constitution should make that more clear. that's how it's generally interpreted and it's a perfectly reasonable thing for the others to put that there. but yeah. what is lincoln's argument that it's not a congressional power? because it's silent, right, it's silent as to who can suspend it. i always tell my students avoid passive language in your writing because passive language is not here. the privilege of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless in cases of rebellion or invasion. why not just say congress cannot suspend the writ. wouldn't it just be more clear with more active language? when clement vallandigham was convicted by military commission he wanted to be a martyr. i don't think he wanted to be that much of a martyr and so after he got this sentence of hard labor for the duration of the war, he had his lawyers petition the local federal court to be released, and the local federal court said this. i want you guys to, you can take this in as well as part of this

argument. this is on page 81 if you have it. it's at the bottom of the page. the court cannot shut its eyes to the grave fact that war exists, involving the most eminent public danger, and threatening the subversion and destruction of the constitution itself. in my judgment, when the life of the republic is imperilled, he mistakes his duty and obligation as a patriot, who is not willing to concede to the constitution. such a capacity of adaption to circumstances as may be necessary to meet a great emergency and save the nation from hopeless ruin. self-preservation is a paramount law which a nation as well as an individual may find it necessary to invoke. vallandigham lost this case because of this argument.

he appealed to the court and said would you give me a writ of habeas corpus? the court said we don't have jurisdiction over a military court's decision. what do you think of the argument, it is as well as for a nation as well as for an individual. frank? >> i guess it's self-preservation at what cost, because we might lose ourselves as a nation if we are willing to give up what we stand for as what's written in the constitution, so i think it's a dangerous argument to say that we're willing to do anything for self-preservation. >> yeah, ashley?

>> i kind of agree with the fact that there is an interest of self-preservation. i think you can see it in the constitution just because of the fact that even though congress technically declares war, the president is actually the one who calls the troops and like you know he's the commander in chief, so you can see the makers of the constitution actually framed it in a way so that we could meet this preservation, and when congress isn't in session and can't declare war, the president can still act in a way that preserves the nation, so i think that shows the intent, that kind of like backs the president in showing that, you know, that is a paramount law of self-preservation and we would do what it takes to preserve ourselves the same way a nation needs to do to preserve itself. >> good. what other arguments does lincoln make in terms of self-preservation or anything else? molly?

>> he makes the argument the constitution charges the president with preserves the constitution and the nation and the laws and regs and stuff. >> yes. >> so he's saying basically the same thing, i have the duty to protect the constitution in whatever way is -- >> he has a unique role to preserve and protect and defend the constitution, yeah. what else does he argue? he has some folksy arguments in his corning letter and if you pick up on any of these, why does he say vallandigham was arrested? what is his argument there? this is, let's see, maybe around page 309 of the letter to corning. what are some of his arguments about vallandigham's arrest in particular. remember, lincoln didn't think it was a good idea that vallandigham was arrested but rather than undermine his military commander in the field, he writes this letter defending the arrest. catherine what page are you on? >> on page 309, talking about whether he should shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts. >> lincoln makes an argument, he says vallandigham was arrested because he was warring against the military, he was warring against the military by giving

anti-war speeches and as a consequence of these speeches, lincoln argues, vallandigham was essentially doing the same as the rebel soldiers. every soldier who deserted as a result of vallandigham's speeches is the same as any soldier who is killed on the battlefield, it's the loss of one soldier every time, so lincoln says he was warring against the military. on page 309, he says, long experience has shown that armies cannot be maintained unless desertions shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. the case requires and the law and constitution sanction this punishment. must i shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts while i must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? and skipping to the last

sentence of the paragraph, i think that in such a case to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but with all a great mercy. what do you guys make of an argument like that? it's not a constitutional argument, although he kind of couches it as one. maddie? >> i think it's really dangerous because it's based solely on intent and he's claiming that it wasn't the boy's intent to desert but it was whoever like provoked him to. i mean, logically it makes sense. i just think it's dangerous. >> what do the rest of you go is think? catherine? >> i think lincoln is calling attention to the fact that people don't give credit to the value of words. people forget how much value and action is inspired behind words so while i disagree with lincoln, i still agree with him.

