The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1866-12-28
Military Commissions n Mask for
Murder.

huFoeT.
The decision of the Supreme Court
relative to the illegality of military
commissions" is by no means tlattering
10 Radical leaders generally. They
have reason to be profoundly grateful
for that providential dispensation which
denied them consciences and rendered
them inscnSible to remorse. Were they
liable to any Of those compunctions
which accompany a sensitive mans
remembrance of guilt, what keen agony
would be theirs ut the thought of their
many deeds which, by this act of the
Supreme Court, have been stamped rs
fragrant violations oflaw and gross out
RACES upon person and property.
Under the specious plea, "erpedit re-
ipWbEcR," sit il host for the State"
there were few rights they did not as
sail and few enormities they did not
commit Under that all-sufficient pre-
text they usurped all authority, viola
ted all law, and trampled upon the
most sacred provisions of the Constitu-
ton They made free speech an impos-
sibiity by consigning to dungeon
every man who dared denOunce official
villainy. They crushed out the indie
pendence of the press by the arrest OF
editors and the destruction of printing
offices. They made 4 mockery of cleo
tions and destroyed the freedom of the
ballot by using the bayOnet to influence
the voters choice. They invaded judicial
tribunals with armed soldiers; they
broke up the courts and imprisoned the
judges they violated the privilege of
the writ of hd6eds corpus, and men who
had been arrested without law, incar-
cerated without authority, and punish
ed without trial or conviction, were
left to endure without remedy every
outrage which the barbarous caprice OF
ignorance in cpaulcts might offer. In
point OF fact, the leading spirits
of the dominant party made such
constant and universal use of
the military necessity" plea, that
scarcely single element of republican
ism was left intact in our Government,
and this nation occupied the anomalous
position of a people whose Constitu-
ton guaranteed them more freedom,
and whose rulers allowed them less than
was enjoyed by any other civilized
community on the face of the globe.
The recent decision of the Supreme
Court declaring that "the Constitution
is the Supreme law of the land, in war
as we'll as in peace" signifies something
more than mere assertion of continual
Constitutional supremacy. Itproclaims
that the above-recited record of tire
Radical party in its assaults upon the
rights of American citizens is nothing
but history of fraud, outrage, rob-
berry and murder.
This decision is by no means
fattering to the vanity Of the
bedizened upstarts who perpe-
trated the military commission" in
iauities. 1t asserts in effect that
they who assumed to be judges were in
reality criminals, and that all the form
ality, ceremony, and mock observance
of legal forms attendant upon their
court martial assassinations only served
to give dignity to their crimes and
make their murders systematic. Refer
ring to this same subject, the Philadel-
phia Age remarks:
"But there is another view to take of
this declaration OF. the Supreme Court.
Its light is shed with glorious radiancy
upon the path that leads into the future.
Does il not ut the same time illuminate
the dark and murky past, and allow the
friends of Justice to see how crime may
be brought to the bar of justice, and
properly, constitutiOnally and legally
punished;' Military commissions, which
deprived citizens of their rights of trial
by jury, have been pronounced uncon-
stitntional and illegal. They stand upon
the same footing as Lynch courts" by
which men have been murdered. There
is not now, nor never was any law for
either, and the men who sat upon the
commissions to try Yallandigham or
Milligan, in law, occupy the same posi-
tion that those persons do who have
pronounced the death sentence upon a
fellow-being from the bar-room of a
Western tavern or the deck of O Missis-
sippi flat boat. Where citizens have
been imprisoned by the DEGREES of these
Illegal military tribunals, it is case of
false mprisonment-where executions
have followed, the crime of murder rests
upon the cOnsciences of the. men ,com-s
posing the military Lynch commissions.
s'-;e AK 81 slses