Secession on Trial

Secession on Trial PDF Author: Cynthia Nicoletti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108415520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This book explores the treason trial of President Jefferson Davis, where the question of secession's constitutionality was debated.

Secession on Trial

Secession on Trial PDF Author: Cynthia Nicoletti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108415520
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This book explores the treason trial of President Jefferson Davis, where the question of secession's constitutionality was debated.

Treason on Trial

Treason on Trial PDF Author: Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807170801
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, federal officials captured, imprisoned, and indicted Jefferson Davis for treason. If found guilty, the former Confederate president faced execution for his role in levying war against the United States. Although the federal government pursued the charges for over four years, the case never went to trial. In this comprehensive analysis of the saga, Treason on Trial, Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez suggests that while national politics played a role in the trial’s direction, the actions of lesser-known individuals ultimately resulted in the failure to convict Davis. Early on, two primary factions argued against trying the case. Influential northerners dreaded the prospect of a public trial, fearing it would reopen the wounds of the war and make a martyr of Davis. Conversely, white southerners pointed to the treatment and prosecution of Davis as vindictive on the part of the federal government. Moreover, they maintained, the right to secede from the Union remained within the bounds of the law, effectively linking the treason charge against Davis with the constitutionality of secession. While Icenhauer-Ramirez agrees that politics played a role in the case, he suggests that focusing exclusively on that aspect obscures the importance of the participants. In the United States of America v. Jefferson Davis, preeminent lawyers represented both parties. According to Icenhauer-Ramirez, Lucius H. Chandler, the local prosecuting attorney, lacked the skill and temperament necessary to put the case on a footing that would lead to trial. In addition, Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase had little desire to preside over the divisive case and intentionally stymied the prosecution’s efforts. The deft analysis in Treason on Trial illustrates how complications caused by Chandler and Chase led to a three-year delay and, eventually, to the dismissal of the case in 1868, when President Andrew Johnson granted blanket amnesty to those who participated in the armed rebellion.

The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr

The Treason Trial of Aaron Burr PDF Author: R. Kent Newmyer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139560948
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The Burr treason trial, one of the greatest criminal trials in American history, was significant for several reasons. The legal proceedings lasted seven months and featured some of the nation's best lawyers. It also pitted President Thomas Jefferson (who declared Burr guilty without the benefit of a trial and who masterminded the prosecution), Chief Justice John Marshall (who sat as a trial judge in the federal circuit court in Richmond) and former Vice President Aaron Burr (who was accused of planning to separate the western states from the Union) against each other. At issue, in addition to the life of Aaron Burr, were the rights of criminal defendants, the constitutional definition of treason and the meaning of separation of powers in the Constitution. Capturing the sheer drama of the long trial, Kent Newmyer's book sheds new light on the chaotic process by which lawyers, judges and politicians fashioned law for the new nation.

The Treason Trials of Aaron Burr

The Treason Trials of Aaron Burr PDF Author: Peter Charles Hoffer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
"Aaron Burr was an enigma even in his own day. Founding Father and vice president, he engaged in a duel with Alexander Hamilton, resulting in a murder indictment that effectively ended his legal career. And when he turned his attention to entrepreneurial activities on the frontier he was suspected of empire building - and worse." "In the first book dedicated to this important case, Peter Charles Hoffer unveils a cast of characters ensnared by politics and law at the highest levels of government, including President Thomas Jefferson - one of Burr's bitterest enemies - and Chief Justice John Marshall, no fan of either Burr or Jefferson. Hoffer recounts how Jefferson's prosecutors argued that the mere act of discussing an "overt Act of War" - the constitution's definition of treason - was tantamount to committing the act. Marshall, however, ruled that without the overt act, no treasonable action had occurred and neither discussion nor conspiracy could be prosecuted. Subsequent attempts to convict Burr on violations of the Neutrality Act failed as well."--BOOK JACKET.

Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War

Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War PDF Author: Jonathan W. White
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807142158
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
In the spring of 1861, Union military authorities arrested Maryland farmer John Merryman on charges of treason against the United States for burning railroad bridges around Baltimore in an effort to prevent northern soldiers from reaching the capital. From his prison cell at Fort McHenry, Merryman petitioned Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney for release through a writ of habeas corpus. Taney issued the writ, but President Abraham Lincoln ignored it. In mid-July Merryman was released, only to be indicted for treason in a Baltimore federal court. His case, however, never went to trial and federal prosecutors finally dismissed it in 1867. In Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War, Jonathan White reveals how the arrest and prosecution of this little-known Baltimore farmer had a lasting impact on the Lincoln administration and Congress as they struggled to develop policies to deal with both northern traitors and southern rebels. His work exposes several perennially controversial legal and constitutional issues in American history, including the nature and extent of presidential war powers, the development of national policies for dealing with disloyalty and treason, and the protection of civil liberties in wartime.

The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France

The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Later Medieval France PDF Author: S. H. Cuttler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521526432
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
An account of the theoretical framework, legal complexities and enforcement of the French treason law.

The Tokyo Rose Case

The Tokyo Rose Case PDF Author: Yasuhide Kawashima
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700619054
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Iva Ikuku Toguri (1916-2006) was an American citizen, born on the 4th of July. Her parents, first-generation Japanese Americans, embraced their new nation and raised Iva to think, talk, and act like a patriotic American. But, despite her allegiance to the United States, she was forced to spend most of her adult life denying that she was a traitor or that she was World War II's infamous Tokyo Rose. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Iva was nursing an ailing aunt in Japan. Prevented from returning to home, she was viewed with suspicion by the Japanese authorities. They hounded her to renounce her American citizenship, which she adamantly refused to do. Pressured to find employment, she joined Radio Tokyo. Known as Orphan Ann, she did nothing more than emcee brief music segments on "The Zero Hour" during the war's last two years. She was never called "Tokyo Rose" by anyone and was but one of only a dozen or so English-speaking females heard on Japanese airwaves. In need of money to return home after the war, she made the mistake of allowing herself to be interviewed by two ambitious journalists who were certain that she was the Tokyo Rose, even though she denied it. The published story brought Iva to the attention of American authorities who tried and convicted Iva for treason, despite the lack of evidence and a reluctant jury. She was then stripped of her citizenship and sent to prison. Yasuhide Kawashima's account of Toguri's trials are deeply rooted in Japanese language sources, American legal archives, and the cultures of both nations. He identifies heroes and villains in both the United States and Japan and also highlights broader concerns: the internment of thousands of loyal Japanese Americans, the meaning of citizenship, the nation's commitment to the idea of fair trial, the impact of tabloid journalism, and the very concept of treason. Iva was eventually pardoned in 1977 by President Gerald Ford—she was the first person in U.S. history to be pardoned for treason—and had her citizenship restored. Yet when she died in 2006, obituaries continued to identify her as Tokyo Rose. Kafkaesque in its telling, Kawashima's tale provides a harsh reminder that the law does not always render justice.

Truth on Trial in Thailand

Truth on Trial in Thailand PDF Author: David Streckfuss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136942033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 507

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Book Description
This book explores the basics of the defamation law as it applies to private-sphere defamation and looks at the peculiar permutations created by the use of public-sphere defamation laws in Thailand, particularly in terms of creating and protecting a nationalist identity.

A Just Defiance

A Just Defiance PDF Author: Peter Harris
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520953703
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Both a riveting courtroom drama and a real-life thriller, A Just Defiance tells the story of four young black South Africans who were arrested for a string of political murders in 1987. In gripping prose, Peter Harris—the white lawyer who defended the men—describes how he came to understand, while constructing the case to save the defendants from the death penalty, the chain of events that led them to undergo training at ANC camps in Angola and return to their homeland to execute some of the apartheid regime's most notorious collaborators. The shocking twists and turns of the high-profile trial kept the public in suspense during the dying days of apartheid. Harris’s account of the trial is intercut with flashbacks to instances of the cold-blooded brilliance and deadly efficiency of the squad's operations. We see Nelson Mandela recently released from Robben Island as he begins negotiations that will eventually lead to the assumption of power by the ANC. We read about bomb-making and assassination attempts by both the ANC and the South African police. A critical and popular success in South Africa, this book is a tale of people driven to extremes by injustice and repression, and of ordinary citizens caught up in extraordinary events. Finally, it is the story of a country’s search for reconciliation, one that captures the moral vertigo of South Africa's violent apartheid years.

A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors

A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors PDF Author: Thomas Bayly Howell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Trials
Languages : en
Pages : 722

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Book Description