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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lincoln and Taney, January 11, 2007
Professor James Simon of New York Law School has made a specialty of exploring historical conflicts between the executive and judicial branches of the government of the United States. He has written books on the conflict between President Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice Marshall, on the Supreme Court during the Nixon Presidency, and on the conflict among liberal, conservative and centrist elements on the Rhenquist court. Simon's most recent book, "Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney" is a study of the various conflicts between President Abraham Lincoln and the fifth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger Taney, prior to and during the Civil War. Simon offers a thoughtful and timely account, particularly as the Lincoln-Taney conflict involved questions of civil liberties.
The book is cast in the form of a dual biography. Taney's life is much less well-known than Lincoln's and Simon provides valuable biographical insight. Simon points out Taney freed his own slaves and disliked slavery, but that, as Attorney General for President Jackson, Taney wrote a legal memorandum foreshadowing the conclusions he would later reach in the notorious Dred Scott decision. In fact, prior to Dred Scott, Taney was a highly regarded jurist, respected for his legal acumen, thoroughness, and balance.
The book focuses on Lincoln and Taney's respective views on slavery, secession, and the conduct of the Civil War. Simon offers a valuable discussion of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on slavery before the Dred Scott case and he describes well the process the Court used in reaching its fateful decision in Dred Scott -- generally regarded as the worst moment in the history of the Court. He describes how Lincoln criticized the decision and Taney at length during his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas and how this criticism helped Lincoln achieve the Presidency. There is little in the book on Taney and secession, but Simon makes clear that Taney was sympathetic to the Southern position and favored a peaceful dissolution of the Union rather than a long and bloody civil war, regardless of its outcome.
The larger portion of Simon's book deals with conflicts between Lincoln and Taney following Lincoln's election. Taney objected to Lincoln's assumption of broad war powers which he viewed as in excess of the executive's power under the Constitution. Simon discusses a famous decision of Taney in the Merryman case which involved Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus in the border state, and Taney's home state, of Maryland. The Merryman decision is still studied today for its discussion of civil rights during war time. Simon also explores Taney's views on matters that did not reach the Supreme Court during the Civil War but that involved expansion of presidential powers -- including the Emancipation Proclamation, the use of paper money called "Greenbacks" to finance the Civil War, and the imposition of an income tax. There is an excellent discussion of a series of cases known as the Prize cases which challenged Lincoln's imposition of a blockade and seizure of ships during the early days of the Civil War. The Court sustained the blockade, based upon military necessity by the narrow vote of 5-4 with Taney voting in the minority. I was unfamiliar with the Prize cases, and Simon describes them well.
The book is jargon free and can be read easily by non-lawyers. In addition to the discussion of the lives of Lincoln and Taney and the discussion of legal issues, Simon gives a broad running history of the battles in the Civil War, similar to the narrative accounts available in many other books. This discussion is not at the level of Simon's legal discussion. Simon's history is full of many small but irritating factual and typographical errors. For many battles in the war, Simon confuses total casualty figures with figures for fatalities. This is a common mistake, and it vastly inflates the number of fatalities -- which were horrendous in any event -- for battles such as Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg. Simon also refers to General U.S. Grant as a "colonel" at the time of the taking of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry. A more careful check of the historical details of the Civil War would have been appropriate and welcome.
This book is valuable for its good, nuanced portrayal of Chief Justice Taney and for its discussion of the legal issues surrounding the Civil War, Lincoln's presidency, and the protection of civil liberties during times of crisis.
Robin Friedman
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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Solid Treatment of Some Well-Trod Ground, January 5, 2007
I had some concern when starting this fine book by Professor Simon of New York Law School that it would be highly repetitive of other books and articles focusing on this topic. In actuality, I found his discussion to be fresh and quite intriguing. The "war" between Taney and Lincoln is, of course, well known and has become somewhat pertinent given the current use of the Patriot Act. What Simon does is to put the struggle into a useful context. First, he provides somewhat thorough -- but concise -- discussions of Taney and Lincoln. In this way, the reader develops an understanding of what motivated each of these powerful figures. Next, he discusses key judicial and congressional developments in the period immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War. I thought his chapter on the much discussed Dred Scott decision was particularly effective, since it was obvious given the author's discussion of Taney and the formative influences shaping his outlook why he led the Court to decide this "self-inflicted wound." In addition, the author's discussion of the actual legal warfare between the two is written with clarity and insight, and does not require any legal training to understand the conflicting viewpoints. Finally, even after Taney dies in 1864, Simon still carries on with Lincoln, his views toward Reconstruction, and his successful efforts to bring the war to a conclusion. Along the way, I learned a good deal about Lincoln, including that he was a more complex and interesting figure than I had realized. At around 336 pages, the narrative moves along nicely -- I never felt bogged down -- and helpful bibliographic references are included. A particularly apposite book given the current disputes over the extent of president power during the Iraq episode.
