, which has been praised by legal scholars, concluded that only the Congress could suspend the right of habeas corpus, citing English laws, American Supreme Court opinions, the Constitution, and then telling the President to obey the commands of the Constitution:
”…if the authority which the Constitution has confided in the judiciary department and judicial officers may thus upon any pretext or under any circumstances be usurped by the military power at its discretion, the people of the United States are no longer living under a government of laws, but every citizen holds life, liberty and property at the will and pleasure of the army officer in whose military district he may happen to be found.”
Not only did the Lincoln administration ignore the Supreme Court, so did the Congress which met in early July, 1861. Taney ruled that only the Congress can take away the right of habeas corpus. But Congress didn't do as Taney ruled. For almost two years, Congress discussed, debated, and drafted legislation but never passed anything until March, 1863. It seemed to be the consensus of the Congress that the President could suspend the right on his own, so why act? The prolonged delay in having Congress suspend habeas corpus may have been for other reasons, however. Congress found itself in a dilemma over Taney's opinion, although in the debates, Taney's ruling was never discussed so far as I could discover. The problem was the likelihood of civil liability for the executive in making illegal arrests, should courts in actions for damages rule with Taney. And since there were thousands upon thousands of illegal arrests, the consequences could have been a financial disaster. Seward did come up with a temporary solution. In one case, a law suit was filed against a general for damages for false imprisonment, Seward solved that by having the lawyers arrested and imprisoned – the whole firm. Other lawyers got the message. There was also the matter of criminal liability as well. If Congress suspended the right of habeas corpus, would they not be admitting Taney was right? To solve this in January, 1863, they passed a statute exonerating and indemnifying executive officers and the military for false and unlawful arrests, which paved the way for a congressional suspension of the writ in March, 1863. While this law provided some judicial review of arrests, it was ignored by the military just as Taney's Merryman decision was ignored.
It was in the foregoing frame of reference that the plan was hatched to arrest Taney and thereby silence him. Even when Lincoln was ignoring the ruling of the Supreme Court, Taney did not sit by and do nothing. He sent copies of his opinion to other judges urging them to issue writs of habeas corpus, and many did, even state courts and state supreme courts (Wisconsin) issued and enforced writs of habeas corpus against arbitrary military arrests, but this was a hit and miss situation. In his circuit in Maryland, Taney delayed a number of treason trials, as was his right in controlling the docket, because with the passion of the times, he doubted a fair trial could be had. No doubt this obstruction by Taney of criminal prosecutions found its way to the President. But there were some notable supporters, even ex-President Pierce sent a letter congratulating him on his courageous stance to defend the right to habeas corpus. His opinion was bad enough for the administration, but his continued effort to get the word out, so to speak, must have enraged the government as its rule by executive power was challenged, and as the abuses continued, voices against military arrests of civilians increased, as many highly respected individuals began to speak out in private against the government's trampling on the Constitution, which it claimed to be protecting and enforcing. This growing wave of outrage against the administration's abuse of power, culminated after the war in 1866 in the case of Ex parte Milligan, which confirmed in every respect Taney's Ex parte Merryman decision, and even went further ruling that as long as civilian courts were open, military arrests and courts were unlawful. But in 1861, the one voice, most damaging to the rule of military power over civilians, was Taney. He just wouldn't shut up. We also understand that Lincoln (Seward, most likely) sent a letter to Taney after his Merryman decision, but the letter has never been found (New York Herald, June 2, 1861). We know, according to Taney's biographers, that Taney told others, “the government had considered the possibility of arresting him.” Carl Swisher, Roger B. Taney (conn. 1961), p. 553. Someway he got the word.
George W. Brown, the Mayor of Baltimore, who later became Chief Judge of the Supreme courts in that city, tells in his memoirs of a conversation with Taney in 1861, following Taney's Merryman decision:
”Mr. Brown, I am an old man, a very old man, (he had completed his eighty-fourth year), 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.” Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of War (John Hopkins University, 1887) p. 90.
The plan to arrest Taney was known by others at that time, in A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, LLD, (Boston, 1879), Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Curtis's biographer condemns the plan to arrest Taney for his Merryman decision:
If he had never done anything else that was high, heroic, and important, his noble vindication of the writ of habeas corpus and the dignity and authority of his office against the rash minister of State who, in the pride of a fancied executive power, came near to the commission of a great crime, will command the admiration and gratitude of every lover of constitutional liberty so long as our institutions endure. vol. l, p. 240.
Commenting on this, George W. Brown in 1887 wrote: “The crime referred to was the intended imprisonment of the Chief Justice. Although this crime was not committed, a criminal precedent had been set and was ruthlessly followed.” He then cites the oft quoted remark by Secretary Seward to Lord Lyons (British ambassador to the United States), boasting of his power to imprison just about anyone, which will be set out below as “The Little Bell.” Both Brown and Curtis point to Seward as the real party behind the planned arrest.