>> yeah, you kind of see the, that as rational and yet -- >> yeah. >> yeah, what else, maddie? >> also i think that it gives an excuse to people, like if you commit a crime but you weren't intending to do it for a bad purpose or to like hurt the union, then you can get away with it. so it could lead to more crimes. >> more crimes. yeah, molly? >> sometimes you'll find intention is hard to prove, like you know, you can prove that somebody killed somebody else but you can't necessarily prove why they did. >> sure. >> like it's much harder and so it could be, you know, harder to get a conviction in such cases when you have to prove intent. >> yeah. what other arguments did you see in here? what else does lincoln maintain and how do you react or interact to it? sure. >> at the beginning of the page, he says, of 309, he says, "if

mr. vallandigham was not damaging the military power of the country, then his arrest was made on mistake of fact, which i would be glad to correct on reasonable satisfactory evidence." so he's saying if he was arrested incorrectly, that that arrest was based on fact, but he is like i think he's backing up his military forces and saying okay if we were wrong prove it and we'll let him go. >> at the bottom of 311 he says "and let me say in my own discretion i do not know if i would have ordered the arrest of vallandigham but he says the boots know better on the ground than i know in washington what's appropriate. turn to page 307.

he says that he has a power to make preventative arrests, and that these arrests are not made to be vindictive but to prevent future harm. so he says usually people are arrested because they're accused of committing a defined crime. he says you suspend habeas corpus because you don't have the evidence to hold someone and accuse them of a defined crime. you think they might be plotting something or guilty of something but you don't have the evidence, so he says usually arrests are done for one reason, the arrests i'm overseeing are being done for a wholly different reason. he says indeed, this is about a third of the way down on page 307, indeed arrests by process of courts and arrests in cases of rebellion do not proceed all together on the same basis. the former is directed to the small percentage of ordinary and continuous perpetration of crime while the latter is directed at

sudden and extensive uprisings against the government which at most will succeed or fail, in no great length of time. in the latter case, arrests are made not so much as for what has been done as for what probably would be done. the latter is more for the preventative and less for the vindictive than the former," and then how about this, "the man who stands by and says nothing when the peril of his government is discussed tonight be misunderstood. if hindered, he is sure to help the enemy" sorry, "if not hindered, is he sure to help the enemy, much more if he talks ambiguously, talks for his country with buts and ifs and ands." he's got two things going on there. should the government, you know, do you buy lincoln's argument here? i can tell a lot of you don't.

argue against this or argue for it. should the government be able to make preventative arrests if it will stop greater harm? david? >> it sounds like government-sanctioned kidnapping. >> what do you think, chris? >> definitely the circumstance is different than any other time in history. we're fighting a war for preservation of the union, so drastic times call for drastic measures, so obviously all these people that arrested did something that was sort of against the union so it's better to not have them tried in maryland, where a lot of people are sympathetic to the southern cause and to kind of keep them away from continuing to cause problems.

>> yeah. does rebellion, does war change things? molly? >> i would say yes, i think it's the lesser of two evils here. if you have i guess some idea not necessarily of good evidence but if you believe that somebody is acting in such a way that or about to act in such a way that will harm other people, people around them, harm soldiers and battle or anything else, then you should be able to stop that, and the way that lincoln saw to stop that was to suspend this writ and do that, so i think that it's justified, but also only justified in times when it's required by public safety, which is what he's saying, so as long as it's not carried into ridiculous lengths, then i think it's okay. >> i want to look at one last thing, before we finish, and that is the media reaction to this. you guys read a couple editorials by newspapers. did i put them in the handout for you guys? how did the media respond, and what do you make of the media response? now one thing to keep in mind, journalism in the 19th century, was not like journalism today. newspapers in the 19th century

were almost invariably owned by political parties, and so they had a party line that they were going to tow, and they made their money by publishing things that the party faithful wanted to read, so keep that in mind as you think about these editorials. how did the newspapers respond? you can see a difference from the republican papers to the democratic papers. catherine? >> my favorite was the one about the marshal habeas corpus in refers to merriman on page 47 from the "new york daily tribune" talking about how the judiciary is the most insidious, most intolerable, most dangerous of all three branches of the government and i thought that was interesting that they were taking chief justice tawny saying they had the worst opinions and try to take the most leverage out of everybody, we should just ignore this. >> for those of you who have

taken 100, this sounds like brutus. the courts and let us not be afraid of military despotism, of all the inflictions of mankind that of the judiciary is the most insidious, the most intolerable, the most dangerous. the times are perilous. treason is abroad. rebels are in arms against the state, and therefore, something must be done to meet that. what other things in the newspaper editorials, yeah, xenia? >> he talks about how in the new york world that tawny just wanted to hurt the reputation and the president, and he wanted to take away people's confidence in the president, and he almost like took the sides of the rebels. >> yeah, what do you guys think of that? is tawny doing his duty as a judge in this case? is he upholding the law or trying to embarrass lincoln? is he trying to help the rebels? how do you guys interpret tawny's actions in this case?

frank? >> i think tawny was trying to evaluate the merits of the case, and i don't think he was simply doing something to undermine, though that might be a prerogative of his, but in the piece, the newspaper piece it's clear just an ad hominem. he said no patriot mind would approve this. he's not a patriot. >> yeah. what else do you guys think? do you see tawny as a partisan from the bench? do you see him as acting right? >> i think he's partisan in such a way like that he has his own opinions and he's going to act on his, you can't stop anyone from doing that and he's also at the same time trying to uphold what he believes as the right law, like he read the constitution, he got his opinion, that only congress could suspend the writ, puts that in law doing what he believes is his duty. other people might not necessarily agree with it.

