Today in Supreme Court History: March 4, 1861

3/4/1861: President Abraham Lincoln's inauguration.

President Abraham Lincoln

Comments

[DaivdBehar]

This scumbag lawyer fav was the very worst President, in a class alone, an order of magnitude worse than Carter Class terrible Presidents. Bush Jr is on the list, but noone compares to Lincoln. Killed 600000 Americans by his awful lawyer judgment, like 3 million today.

[apedad]

So you're saying it's OK for an armed organization to attack United States government facilities and personnel, and remain free from reprisal?!?

GTFO....

[grb]

It's amazing how many Lost Cause losers are unaware Southerners seized federal property and fired on U.S. ships months before Lincoln assumed office. Their pretzel "logic" to make the attack on Fort Sumter Lincoln's fault is bad enough, but that other historical ignorance compounds the error.

[DaivdBehar]

Lincoln was proposed many alternatives to war. He chose war. Lawyers are tyrannical by training.

During the war, he blew up the size of government with an income tax, a draft, industrial size incarcerations, the abrogation of many fundamental rights. He sent our warriors into a meat grinder with no thought to preventing deaths on our side. The 600000 estimate is a marked underestimate of the collaterals deaths.

[DaivdBehar]

Lincoln was a penpal and good friend to Marx.

[DaivdBehar]

Lincoln issued an arrest warrant for the traitor Tainey. He took it back from the hand of the federal marshall. Taney then died a slow horrible death from cancer.

He had traitor judges pistol whipped and thrown in Union prisons. That is to his credit. I admit that.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

And to make things worse, the Buchanan administration Secretary of War, John Floyd, intentionally moved military assets into southern locations so they could be taken. He then resigned in 1860 and became a general in the Confederate Army. General Grant was well aware of this fact, and at Fort Donelson, where Floyd was the commander, Grant gave his famous unconditional surrender demand for that reason. Turned out Floyd had already fled the scene.

[GKHoffman]

Floyd is a serious contender for Worst Confederate General.

[Titus PUllo]

You always have "alternative history" or "what if's" with historians (both amateur and professional) but the one event that honestly is never brought up for this (at least I've never seen it) is if SC did not fire on Fort Sumpter. I understand from their perspective it was now a foreign fort but what if they offered to pay for it? To negotiate...to not attack it.

Lincoln had bad views on economics for sure and was a bit paranoid by locking up dissidents, but he decided the game was worth the candle. I'm sure the deaths of the war impacted him daily...it is hard to see him in a second term. I know history always seems like the result that occurs is the "obvious" one but how would the second term have turned out? Would the radical republicans who honestly created more problems been kept at bay by Lincoln? I guess in the multi-verse that occurred by not this one.

[Queen Amalthea]

The insights of an idiotic incel.

[DaivdBehar]

Hi, Queenie. What is your diverse sexual preference? I am writing a letter of recommendation for you. You are good at rhetoric.

[Queen Amalthea]

Lol, no one needs any help from your absurd aspy self.

[DaivdBehar]

Tell the class your gender identity and that on your birth certificate. There is nothing to be ashamed of. All 540 ways to love are worthy and much valued by the woke.

[DaivdBehar]

Queenie, what does aspy mean? It does not sound good.

[Queen Amalthea]

When the doctors let you near a mirror take a look and say a few things. There you go!

[DaivdBehar]

No, what does it mean? And also tell us your race. You should be proud of it.

[Queen Amalthea]

We've gone over this Patient 1693-G, look in the mirror to get the best definition of what an aspy is and my race is homo sapiens (like yours is homo ignoramous virginalis). Now take a nap until evening medication time, there's a good boy!

[Frank Drackman]

its slang for Ass-Burgers, you know, those nuts who can tell you that from 1969-71 Davey Johnson hit .280, .281. and .282, then ruined it by hitting .221 in 1972, prompting the Bird's to trade him to the Braves, where he hit 43 "Taters" in 1973, 25 more than his previous best (no Steroids, Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, AKA "the Launching Pad" (and currently a parking lot, sad)

[David Nieporent]

Behar hates Lincoln because Lincoln freed the slaves.

[DaivdBehar]

David. Slavery was known to be wrong since 1750. The entire world ended it peacefully. The Democrat lawyer made that impossible. Had we remained a colony, it would have ended in 1833, enforced by a sheriff. The lawyer idiocy, the American Revolution caused the Civil War.

Taxes had doubled to pay for military protection of the lands of these lawyers from the Indians, so the idiots started a revolution. Stupid, stingy, and catastrophic.

[DaivdBehar]

David, aren't you a lawyer? STFU. I am talking to a denier and wasting time. Your beliefs in supernatural doctrines is not crazy. It is evil.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Josh didn't make his usual mistake. Probably because 2061 hasn't happened yet.

[Syd Henderson]

Something is autofilling dates for him. As far as the event of the day, March 4 works as inauguration day for most presidents before 1936 (excluding VPs who succeeded on a president's death and Washington.) Taylor was sworn in on March 5, so we can have him tomorrow (though he didn't have a chance to appoint a Justice).

[F.D. Wolf]

Of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history Lincoln is the only real giant. Alexander, Frederick the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Gladstone and even Washington stand in greatness of character, in depth of feeling and in a certain moral power far behind Lincoln. Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud; he was a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live thousands of years in the leg­ends of future generations. We are still too near to his greatness, and so can hardly appreciate his divine power; but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us...

