According to the U. S. Constitution, when any citizen is imprisoned, a court must issue a writ of habeas corpus, which requires the government to produce the suspect in open court and to charge him or her with a specific crime. The Confederate Constitution had a similar clause. Intended to prevent arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment, habeas corpus was suspended by both the Confederacy and the Union during the CiviL War.
In the Confederate States of America, the suspension of habeas corpus was short lived and usually ineffective. Jefferson Davis, motivated partly by his personal commitment to having a weak central government, refused to suspend habeas corpus without congressional approval. Violence by Union sympathizers and a general perception that opposition to the Confederate cause required repression led the Confederate Congress, in early spring 1862, to give Davis that power. Moving quickly, Davis enacted martial law, including the right to hold suspects indefinitely without charge in Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Richmond. In those cities, the suspension of habeas corpus was intended to legitimize the existing practice of imprisoning Union sympathizers in the “Castle Thunder” Prison at Richmond and to free Confederate military governors to destroy local dissent.
Because the Confederate Congress had only provided Davis with suspension power for a limited period, the president lobbied repeatedly for votes to renew his authority. In addition to Unionist sentiment, the Confederate government pointed to local opposition as a reason why suspension was necessary. In several states, especially North Carolina and Georgia, governors and local judges opposed the use of various federal powers, including conscription. Using writs of habeas corpus, judges freed local men from the control of military recruiters and military courts. In effect, habeas corpus served as a way for state judicial authority to override military power. Although the Confederate Congress enacted legislation, in February 1864, intended to prevent local judges from interfering with military tribunals or martial law, it was never able to assert federal control completely.
Ultimately, the suspension of habeas corpus in the Confederacy had little beneficial effect. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, Davis was unwilling to act zealously in this regard. He was caught—as he was in policies on banking and currency and conscription—between what was expedient and what served the philosophical purpose of secession. If the purpose of the Confederacy was to protect the right of states to avoid domination by a central government, then Davis could hardly use federal power to impose a national view on municipalities and local judiciaries. Instead, the suspension of habeas corpus was used sparingly and rarely made a positive difference for the Confederate cause.
In the Union, by contrast, habeas corpus was suspended for much of the war, and thousands of people were imprisoned. Before the Civil War, only once had a president suspended habeas corpus. Even then, the suspension had been short lived. President Lincoln, however, sought to use his executive power in a much more expansive and pragmatic way. Arguing that no single law was worth the failure of the Union, Lincoln believed that suspending habeas corpus allowed him to achieve several goals.
The first goal, and the reason for which the writ was suspended initially, was keeping Maryland in the Union. Faced with the possibility that Maryland would secede, which would cut Washington, D. C., off from the rest of the North, Lincoln allowed Winfield Scott to arrest Confederate sympathizers at every level of Maryland society, including Baltimore’s chief of police and mayor. One of those arrested was John Merryman, who sued for release based on his constitutional right to be charged or released. Although the Supreme Court agreed that he should be freed (in Ex Parte Merryman), Merryman remained in prison.
Throughout the war, the issue of whether the executive branch was empowered to suspend habeas corpus or whether it required the approval of another branch remained unclear. The Constitution says that the writ can be suspended, but not by whom, in what circumstances, or how. While lawyers, congressmen, and citizens debated executive authority, at least 13,535 Americans were arrested. Finally, in March 1863, Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Indemnity Act, which gave Lincoln the power to suspend the writ. By assenting to the power of the president, however, Congress effectively moved to assert its own power to approve any executive use of suspension. In addition, Congress insisted that all those arrested must be identified in regular lists of prisoners within 20 days of their arrest.
While the Confederacy had used the suspension of habeas corpus to prevent espionage and to assert its right to conscription, the Union’s suspension of habeas corpus served mostly to suppress political dissent. Although some Confederate collaborators and spies were arrested, the majority of those detained were Democrats and other opponents of Lincoln administration policies. Democratic candidates for office were quick to label Lincoln a tyrant, and in some cases their rhetoric hurt Republicans, including the president, at the ballot box. For his part, Lincoln perceived the value of a unified HOMEERONT, and he was willing to silence some dissenting voices to achieve that unity, at least on the surface.
See also states’ rights.
Further reading: Mark E. Neely, The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
—Fiona Galvin
Halleck, Henry Wager (1815-1872) Union general A renowned military theoretician, Henry W. Halleck served the Union as field general, general in chief, and army chief of staff. While he failed to provide innovative and decisive leadership in battlefield strategy, Halleck excelled at organizing the army. Born on January 16, 1815, in New York, Halleck became discontented with farm life and left home to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated third in the class of 1839.
After a six-month tour of European military establishments, Halleck published Elements of Military Art and Science in 1846, a text that incorporated Antoine-HENRI, BARON DE Jomini’s approach to war. Halleck’s work spread Jomini’s theories beyond the professional military when it was read by President Abraham Lincoln and volunteer officers during the Civil War.
