STATE OF ILLINOIS. SUPREME COURT. THIRD GRAND DIVISION, APRIL TERM, A.D. 1866. MADISON Y. JOHNSON, VS. J. RUSSEL JONES, JOHN C. HAWKINS, OLIVER P. HORKINS, ELIHU B. WASHBURNE AND BRADNER SMITH. APPEAL FROM JO DAVIESS COUNTY. ABSTRACT, BRIEF. ARGUMENT OF PLAINTIFF WITH OPINION AND JUDGMENT OF COURT.
Dubuque: Herald Steam Printing House, 1869. 74pp. Disbound, some light pencil underlining, else Very Good.
Johnson had been a Galena Copperhead, imprisoned for several months in 1862 without trial or charges during the Civil War. Union authorities seized him in Galena and detained him in several prisons. Johnson explains the reason: "We believed that a little conciliation and statesmanship, might have averted the calamity, and we showed our disapproval, in a legal and proper way, by earnestly protesting, against the usurpations and outrages perpetrated against liberty, in the name of 'Union' -- that imperiled the very existence of constitutional government." The government said that Johnson had sought to discourage Union enlistments, and thus imperiled the war effort.
Continuing to denounce the "excesses, and outrages that were perpetrated, by the dominant party, during that great national ordeal," Johnson is unrepentant. After his release he returned to Galena as a hero, made his way upward in the Illinois Democratic Party, and in April 1864 sued his captors for false imprisonment. His pamphlet details the pleadings, his arguments, the judicial decisions, and the defendants' acknowledgement of error. The Illinois Supreme Court, deciding the case after War's end, had little trouble deciding in Johnson's favor. In a similar case, Ex Parte Milligan, the United States Supreme Court had denied a military court's jurisdiction to try an Indiana Copperhead, a civilian residing outside a war zone, where civil courts were functioning. Rather, he was entitled to all the guarantees provided by the Bill of Rights. Chief Justice Chase, formerly Lincoln's Treasury Secretary, concurred specially in Milligan, asserting, "The laws which protect the liberties of the whole people must not be violated or set aside in order to inflict, even upon the guilty, unauthorized though merited justice." Item #32203
Price: $450.00