Editing Ex parte Merryman (section)

==Historical context==
In the month preceding the ''Merryman'' case, Baltimore Mayor Brown,<ref>Mitchell, p.&nbsp;207</ref> the entire city council, the police commissioner, and the entire Board of Police, were arrested and imprisoned at [[Fort McHenry]] without charges, creating some controversy.<ref name="The Baltimore Sun">{{cite news |url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/2001/11/27/a-time-liberties-werent-priority/ |title=A time liberties weren't priority |first=Carl |last=Schoettler |work=The Baltimore Sun |access-date=June 5, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LHkbTYE7D8gC&q=mayor+brown+fort+mchenry&pg=PA291 |title=Maryland Voices of the Civil War |editor-first=Charles W. |editor-last=Mitchell |edition=illustrated |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |year=2007 |isbn=9780801886218 |page=291 |access-date=17 October 2020}}</ref> In September after the ''Merryman'' ruling, and in disregard of it, the Army arrested sitting Democratic U.S. Congressman for Maryland [[Henry May (Maryland)|Henry May]], and fully one third of the members of the [[Maryland General Assembly]], and expanded the geographical zone within which the writ of habeas corpus was suspended.<ref name="The Baltimore Sun"/> When prominent Baltimore newspaper editor [[Frank Key Howard]] ([[Francis Scott Key]]'s grandson) in a September editorial criticized Lincoln's failure to comply with Chief Justice Taney's ''Merryman'' opinion, Howard was himself arrested by Federal troops under orders from Lincoln's [[William Seward|Secretary of State Seward]] and held without charge or trial. Howard described these events in his 1863 book ''Fourteen Months in American Bastiles'', where he noted that he was imprisoned in [[Fort McHenry]], the same fort where the [[Star Spangled Banner]] had been waving "o'er the land of the free" in his grandfather's song.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Howard |first1=F. K. (Frank Key) |title=Fourteen Months in American Bastiles |date=1863 |publisher=H. F. Mackintosh |location=London |url=https://archive.org/details/fourteenmonthsin00inhowa |access-date=18 August 2014}}</ref> Two of the publishers selling his book were then arrested.<ref name="The Baltimore Sun"/> In all, nine newspapers were shut down in Maryland by the federal government, and a dozen newspaper owners and editors like Howard were imprisoned without charges.<ref name="The Baltimore Sun"/>

In October 1861, one of them, John Murphy, asked the United States Circuit Court for the District of Columbia to issue a writ of habeas corpus for his son, then in the United States Army, on the grounds that he was underage. When the writ was delivered to General [[Andrew Porter (Civil War general)|Andrew Porter]] Provost Marshal of the District of Columbia, he had both the lawyer delivering the writ and the United States Circuit Judge [[William Matthew Merrick]], who issued the writ, arrested to prevent them from proceeding in the case ''[[United States ex rel. Murphy v. Porter]]''. Merrick's fellow judges took up the case and ordered General Porter to appear before them, but Lincoln's Secretary of State Seward prevented the federal marshal from delivering the court order.<ref name=Burlingame>''[https://books.google.com/books?id=TR_sM4IFw48C&pg=PA28 Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay]'', p. 28 (SIU Press, Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger eds. 1999).</ref> The court objected that this disruption of its [[legal process|process]] was unconstitutional as the president had not declared [[martial law]] (while acknowledging that he had the power to do so) but noted that it was powerless to enforce its prerogatives.<ref>{{USStat|12|762}}.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/courts_circuit_dc.html|title=History of the Federal Judiciary: Circuit Court of the District of Columbia: Legislative History|publisher=[[Federal Judicial Center]]|access-date=July 12, 2011}}</ref>

In November 1861, [[Richard Bennett Carmichael]], a presiding state circuit court judge in Maryland, was imprisoned without charge for releasing, due to his concern that arrests were arbitrary and civil liberties had been violated, many of the southern sympathizers seized in his jurisdiction. The order came from Secretary of State Seward. The federal troops executing Judge Carmichael's arrest beat him unconscious in his courthouse while his court was in session before dragging him out, initiating yet another public controversy.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://teachingamericanhistorymd.net/000001/000000/000016/html/t16.html |title=Suspension of Civil Liberties in Maryland |last=Scharf |first=J. Thomas |publisher=Maryland State Archives |access-date=2008-05-16 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080519222040/http://teachingamericanhistorymd.net/000001/000000/000016/html/t16.html |archive-date=2008-05-19 }}</ref>

In early 1862, Lincoln took a step back from the suspension of ''habeas corpus'' controversy. On February&nbsp;14, he ordered most political prisoners released, with some exceptions (such as editor Howard), and offered them [[amnesty]] for past treason or disloyalty, so long as they did not aid the Confederacy.<ref name=AmnestyProc>[[s:Amnesty to Political or State Prisoners|Amnesty to Political or State Prisoners]].</ref>