How Did Abraham Lincoln Went Against The Bill Of Rights

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was the president, and therefore the Commander in Chief of both the Army and Navy. He led the Union to victory against to Confederates to win the Civil War, but while doing so he made many decisions that were unconstitutional. The emancipation proclamation went directly against the fifth amendment, suspending habeas corpus was not within his powers, and military tribunals that he set up should not have been allowed to try citizens in place of normal courts.

The Emancipation Proclamation directly went against the Constitution, along with being just plain hypocritical. At that time, slaves were property. The fifth amendment of the Bill of Rights says, according to the National Constitution Center and Legal

However, according to the article “Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties in Wartime” the Emancipation Proclamation declared slaves in the states still in rebellion to be free. Since the slaves were property, Lincoln was practically stealing them from the people who had spent money to “own” them, taking away the property that at the time they had legally paid for. In that same article, it also directly states that nowhere in the Constitution does it authorize either Congress or the president to confiscate property without compensation, and even goes directly against that. Lincoln himself even seemed to question the lawfulness of his decision. According to the article mentioned before, “Lincoln’s Abuse of Power during the American Civil War”, in his first Inaugural Address he says, "I declare that I have no purpose directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of

According to the article “Lincoln’s Abuse of Power during the American Civil War”, Congress is the only one who is constitutionally allowed to suspend this, and by doing it as the president, he unlawfully took power away from the Legislative Branch. As a matter of fact, this same article even mentions how a Supreme Court Chief Justice, Roger Taney, admits that “a state of rebellion is the only time when Congress could declare the writ removed.” Other articles also say that the Supreme Court did not agree with his decisions. “Flaps over Executive Orders go Back to Lincoln’s Time” also says that this same court chief said it was unconstitutional, but he was ignored. The article “Revoking Civil War Liberties: Lincoln's Constitutional Dilemma” mentions that when the Supreme Court tried overturning his order, they were ignored. The supreme court is the interpreters of the Constitution, and if they say that something is not allowed, it means that it is against the Constitution. By taking a power of Congress and then ignoring the Supreme Court, he had been extremely unconstitutional with the decision to suspend Habeas