THEY'VE GOT THE AUTHOR OF DRED SCOTT ON THEIR SIDE, W HAS THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR:

War, after the smoke clears: a review of This Mighty Scourge Perspectives on the Civil War by James M. McPherson (Tim Rutten, January 17, 2007, LA Times)

In "This Mighty Scourge" -- a riveting collection of 16 masterfully written essays -- James M. McPherson again demonstrates that he is our greatest historian of the war. Now 71 and an emeritus professor of history at Princeton, McPherson is author or editor of more than two dozen books on the Civil War, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Battle Cry of Freedom," which is the best and most eloquent single-volume account of the conflict. [...]

The two essays in the book's final section deal with the compelling figure of Lincoln. McPherson has been a public opponent of the current war in Iraq and in "As Commander-in-Chief I Have a Right to Take Any Measure Which May Best Subdue the Enemy," he analyzes Lincoln's abrogation of civil liberties during the war, including his suspension of habeas corpus, which was held illegal by then U.S. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney -- author of the notorious Dred Scott decision. The legal issue, by the way, was never whether the "Great Writ" could, in fact be suspended, since Article I of the Constitution provides for such a step "when in cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." The argument was over whether Congress or the president had the power to do so.

McPherson quotes contemporary legal scholar Michael Stokes Paulsen's approval of Lincoln's initiative as a defense of the Constitution itself: "A part cannot control the whole, to the destruction of the whole." Lincoln, one of his era's great trial lawyers, preferred a homespun analogy to surgery: "Life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through preservation of the nation."