The greatness of Napoleon, Caesar or Washington is only moon­light by the sun of Lincoln. His example is universal and will last thousands of years. Washington was a typical American, Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country— bigger than all the Presidents together. Why? Because he loved his enemies as himself and because he was a universal individu­alist who wanted to see himself in the world— not the world in himself. He was great through his simplicity and was noble through his charity.

-Leo Tolstoy (1909)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tolstoy_on_Lincoln

[Queen Amalthea]

Very interesting, you so often add something interesting to these posts, I thank you.

[Nick Gillespie's Jacket]

If I’m not mistaken, that’s a quote from Leo Sayer, not Leo Tolstoy.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

He was a man of the road, a hobo by name.

[grb]

Foote's multi-volume monster history of the Civil War has a habit of grouping passages on Lincoln & Jefferson Davis in succession. The latter always seems so small and petty compared to Lincoln. He always seemed to realize the enormity of his moment in history.

[DaivdBehar]

Leo was Russian, no? Russians do not care nor even know about the dignity of life nor about the value of freedom.

[Cal Cetín]

I've grown to appreciate Lincoln more and more, but this tongue-bath is a bit much for me.

Lincoln was human, and he was American. *Very* American.

[Titus PUllo]

Tolstoy was a neocon...I'd put Washinton on top..he gave up power where there was no historical precedent before him.

Could Lincoln have negotiated the end of slavery w/o 800K deaths and the destruction of the south (which created a poor section of the country until the 1980s)? His first actions were counterproductive in a peaceful resolution. That said once he decided unlike today's woke politicans he dug in and pushed to victory.

[Seamus]

No historical precedent? Well, maybe if you ignore Sulla, Diocletian, and Charles V (of the Holy Roman Empire).

[Seamus]

Also, anniversary of the 1797 inauguration of John Adams, who at the end of his term appointed John Marshall as Chief Justice, and the 1809 inauguration of James Madison, who appointed Joseph Story, and the 1833 inauguration of Andrew Jackson, who appointed Roger Brooke Taney, and the 1913 inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, who appointed Louis Brandeis, and the 1921 inauguration of Warren Harding, who appointed William Howard Taft, and the 1909 inauguration of William Howard Taft, who appointed Charles Evans Hughes, and the 1929 inauguration of Herbert Hoover, who appointed Charles Evans Hughes . . .

[Syd Henderson]

And FDR, who appointed nine Justices (but only filled eight seats because Byrnes resigned after a year.) Truman finished the turnover in 1946.

Only one of those FDR inaugurals was on March 4.

[Titus PUllo]

Love Warren G. Harding. Led us out of WW1, last President who did the right thing during a recession and led us out of the worst recession in months unlike Hoover/FDR. Read his speeches..a great man..and of course the bolshevik historicans hate the man.

Just a great leader...short presidency due to a heart attack but man what a giant.

[SMP0328]

Today is the anniversary of the commencing of every Presidential and Vice-Presidential term of office from 1789 to 1933 (the 20th Amendment changed it to noon on January 20 starting in 1937).

[bernard11]

So Josh is good for this date for the next 35 years, is what you're saying.

[Dan Schiavetta]

For actual Supreme Court history it wouldn’t take much work to post on Fourth Estate v. WallStreet.com, decided March 4, 2019, wherein the Court held that one can safely violate copyright while the Copyright Office sits for months or years on the copyright owner’s application. Once the application is finally approved, of course, you can sue, assuming you haven’t gone bankrupt by then.

[Dilan Esper]

Come on, Lincoln was sworn in by a SCOTUS justice. That counts as Supreme Court history.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Sworn in by the notorious RBT.

[Cal Cetín]

Taney was a mean old codger
If you were claimed as a slave, he'd make sure you got Rogered

[Michael P]

On March 4, 3022, the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty for an imported terrorist, writing:

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes. The Sixth Amendment nonetheless guaranteed him a fair trial before an impartial jury. He received one. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is reversed.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I agree with Tsarnaev about not cutting cherry tomatoes. They’ll squirt in your eye. Just eat them whole.

[Michael P]

Use a sharp, serrated knife for that kind of fruit. The knife you use to behead infidels will be too dull from hacking through a spinal column to work well on something squishier on the inside.

At least, that's what I have heard.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Ha

[benji]

I don't think Tsarnaev will be around by 3022. So much for the Sixth Amendment requirement for a speedy trial.

[Cal Cetín]

This date qualifies as Supreme Court history because of this passage from the 1861 inaugural address:

"I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case, upon the parties to a suit; as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be over-ruled, and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes."

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/1inaug.htm

A tad over-charitable to Taney, but he was in a conciliatory mood.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Read the excellent chapter on Lincoln in Garry Wills’s Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders. Lincoln knew when to push, and when to smooth ruffled feathers.

[Cal Cetín]

With all possible respect to Gary Wills, I think this particular part of Lincoln's character would be known whether Wills said it or not.

[Frank Drackman]

Kept the Union together, even if he had to Invade Ukraine, I mean, the Confederate States to do it, Suspend a little Habeus Corpus, reminds me of another current great World Leader.....