Benjamin R. Curtis was one of the most respected jurist and lawyers of the period, and as a lawyer he argued over three dozen cases before the Supreme Court and represented President Johnson in his impeachment trial in the Senate. His most notable work on civil liberties was a pamphlet, Executive Power published in 1863. It challenged the administration's habeas corpus proclamation and other decrees of the executive. It was probably the most powerful and damning treatise against the military tyranny of the Lincoln administration. It were written by anyone but Justice Curtis, like a newspaper editor, the author would probably have been arrested and imprisoned forthwith. Wrote Curtis:
“Every citizen of the United States is under the direct military command and control of the President. They declare and define new offenses, not known in any law of the United States. They subject all citizens to be imprisoned upon a military order, at the pleasure of the President, when, where, or so long as he, or whoever is acting for him, may chose. They hold the citizen for trial before a military commission…for such act or omissions as the President may think proper to decree to be offenses; and they subject him to such punishments as such military commission may be pleased to inflict.” Supreme Court Justice, Benjamin R. Curtis, Executive Power (1863), p. 15; Reprinted in Memoirs (1879), vol. 2, p. 316.
Benjamin Curtis was a devoted advocate for the North. He wrote in Executive Power, “The war in which we are now engaged is a just and necessary war. It must be prosecuted with the whole force of the government, till the military power of the South is broken.” The former Justice of the Supreme Court, was noted for his dissent in the Dred Scott case, arguing that Dred Scott was free. In 1858, in the famous debates with Douglas on the issue of slavery, Lincoln carried in his pocket a copy of the dissenting opinion of Justice Curtis in the Dred Scott case. He was obviously no Southern sympathizer. Yet in a letter to his wife he acknowledged that he too might be imprisoned for this pamphlet, but it was his duty to attack the military tyranny that had taken over the country, and he told her that if some morning she woke up and he was not there, she should look for him at nearby Fort Warren (Boston). He ended his letter, “Though there is no danger to me or mine, there is great and pressing danger to the country…I cannot help to subdue the enemy abroad, – I ought to do what I can to subdue the enemy at home.” Boston, October 6, 1862. Memoirs, vol. 1 p. 251.
By 1863, with so many newspapers shut down and editors in prison, there were only feeble outcries against the military tyranny that spread throughout the country, Military arrests were now under the War Department and the local generals. Secretary of War Stanton was now in charge, and he no doubt was aware of Curtis's Executive Power. After the war at a party in Washington, Stanton came up to offer his hand to Curtis, with this interesting comment: “Judge, now that I have ceased imprisoning my fellow-citizens without due process of law, will you shake hands with me?” They had apparently been good friends before the war, and while Curtis shook hands with Stanton, he never again renewed their friendship. Memoirs, vol. I, p. 366 note 1.
Curtis's great respect in Washington and his words in Executive Power had a lasting and powerful influence in the years to come He was at first very reluctant to publish, but many having read a draft of his pamphlet, urged him to do so, and realizing there was some danger of being imprisoned, he did what he said was his duty to speak out. Here was one of the nation's most respected jurists and thinkers in the North, by all ranks, and the administration had to eat crow and tolerate his powerful condemnation of the use of military power against civilians. As noted when the war ended the Supreme Court repudiated everything Seward and Stanton had done. One can't help but suspect the nations best thinkers and leaders who had tolerated Seward's military tyranny had had a enough, and Curtis's Executive Power, well known by all, may have been the moving force that caused the Supreme Court in 1866, to obliterate the tyranny tolerated by the bench and bar in the North in wartime. There was indeed a “New Birth of Freedom” for the Bill of Rights and Constitutional government as well as for the slave.
“Mr. Seward's Little Bell”
If we try to do our best to get to the bottom of the account by Ward Hill Lamon of the warrant to arrest Chief Justice Roger B.Taney, all the evidence points to William Seward as the moving force for the planned arrest; indeed, as the person behind the suspension of the right of habeas corpus by executive decree. Lincoln opposed the whole idea until Seward went to Lincoln and persuaded him to change his mind with the commitment on Seward's part to be the henchman to do the dirty work, and he was. In fact, there were 5 proclamations suspending the right of habeas corpus from April 27, 1861 to July 5, 1864, and all of them were signed, not by Lincoln, not by Stanton, but by Secretary Seward. After the first year of the war, the military arrests were turned over to the War Department under Secretary Stanton, yet Seward signed the proclamations. Why not Stanton at this time, and why not Lincoln at all times? Seward appears to have been drunk with his newly acquired powers. Lord Lyons, the British Minister in Washington, records his boasting with the account known as “The Little Bell”:
I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the imprisonment of a citizen of Ohio; I can touch a bell again and order the arrest of a citizen of New York; and no power on earth, except the President, can release them. Can the Queen of England do so much?
One scholar focusing in the executive arrests, noted that Lincoln's hand “can be seen only dimly in the policy of repression” during the Civil War (Deane Sprague, Freedom Under Lincoln, Boston, 1965, pp. l57-59). Always it was Seward and later Stanton and the War Department, and of course, the generals who gloated in and carried out the arrests. Mary Chestnut, whose husband served in the Senate with Seward, wrote in her diaries, that in the North, “Seward's little bell reigns supreme.” C. Vann Woodward, Mary Chestnut's Civil War (Yale, 1981) p. 176.
