LYCOS RETRIEVER 
President Abraham Lincoln: Supreme Court
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Perhaps the most striking evidence of mental trouble in Abraham Lincoln's family comes from his paternal relations. His great-uncle once told a court of law that he had "a deranged mind." His uncle Mordecai Lincoln had broad mood swings, which were probably intensified by his heavy drinking. And Mordecai's family was thick with mental disease. All three of his sons -- who bore a strong physical resemblance to their first cousin Abraham -- were considered melancholy men. One settler who knew both the future president and his cousins spoke of the two "Lincoln characteristics": "their moody spells and great sense of humor."
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Springfield, Illinois is the site of a number of attractions through which the life and times of President Abraham Lincoln are vividly represented. Lincoln began his political career in Springfield. Included are a national park site, his family home, and the conserved neighborhood surrounding it. The four-block Lincoln Home National Historic Site is closed to automobile traffic, forming a pedestrian court within the neighborhood in which the Lincoln home is situated. This historic area has been authentically restored in every detail and even has streets with gas lamps and wooden sidewalks.
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Lincoln ignored Ex parte Merryman. In doing so, he did less than defy the Court, because the Merryman opinion was solely Taney's. Indeed, the full Court wisely refused to hear a similar case on technical grounds. Over the years Lincoln defended often, in his homely fashion, his stance on civil liberties and their relationship to the Constitution: "Often limb must be amputated to save a life; but life is never given to save a limb." By examining literally thousands of less-publicized cases, historian Mark Neely has shown how Lincoln tried repeatedly to achieve that precarious balance between order and liberty during wartime. Eventually both the Congress and the Court approved the emergency measures. When the war was over... Lincoln's good friend David Davis spoke for the Supreme Court in Ex parte Milligan (1866), ruling that military trials of civilians while regular courts were functioning were unconstitutional.
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Lincoln welcomed the Court's generally coâ€operative stance. Election results in 1862 and 1864 suggested that the northern public, including soldiers, believed that the Lincoln administration and the Supreme Court were sustaining constitutionalism and law. Republican congressmen sometimes expressed antiâ€Court views. Yet they and Lincoln applauded the Court's reviving credibility after Dred Scott and Merryman. Accordingly, Congress never transformed criticism into constraints on the Court that would have denied its appropriate role in evaluating public policies and protecting private rights.
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[One] important example of Lincoln's skills as a railroad lawyer was a lawsuit over a tax exemption that the state granted to the Illinois Central Railroad. McLean County argued that the state had no authority to grant such an exemption, and it sought to impose taxes on the railroad notwithstanding. In January 1856, the Illinois Supreme Court delivered its opinion upholding the tax exemption, accepting Lincoln's arguments.
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Famed for his clemency for court-martialed soldiers, Lincoln ... took a realistic view of war as best prosecuted by killing the enemy. Above all, he always sought a general, no matter what his politics, who would fight. He found such a general in Ulysses S. Grant, to whom he gave overall command in 1864. Thereafter, Lincoln took a less direct role in military planning, but his interest never wavered, and he died with a copy of Gen. William Sherman's orders for the March to the Sea in his pocket.
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