Taney Arrest Warrant

The argument is that in late May or early June 1861, President Lincoln secretly ordered an arrest warrant for Roger B. Taney, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, but abandoned the proposal.

The arrest order is said to have been in response to Taney's Circuit Judge ruling in Ex parte Merryman, which found Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus to be unconstitutional.

As historian Brian McGinty concludes, if there was such a plan to arrest Taney it would have been both reckless and inflammatory on Lincoln's part, for it would have dramatically escalated political tensions.

[1]p.76-77 The single primary source document is a manuscript written in the 1880s by Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln's friend, bodyguard, and United States Marshal for the District of Columbia during his administration.

According to Tyler, as Taney "left the house of his son-in-law, Mr. Campbell" en route to his courtroom "remarked that it was likely he should be imprisoned in Fort McHenry before night, but that he was going to Court to do his duty."[1]p.