>> so it's kind of both, maybe he's upholding the law, he believes it's right and it has the added perk of going against a politician he opposes. maddie? >> in the third article, it says that the government which is fighting to maintain the integrity of the constitution should interpose no arbitrary action to suspend or interfere with the rights plainly guaranteed under it, so i think they're just arguing that, that you should look strictly at the law of the constitution and not suspend anything or change anything. >> yeah, these last two pieces are the democratic papers so that's one response. how do these papers respond to tawny's? >> even though i don't agree with it i liked what the "new york weekly journal of commerce" said. >> yeah. >> it said the writ was originally and always intended as a defense of the subject against the tyranny of the government, and nowhere is such

defense more needed than under a government like our own, so it's saying that this tyrannical government is getting rid of a writ that was meant to combat tyrannical governments and it lambastes what the "new york tribune" said about the judiciary. >> yeah. i mean that's the tension here. this writ is in existence to protect people accused of a crime and yet it can be used in a way that can undermine the government, and so the government can suspend it and yet doesn't that undermine the purpose to begin with? again, many of you are national security studies minors here. you'll come across these in a lot of your classes, these instances where national security and the interests of the nation are sometimes in conflict or in tension with individual liberties and personal rights. this is one great moment where that happened in u.s. history. lincoln had about 14,000 civilians arrested under his presidency. now, again, many of these guys, at least according to mark neely, would be people who would have been arrested anyway. they were people who were

committing crimes that, you know, if the civil authorities were competent to the problem, they probably would have been arrested anyway, but then you have other instances like vallandigham that really get to the heart of the tension of politics in wartime and lines between dissent and loyalty that are often blurred when partisan rhetoric are heated. we see that even today. and i hope that you guys can see how the arguments that were had 150 years ago are still really quite relevant to us. we're going to talk about the war on terror in the last week of class and some of the debates that are going on in our nation today about what do we do with people who are picked up on the battlefield who aren't wearing a uniform? do you hold them indefinitely? do you give them habeas corpus rights? do you try them in a civil court or a military court or do you send them somewhere else to try them in a court to another country? the debates that we're having today are different in many important ways from the debates that were going on during the civil war, and yet i hope that you can see how the debates that they had can inform us and help

teach us about the arguments we're having today. so with that, please remember on your way out to pick up one of these, this is the guidelines for your papers for your proposals. i've actually given you a slight extension on the due date, it's marked here on the top of the page in bold. you're welcome. and it is still due next week but i gave you an extra day and i'll look forward to seeing you all next week at the conference. thanks so much, and fortunately, all the brights are back in my mug after the end of class. >> "lectures in history" airs each saturday at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern and sundays at 1:00 p.m. we feature a classroom lectures from across the country on different topics and eras of american history. to keep up with american history tv during the week, or to send us your questions and comments

follow us on twitter, we're at twitter.com/cspanhistory. 40 years after the first full scale engagement between u.s. troops and the people's army of vietnam, the vietnam archive at texas tech university in lubbock interviewed veterans from the battles of the eye drag valley. it was after the battles waged in november of 1965 that north vietnamese forces began engaging in guerrilla warfare. the americans outnumbered by the north vietnamese army prevailed but it was at a heavy cost. up next an interview with medal of honor recipient captain ed "too tall" freeman, a helicopter pilot who flew into landing zone x-ray to help deliver ammunition, supplies and to rescue wounded soldiers. this is about 40 minutes. >> this is dr. richard verone, today is veteran's day, november 11th, 2005 in washington, d.c. n crystal city, hilton, and we are commemorating the 40th anniversary of the battles of the ia drang valley in 1965.

major freeman, thank you for doing this and i want to ask you a little bit about your memories of those days in the ia drang, and if you could, before we get to some of the specific things that happened, can you tell me about your training for those type of missions. i know talking to pilots you had to throw some things out the door and improvise, but could you tell me what you brought into that battle? >> experience. i didn't have the privilege of training with their assault. my commander, bruce crandall did and they trained for two years on this air assault business that they were undertaking and it was of course a brand new concept of warfare as far as the army was concerned. >> right. >> but i was already an

experienced pilot. prior to coming to that organization. i had been -- i ran for a year of mapping. i did topographical mapping and i had been in south and central america for four years doing the same basic job. >> right. >> so i had quite a bit of experience. >> and you had some interesting experience in korea. >> yes. and as far as battle is concerned, war is concerned, i felt the sting of battle when i was very young. >> you were at pork chop hill? >> yes, um-hum. >> did being on the ground then in korea, and as you said,

