page_title: Lambdin P. Milligan
section_title: Arrest and detention
hierarchical_section_title: Lambdin P. Milligan / Lawyer and anti-war Democrat / Arrest and detention
caption_attribution_description: English: The twelve member military commission that presided over the treason cases resulting in the conviction of members of the Knights of the Golden Circle. Upon appeal the decision was overturned by the US Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan
context_page_description: Lambdin Purdy Milligan was a lawyer and farmer who was known for his extreme opinions on states' rights and his opposition to the Lincoln administration's conduct of the American Civil War. Believing that the Confederate states of the South had the power under the U.S. Constitution to secede from the Union, he opposed the war to reunite the nation. Milligan became a leader of the secret Order of American Knights and advocated violent revolution against the U.S. government. U.S. Army forces arrested him at his home and tried him and other conspirators by military commission for disloyalty and conspiracy. Found guilty, he was sentenced to death. A habeas corpus appeal made its way from the federal circuit court in Indianapolis to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1866 ruled that the application of military tribunals to citizens when civil courts are open and operating was unconstitutional. See Ex parte Milligan 71 U.S. 2. Following the Court's ruling on April 3, 1866, Milligan and the others were released from custody. He returned home and practiced law in Huntington, Indiana, where he later filed a civil suit claiming damages for the military arrest and trial.
context_section_description: On September 17, 1864, General Alvin Peterson Hovey, commander of the Military District of Indiana, authorized a military commission to meet on September 19 at Indianapolis, Indiana, to begin trials of those placed under military arrest. Dodd was the first to be tried.  Shortly thereafter, commanders ordered the arrest of other leaders of the Sons of Liberty.  These included William A. Bowles of French Lick, Indiana; Joseph J. Bingham, editor of the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel and chairman of Indiana's Democratic State Central Committee; Horace Heffren, editor of the Washington (Indiana) Democrat; Stephen Horsey of Martin County, Indiana; and Andrew Humphreys of Bloomfield, Indiana. Among them was Lambdin Milligan, who was arrested at his Huntington home on October 6, 1864.  Two other men, James B. Wilson and David T. Yeakel, were also seized. Because President Lincoln had suspended the writ of habeas corpus on September 24, 1862, as authorized under Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, and Congress ratified this action on March 3, 1863, with the passage of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, no warrant or affidavit was issued to show justification for Milligan's arrest.
  Dodd escaped from jail during his trial and fled to Canada. He was found guilty in absentia on October 10, 1864, and sentenced to hang. Charges against Bingham, Heffren, Harrison, Yeakel, and Wilson were dismissed with deals to be witnesses for the military prosecution.
caption: Military commission that originally convicted Milligan.
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