Ward Hill Lamon claims that the “administration” planned the arrest of the Chief Justice. And in the account by Justice Curtis, he refers to the culprit as “a rash minister of state who, in the pride of fancied executive power” was about to commit a “great crime” in arresting Chief Justice Taney. The clues to the culprit are evident, and Lincoln would hardly have qualified. What makes this so much Seward's doing, is that in the early weeks of Lincoln's administration, Seward fancied himself as a “prime minister” who would really run the country with the inexperienced bumpkin from Illinois as a titular head of state – but without the smarts to lead the country in these perilous times. Lincoln eventually made it clear who was boss, but that appears to be a matter of form most of the time. Seward was with Lincoln almost every day, and was involved in almost every decision. He attended almost every cabinet meeting and on those few occasions when he could not, he sent his son along, much to the disapproval of the other cabinet members. He never gave up the appearance of being prime minister. The other cabinet members were well aware of his reigns of power, referring to him derogatorily as the “premier.” Document after document that required the President's name was signed by Seward, just like in Britain, the Crown executes documents, signed, not by the Queen, but the prime minister. Ten years before, the main objection to Winfield Scott as the presidential candidate of the Whig Party is that Scott would have been Seward's pawn in running the country, and he was not very well liked. Lincoln faced the same problem, only this time Seward played his cards better and stayed away from appearing to be to much of the nation's prime minister. Although he did have the nasty habit of signing documents under Lincoln's name, prime minister style. It became obvious who was the power behind the throne.
Seward and the Chief Justice were bitter enemies, so much so that Taney remarked that if Seward had been elected President, he would have refused to administer the presidential oath of office to Seward. Wouldn't that have been interesting? With Seward throwing just about everyone in jail he didn't like, even his ambassadors, Taney would have been his greatest triumph, the man he called the chief criminal conspirator with slave owners in Dred Scott. And this was Lincoln's so called “right hand man.”
The account by Lamon of the warrant to arrest Taney, would suggest some doubt in Lincoln's mind. According the Lamon, it was the “administration” that had decided to arrest Taney, and at that time the administration would have been Seward. But the arrest was not made, probably as Professor Hyman suggests, “Lincoln did not allow the arrest to occur.” And Lincoln wisely omitted this in his private papers as all presidents have done over the years. This was just another instance in which Seward had gone too far. Remember Lincoln had only been on the job for a few weeks and had just asserted himself against Seward in his famous “Thoughts for the President's consideration.” An outrageous suggestion telling Lincoln to call Congress and declare war against three major European powers. Lincoln refused, of course, but Seward was a clever manipulator. One of his biographers refers to him as a “devious person” and when he was rejected by this affront in his “Thoughts” thereafter he used a more subtle approach of persuasion on a personal, private level, meeting with the president almost every day. And he never gave up running the government, as his most recent biographer notes in the subtitle to his book, Seward is Lincoln's “Right Hand.” John M. Taylor, William Henry Seward: Lincoln's Right Hand (New York, 1991)
Lamon's role in the Taney's warrant was that of an executive officer, as federal marshals most often made the military arrests. He was known as “the intimate of the President.” They were law partners in Illinois, and when Lincoln prepared to go to Washington after the election, he said to Lamon, “Hill, on the 11th I go to Washington, and I want you to go along with me…In fact, I must have you. So get yourself ready and come along.” In those early weeks, Lamon was the one person Lincoln could confide in – the one and only confidant he had at that time. He sent him to South Carolina to discuss the Fort Sumter situation with the Governor and to see if there were any significant number of Unionists in the State. This was certainly the most critical mission of the time as war was brewing. Lamon discovered there weren't any Unionists, and he returned to Washington to advise Lincoln on what he had learned. But in a short time, Seward replaced Lamon as Lincoln's confidant on matters of state.
Ward Hill Lamon had a reputation as a two-fisted drinker and teller of off colored jokes, which Lincoln enjoyed. But that does not make a case that he made up the account to arrest the Chief Justice. Indeed, Richard Yates, the Governor of Illinois introduced him to the governor of New Jersey in February, 1861, “He is one of our ablest young lawyers, a man of strong and vigorous intellect…His integrity is unquestioned.” Lamon's account of the warrant to arrest the Chief Justice stands, but the culprit is not Lincoln.
The conversation Lamon records with Lincoln on the arrest warrant, indicates a reluctance on Lincoln's part to make the arrest, and add to that “Seward's bell reigns supreme.” What greater show of “the little bell,” than to arrest the chief magistrate of the nation, whom Seward hated. And then there is Justice Curtis's remarks pointing to Seward – “the rash minister of state” – would certainly not be Lincoln. A “rash” minister could only be the author of the “little bell,” and the author of the plan to arrest Taney. And, who else could possibly be a “minister of state,” except the Secretary of State? This was Seward's real folly, not the purchase of Alaska.