feeling the sting of battle in that sense, help you, those days in november supporting colonel crandall? >> absolutely. i understood war a little better than i had when i first encountered it, mm-hmm. >> okay. so tell me about bruce crandall. what was he like? and him as a commander? >> he was a tremendous leader. almost to a point of a little bit dangerous. i'll give you an example. we were coming back in one evening, from a operation, and had been inserting troops, and we were empty. and we come in near this one village and we had normally received fire from that village, and he came in with the radio and says, yellow "x" to one of the other pilots, take over the flight, and he says, follow me freeman. you know, circuit 2-6, roger. and we peeled off from the formation, dropped down and started out over this village. and we flew around the village for awhile. we landed, come back and i says pray tell, why did we do that? and he says, to see if we could draw some fire and i started to punch him out but i didn't, because he was my friend and also my commander. but, he was trying to draw fire, at which at the time we would

have called in gunships to take care of the problem. >> right. >> but i told him we can find other ways to draw fire other than that, especially if it's just me. >> so a good leader. how about communication? you all have to really talk to each other up there when you're flying, and how important was that? and how were you two together? >> we worked together real well. you got to remember we were in panama together, and then he was in costa rica and i was in managua, nicaragua, and we were on many missions together. we went to advanced engineering school together. a year-long course. i watched his kids grow up, he, of course, mine. both of our families kind of grew up together. and he's an outstanding individual. >> what do you know, then, what did you know about colonel moore?

>> i didn't know colonel moore until i arrived in vietnam and got acquainted with him. of course. having to support his organization first to the seventh, most of the time as far as i know, we were almost assigned to him, as each unit, depending on their numbers, was assigned to a battle one, and we drew colonel moore's battle one, first and seventh. and i got to know him real well. as a matter of fact, i'm an honorary member of the first and the seventh. after the battle of ia drang he called bruce and i in to his office tent and made us honorary members, and i'm -- i signed a -- a document, and i have a medallion, and my number is 11, bruce's is number 10. >> mm-hmm. >> so we're honorary members of the first and the seventh. >> tell me about how moore was as a person? what was he like on the field? and especially those three days? >> he was firm and he believed in training above everything else. and discipline. and when you have that it makes for a better battle for your soldiers to be very disciplined.

i found this and i compared it to what i run into in korea, i had a hodge matadge group of people, some cooks, some truck drivers, and i'm not bad mouthing any of them, but they were not trained. it was an entirely different situation to be with a trained and a highly skilled organization versus one that wasn't. >> well, let's go to november 12th and 13th, before the insertion of the 14th. what were your preparations, and what were you all expecting? >> i don't think we expected what we were got, because our intel says there is suspected enemy activity in the area. >> right.

>> and that suspected enemy activity turned out to be three regiments. and they met us on the fifth lift. we have not one round was fired for the first five times we went in there -- four times we went in. on the fifth one, they arrived. and did they announce their arrival. and they really worked us over. >> tell me about that first -- the first time you did come under fire from them. >> well, it was such a surprise, i guess, because we were -- you know, you almost get complacent doing this for the four trips, and almost brought back to well, i guess they all went home or whatever. >> right. >> then all of a sudden they open it up and it tightens up things and you begin to reassess your position. >> mm-hmm. >> in life. but, we lost quite a few helicopters.

it was damage beyond repair. some of them could make it back to the pickup zone. >> right. >> but it was a fierce battle, just instantly, and it just like turning a switch on. and it happened. >> what were you getting shot with? what was coming at you? >> ak 47s mostly and some machine-gun fire. but i'd say 90% was ak-47s. because that was their primary weapon. and they travel light. but occasionally, you would enter an area where they had light machine guns, and occasionally also, but seldom you'd run into 51 caliber machine guns. >> right. >> and i did that once, it wasn't in iran -- the ia drang valley. but one of them hit my rotor system and knocked a hole that you could put your hand through, your fist through the main rotor blade. and i expected it fall any minute or break but it didn't. it didn't hit the spar so it just made a deathly noise. but most of the time it was ak-47s.

>> let me ask you something about operating in that kind of environment, when it just got, like you said, instantaneously very dangerous, very lethal. first of all, for yourself personally, how do you continue to fly? i know you have -- you're following your commander, you're under orders, you want to support the people on the ground, but what's going through your mind personally? and what are you feeling when you're coming in to this -- to the lz x-ray and you're really getting hit with it? >> training. the only difference in a training mission and a combat mission is a combat mission, add bullets. remind yourself that you can't change what is going on about you at that particular time. and i always have the mind-set that it is more honorable to let the enemy kill you than to kill yourself. and if you -- if you get carried away with this fear,