During the Mexican-American War (1846-48), Halleck was assigned to California. He resigned from the army in
1854 to focus on his law practice and land and mining interests. By 1861, Halleck had amassed a fortune of $500,000. But in August 1861, Halleck left his successful private pursuits and returned to the army. He replaced Gen. John Fremont in the Department of the Missouri, where he quickly instilled order to the disorganized and corrupt command. His curt manner facilitated rapid reform but did not foster positive personal relationships, traits that continued to shape Halleck’s reputation during the Civil War. Halleck proved to be a tentative commander, reluctant to authorize advances until all risks could be minimized. Yet when General Ulysses S. Grant’s forces captured Forts Henry and Donelson in early 1862, Halleck eagerly claimed credit for the victories of his subordinate, who had operated beyond Halleck’s orders.
Lincoln brought Halleck to Washington, D. C., as general in chief of the army in July 1862 in the hope that Halleck’s theoretical expertise would provide much needed coordination to the Union war effort. Halleck relayed Lincoln’s desires for more aggressive efforts against Confederate troops, but his lack of innovative battlefield strategies and his deference to the field generals disappointed Lincoln. Halleck convinced Lincoln that Grant’s forces in the western theater should continue to follow Jomini’s principle of seizing strategic property, but by 1863 he was willing to compromise Jomini’s genteel method of war and concentrate on destroying Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Lincoln utilized Halleck as an intermediary to avoid conflicts with field generals, to deflect criticism when popular officers were dismissed, and to avoid responsibility when victory eluded Union troops. Much criticism was directed at Halleck by the press, politicians, dissatisfied officers, and the general public, even when disappointing results were due to the failure to follow Halleck’s orders.
Ultimately, Grant’s successes led to his promotion to general in chief of the army on March 9, 1864. Halleck became chief of staff and continued his duties: forwarding orders from Lincoln and Grant; overseeing the administrative aspects of the army; and bearing the brunt of criticism from soldiers, politicians, and the public.
Halleck’s successes were less publicized. He instilled order, efficiency, and discipline in a largely volunteer army. Halleck organized the mobilization of troops; the transportation of men and material; and the acquisition and distribution of food, clothing, and ammunition. He centralized the administration of an army that had been formed largely through state-sponsored units, and he professionalized the army by working for the replacement of political generals with West Point graduates.
After Lincoln’s death, Halleck was stripped of his chief of staff title and ordered out of Washington. Assigned first to Richmond, then to San Francisco, and finally to Louisville, Kentucky, Halleck remained with the army until his death on January 9, 1872. He was vilified in the memoirs of Union generals, with few people defending his contributions. While Halleck was not a great military strategist, his administrative efforts made many Union victories possible and created the first national army in the United States.
Further reading: Stephen E. Ambrose, Halleck: Lincoln’s Chief of Staff (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1962); Henry W. Halleck, Elements of Military Art and Science (1864; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1971); John F. Marszalek, Commander of All Lincoln’s Armies: A Life of Henry W Halleck (Cambridge, Mass. 2004).
—Martha Kadue
Hancock, Winfield Scott (1824-1886) Union general, politician
Union general and Democratic politician, Winfield Scott Hancock was born on February 14, 1824, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth and Benjamin Franklin Hancock. Hancock used his family’s Democratic Party connections to secure an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1844 in the bottom third of his class. Breveted a second lieutenant, Hancock served effectively as an infantry recruiter on the western frontier. He first experienced combat in 1847 during the Mexican-American War. Hancock commanded a company at Chapultepec and discovered that he enjoyed battle. Breveted first lieutenant, the gregarious Hancock became friends with his fellow officers, including Virginian Lewis A. Armistead. Returning to garrison duty in St. Louis, Hancock married Almira Russell, a supportive wife who saw him through the disappointments of peacetime army service. In 1861 Hancock, a captain of infantry, was stationed in Los Angeles as chief quartermaster for the southern district of California.
A Democrat and Southern sympathizer, Hancock favored states’ rights, but he never considered taking up arms against the Union. After hosting a bittersweet farewell dinner for friends who had decided to fight for the Confederacy, Hancock traveled east to seek an infantry command. Fellow Democrat Gen. George B. McClellan gave Hancock the Third Brigade, Smith’s division, army of the Potomac, which in 1862 was assigned to the Second Division, Fourth Corps. In May, the new brigadier general skillfully led his men at the Battle of Williamsburg, earning the nickname “Hancock the Superb.” In September, he assumed command of the First Division, II Corps, when its senior officer was mortally wounded at the Battle OF Antietam.
