Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [229]
The little party made its way to Philadelphia and then caught a steamer from Perryville to Annapolis, bypassing the blocked railroad tracks in Baltimore. En route, however, they were approached by an enemy vessel, which fired a warning shot. Fearing that the Confederates had intelligence that Anderson was on board and were intending to capture him, the captain placed a cannon in position and “crowded on steam.” While Kate and Nettie remained below with the hatches closed, the steamer churned ahead, eventually gaining enough ground that its adversary “ran up a black flag, changed her course, and was soon out of sight.” From Annapolis, they reached Washington and were reunited with their relieved father.
These “were terrible days of suspense” for the Seward family in Auburn as well. Young Will Seward, now twenty-two, made nightly forays to the local telegraph office, hoping in vain for news from his father. In daily letters, Frances entreated her husband to let her join him. “It is hard to be so far from you when your life is in danger,” she pleaded. No reply came to her appeal.
In public, Lincoln maintained his calm, but the growing desperation of the government’s position filled him with dread. Late one night, after “a day of gloom and doubt,” John Hay saw him staring out the window in futile expectation of the troops promised by various Northern states, including New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. “Why don’t they come!” he asked. “Why don’t they come!” The next day, visiting the injured men of the Massachusetts Sixth, he was heard to say: “I don’t believe there is any North. The Seventh Regiment [from New York] is a myth. R. Island is not known in our geography any longer. You [Massachusetts men] are the only Northern realities.”
For days, the rioting in Baltimore continued. Fears multiplied that the Maryland legislature, which had convened in Annapolis, was intending to vote for secession. The cabinet debated whether the president should bring in the army “to arrest, or disperse the members of that body.” Lincoln decided that “it would not be justifiable.” It was a wise determination, for in the end, though secessionist mobs continued to disrupt the peace of Maryland for weeks, the state never joined the Confederacy, and eventually became, as Lincoln predicted, “the first of the redeemed.”
Receiving word that the mobs intended to destroy the train tracks between Annapolis and Philadelphia in order to prevent the long-awaited troops from reaching the beleaguered capital, Lincoln made a controversial decision. If resistance along the military line between Washington and Philadelphia made it “necessary to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus for the public safety,” Lincoln authorized General Scott to do so. In Lincoln’s words, General Scott could “arrest, and detain, without resort to the ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to the public safety.” Seward later claimed that he had urged a wavering Lincoln to take this step, convincing him that “perdition was the sure penalty of further hesitation.” There may be truth in this, for Seward was initially put in charge of administering the program.
Lincoln had not issued a sweeping order but a directive confined to this single route. Still, by rescinding the basic constitutional protection against arbitrary arrest, he aroused the wrath of Chief Justice Taney, who was on circuit duty in Maryland at the time. Ruling in favor of one of the prisoners, John Merryman, Taney blasted Lincoln and maintained that only Congress could suspend the writ.
Attorney General Bates, though reluctant to oppose Taney, upheld Lincoln’s suspension. Over a period of weeks, he drafted a twenty-six-page opinion, arguing that