all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a
doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism
Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may fill the places once occupied by Washington and Lincoln; and if this right (the right of the executive and his military subordinates in time of foreign or domestic war to substitute martial law for the civil law) be conceded, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate."
Replying to the mediaeval logic of Justice Gabbert that if the military may slay, much more they are permitted to imprison, Judge Steele says:
"The power to take the life of an insurgent does not include the power to take the life of a person not an insurgent. And if that be true, then by the process of reasoning that the Court adopts, if the military authority may not take the life of one not an insurgent, they may not imprison a person who is not an insurgent. The question is: May the military authorities, when a county is declared to be in a state of insurrection, arrest any person, whether guilty or innocent, and detain him uiftil the executive declares that order has been restored? The question can be answered in the affirmative in no other way than by declaring that the executive has the power to suspend the privilege of habeas corpus, or by declaring that martial law prevails whenever the executive so proclaims.
"Martial law exists or it does not exist. When it exists, there is no civil law. Martial law and civil law cannot exist together. If the civil law can enforce one guarantee,
The Pinkerton Labor Spy, 139