Breveted to major general, Hancock was a stickler for military procedure whose men admired his geniality and dashing appearance. In December 1862, he demonstrated
Union general Winfield S. Hancock (Library of Congress)
His outstanding leadership abilities and conspicuous personal bravery during the futile Union assault on Marye’s Heights at the Battle of Fredericksburg. In May 1863, he valiantly held his division in an exposed position while the rest of the Union army retreated from the Battle of Chancellorsville. Hancock succeeded to the command of II Corps in June, just before the Army of the Potomac, under Gen. George Gordon Meade, marched north in pursuit of the Army of Northern Virginia and Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Word arrived at Meade’s Maryland headquarters on July 1 that the Confederates had been engaged near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and that Union First Corps commander, Gen. John F. Reynolds, had been killed. Meade, ignoring military protocol, sent Hancock ahead to take command on the field while the rest of the army came up. Hancock’s main contribution that day was to restore order to the Union forces and place the troops in defensive positions along Cemetery Ridge and Culp’s Hill. His steadiness under fire was evident the next day, when he commanded his own Second Corps at the center of the Union line and shored up the exposed Third Corps to his left. On July 3
Hancock was again in the thick of the action, commanding the Union defense during Pickett’s Charge, an assault in which his friend, Confederate general Lewis Armistead, was mortally wounded. Hancock, also wounded, refused to leave the field until victory was assured.
Despite nursing a painful, unhealed thigh wound, Hancock returned to the Second Corps in March 1864. He fought well in the WILDERNESS campaign and the Battles of Spotsylvania, but his corps suffered heavy losses at the Battle of Cold Harbor during frontal attacks on entrenched Confederate positions. Hancock uncharacteristically declined to assume field command at Petersburg on June 15, missing a potential opportunity to overrun the then lightly defended city. Hancock gave up his Second Corps command in November 1864, and after attempting unsuccessfully to recruit volunteers for a new veteran corps, he finished the war as commander of the Department of West Virginia and the Middle Military Division.
In 1866 Congress awarded Hancock the postwar rank of major general. He returned to the regular army, serving stints as commander of the Military Department of the Missouri and the Fifth Military District. Stationed in New Orleans, Hancock, an opponent of Radical Reconstruction, issued orders designed to keep free African Americans off juries and voter-registration lists. Gen. ULYSSES S. Grant recalled Hancock to Washington, D. C., and briefly appointed him commander of the Division of the Atlantic. After Grant became president in 1869, Hancock was assigned to the remote Department of Dakota. Meade’s death in 1872 entitled Hancock, as the army’s senior major general, to reclaim command of the Division of the Atlantic. From division headquarters in New York City, Hancock pursued his long-standing political ambitions. In 1880 Hancock won the Democratic presidential nomination but lost the general election to Republican James A. Garfield. During the campaign, Grant condemned Hancock’s postwar administration of the Fifth District, so it was ironic that Hancock’s last public duty was to plan and direct Grant’s 1885 funeral. Hancock died in New York on February 9, 1886.
See also Gettysburg, Battle of; Petersburg campaign.
Further reading: David M. Jordan, Winfield Scott Hancock: A Soldier’s Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); Glenn Tucker, Hancock the Superb (Dayton, Ohio: Press of Morningside Bookstore, 1980).
—Amy J. Kinsel
Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins (1825-1911) author, lecturer, reformer, abolitionist
An advocate of African-American civil rights, education, temperance, abolition, and civic morality, poet and author Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was also a prominent leader of the women’s club movement of the late 19th century. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1825, Frances Watkins was the only child of free African-American parents. At three years of age, she was orphaned and adopted into the family of her uncle, Rev. William Watkins. Frances attended her uncle’s school, where she received significantly more intellectual training than was common for African-American children at the time. At 14 years of age, Watkins began an informal apprenticeship in sewing with a Baltimore man named Armstrong. Sewing provided an income for Watkins, who taught the craft at the Union Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, and in Little York, Pennsylvania. By the time she began teaching in the late 1840s, she had also achieved her first major success as an author, publishing a collection of poetry, Forest Leaves (1845).
Although sewing provided an adequate income, teaching became unnecessary once Watkins began to speak publicly about her strong antislavery sentiments. Her first public comment was a lecture in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1854. Watkins’s passionate speeches quickly made her popular on the speaking circuit. She also became one of the most widely read African-American poets in America. She would continue to be a prolific and popular writer for the next half century, publishing a number of volumes of poetry as well as novels, most famously Iola Leroy (1892).
On November 22, 1860, Frances Watkins married Fenton Harper, and the couple began farming a property in Columbus, Ohio. Following his death in May 1864, Frances Harper resumed lecturing, focusing in particular on the effects of the CiViL War on African-Americans. While lecturing, Harper stressed the importance of education, moderation in alcohol consumption, and morality within the African-American community.
In 1871 Harper and her daughter Mary moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There, Harper continued to lecture, concentrating largely on two subjects: moral issues among African Americans and temperance. Joining the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Harper spearheaded work among African Americans. In addition, she established Sunday schools for African-American children in Philadelphia. In 1894, at age 69, she became the director of the American Association of Education of Colored Youth. She was also a member, and later vice president, of the National Association of Colored Women. Like many of the most prominent reformist women of her time, advancing age did not deter Harper from participating in civic causes. She continued to fight for a variety of reforms until her death in 1911.
Further reading: Melba Joyce Boyd, Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911 (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1994); Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Ida Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted (1892; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
—Megan Quinn
World History