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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A CLASH OF TITANS IN A RIVETING HISTORICAL BOOK, November 18, 2006
Five MONUMENTAL Stars!! Master historian James F. Simon has written a wonderfully-researched and incisively-written book describing a clash of two historical titans at one of the most critical historical crossroads of the United States of America: "the greatest civil war known in the history of the human race." And he hits every salient historical signpost along the way as he patiently develops and delineates the story.
Primarily it's the story of two men rising to the top of their professions amid the ever-present and explosive issue of slavery that ripped apart a still-expanding young nation. But there is much more going on and he lays it out magnificently. Simon details how slavery was always the major issue between slave states and free states, among many other important issues. The description of the institution of slavery, the treatment of blacks, and the central role of the courts in this time period is a very sad, abhorrent chapter in our nation's history. Mr Simon has done the uninitiated reader a favor with his detailed background work on all of the issues and personalities involved.
President Abraham Lincoln and United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, both tall, imposing, God-fearing figures, bitterly opposed each other on three important points: slavery, secession, and President "Lincoln's constitutional authority during the Civil War". And the broad tapestry of this book includes all of the major players of that era: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, John Marshall, James Knox Polk, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Buchanan, Salmon Chase, and the ubiquitous "triumvirate" of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun, among many more. And then there were the intricacies of the major political parties: Democrats, Whigs, Know-Nothing, American, and Republicans.
He covers the background of Taney and Lincoln in detail. In Lincoln's life we find a man who was always against the institution of slavery. At one point, Taney thought slavery was "evil" and freed his own slaves. But both wound up curiously at odds in later life for different reasons. Lincoln's economic beginnings from postman to early political candidate, Whig party member, and then member of the nascent Republican Party and eventually President were all based on one year of formal education and an unyielding lifelong zest for reading, learning, and memorization. Taney's life is likewise given a detail examination in fascinating prose.
Simon carefully builds both the social/political climates and the laws at issue. He gives an overview of the relevant legal issues of the day: from the "Amistad" case to the Missouri Compromise (1820) to the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico with it's consequent 'spoils' of half a billion acres of land to the Compromise of 1850 to the Fugitive Slave Act to the tense and bloody period of Dred Scott v. Sandford (where members of congress were armed and a member of the Senate was brutally 'caned' in a crowded Senate chamber) to the Prize Cases, the Conscription Law, and many more. The reader will be 200 pages into the book by the time we get to the point of the book, with the almost unbelievable confrontation in Baltimore between a sitting Supreme Court Chief Justice and the Commander of Fort McHenry.
The book details the fact that Lincoln's problems during the Civil War were harsh and the issues were tricky: the suspension of habeas corpus, censorship, suppression of dissidents, the southern blockade, numerous slavery issues and ultimately the emancipation proclamation, among others. With the trials and tribulations of seceding states, border states with shifting allegiances, British intervention, and military defeats, Lincoln did not need a Supreme Court Chief Justice who publicly challenged the legal validity of Lincoln's decisions at every turn, officially and unofficially, comparing Confederate soldiers to the soldiers of the Revolutionary War and ruling that blacks were permanently excluded from the phrase "all men are created equal" and were nothing more than property. Meanwhile, Lincoln expanded the roles of Commander-in-Chief, Head of State, and Chief Executive by using implied powers of the presidency, walking very close to (if not over) the edge of unconstitutionality (see my second note).
By the time the reader reaches p.306 the fate of the Union, in terms of international law and relations, seems to hang in the balance based on the Court's decision on one matter, the Prize Cases, and the fiery oratory of the author of "Two Years Before The Mast". We know the final outcome but the final chapters of this superb historical book detail how we got here and they are spellbinding.
Lincoln's words at the founding of the Illinois Republican Party are the watchwords of this fabulous historical read: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable". This is a masterful, mesmerizing historical investigation by James F. Simon and it gets my Highest Recommendation. Five AWESOME Stars!!
(*This review is based on an unabridged eBook digital download in eReader format. Save a tree, download your books.)
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