By this time, the Confederate armies were running dangerously low on manpower. This was largely due to desertions by enlisted men and drafted men failing to report for duty. Moreover, Federal military forces had begun various campaigns that included looting, pillaging, and plundering private property in the South. This had caused widespread disorder that required attention from the Confederate government.
On February 3, President Jefferson Davis submitted a message to the Confederate Congress asking for authorization to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. This was intended to be the same type of authorization that President Abraham Lincoln had assumed (without congressional consent) to apprehend and jail citizens suspected of disloyalty without trial.
In his message, Davis noted the “discontent, disaffection, and disloyalty” pervading the Confederacy, partly due to the demoralizing effects of Federal military occupation. Northern spies were infiltrating the South and working with war-weary southerners to encourage surrender, emancipation, and reunion, and Davis alleged that such sentiments were rising among those who “have enjoyed quiet and safety at home.”
The president stated that suspending the writ was necessary to combat the rising number of Federal occupiers and Confederate dissidents, both of which tended to demoralize the people and encourage potential race wars between slaves and masters. He asked, “Who will arrest the deserter when most of those at home are engaged with him in the common cause of setting the government at defiance?”
Davis acknowledged that “it can no longer be doubted that the zeal with which the people sprang to arms at the beginning of the contest has, in some parts of the Confederacy, been impaired by the long continuance and magnitude of the struggle.” He then wrote:
“Must the independence for which we are contending, the safety of the defenseless families of the men who have fallen in battle and of those who still confront the invader, be put in peril for the sake of conformity to the technicalities of the law of treason?… Having thus presented some of the threatening evils which exist, it remains to suggest the remedy. And in my judgment that is to be found only in the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.”
Although the Lincoln administration had suspended the writ long ago and jailed thousands of anti-war dissidents without trial, this concept was still controversial for the Confederacy, which had been founded on the principle that the rights of states checked a potentially overreaching national government. As such, many members of Congress opposed Davis’s request. Conversely, supporters argued that such a measure was necessary to suppress draft opposition and other “disloyal” practices.
After nearly two weeks of acrimonious debate, Congress finally approved authorizing suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The bill limited this power to just the president and the secretary of war. It included a specific list of treasonable offenses, thus limiting executive ability to act arbitrarily as much as possible. To further appease detractors, suspension power was allowed only until August 2.
Nevertheless, fierce critics remained, including Davis’s own vice president, Alexander Stephens of Georgia. Stephens called the bill a “blow at the very ‘vitals of liberty’” and accused Davis of “aiming at absolute power.” He wrote:
“If the pending proposition before Congress passes, to put the whole country under martial law, with the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the President signs and enforces it, and the people submit to it, constitutional liberty will go down, never to rise again on this continent, I fear. This is the worst that can befall us. Far better that our country should be over-run by the enemy, our cities sacked and burned and our land laid desolate, than that the people should thus suffer the citadel of their liberties to be entered and taken by their professed friends.”
Despite opposition from Stephens and both of Georgia’s Confederate senators, the state legislature approved a resolution supporting this and all laws designed to win the war. Even so, the opposition to suspending the writ of habeas corpus remained so strong that the power was not exercised.
Passage of the law prompted William W. Holden to suspend publication of his Unionist newspaper, the Raleigh (North Carolina) Standard. Many Confederate officials had branded Holden a traitor for urging southerners to rejoin the Union, and Davis could have ordered him arrested and jailed without charges.
Holden declared that “if I could not continue to print as a free man I would not print at all.” Holden then announced that he would oppose Governor Zebulon Vance in the upcoming election, but Vance turned many of Holden’s supporters against him by accusing him of treason.
Bibliography
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- Faust, Patricia L. (Patricia L. Faust ed.), Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
- Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian. New York: Vintage Civil War Library, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Kindle Edition), 2011.
- Long, E.B. with Long, Barbara, The Civil War Day by Day. New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1971.
- McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford History of the United States Book 6, Oxford University Press (Kindle Edition), 1988.
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