Ex Parte Merryman - Aftermath

Aftermath

The rest of the Supreme Court had nothing to do with Merryman, and the other two justices from the South, John Catron and James Moore Wayne, acted as Unionists; for instance, Catron's charge to a Saint Louis grand jury, saying that armed resistance to the federal government was treason, was quoted in the New York Tribune of July 14, 1861. On circuit, Catron closely cooperated with military authorities.

Lincoln disregarded the ruling. Lincoln also got an opinion supporting his suspension from Attorney General Bates. It formed the basis for Lincoln's July 4 speech to Congress, in which he rhetorically asked, "Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" Lincoln subsequently expanded the zone within which the writ was suspended.

After reconvening, Congress failed to pass a bill favored by Lincoln to sanction his suspensions, and several more district and circuit court rulings affirmed Taney's opinion. Lincoln rendered these cases moot on February 14, 1862, when he issued an order releasing almost all political prisoners on parole. In response to opposition to conscription, however, Lincoln again suspended habeas corpus six months later, this time throughout the entire country. The passage of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act in March 1863 ended the controversy, at least temporarily, by authorizing the suspension of habeas corpus upon Congress's authority rather than on the president's authority.

The Merryman decision is still among the best-known Civil War-era court cases and it is one of Taney's most famous opinions, alongside the Dred Scott case. Its legal argument holding that Congress alone may suspend the writ is noted for reiterating the opinion of John Marshall and the court in Ex parte Bollman and was recently restated by the Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.