MICROBYTE: MARTIAL LAW

The dictionary defines Martial Law as the temporary substitution of military authority for civilian government, typically invoked during extreme emergencies. 

The problem is who gets to define what constitutes an emergency, and who gets to decide when the soldiers go home? 

Well, the answer is that nobody knows for sure. Marital law has never been explicitly defined, not by the Constitution, not by the courts, and not by Congress.

The British imposed martial law in several American Colonies after the Boston Tea Party and during the war. Andrew Jackson imposed strict curfews, censored the press, and arrested critics, including a federal judge. President Abraham Lincoln invoked martial law in border states and suspended habeas corpus to maintain Union control.  After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was placed under martial law from 1941 to 1944. The military assumed complete control, suspending civil liberties and courts. Martial law was invoked during civil rights unrest, such as in Alabama in 1964, and to enforce federal desegregation orders in the South. Martial law has been declared in the U.S. at least 68 times, usually at the state or local level, most often in response to labor unrest or riots.

By now, you’re probably thinking the same thing I’m thinking: In the wrong hands, at the wrong time, Martial Law could be a democracy killer. 

The Brennan Center for Justice: “The exact scope and limits of martial law will thus remain dangerously unclear until Congress and state legislatures enact new laws that better define them.”

MICROBYTE: JUNETEENTH

As you learned in school, if you were lucky enough to have been in school when we still taught American History, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, signed in 1863, did indeed declare, at least on paper, that all enslaved people in the Confederate States were to be free. It was both a significant legal document and a symbolic act. But at the date of signing, January 1, 1863, it was more a gesture of moral intent rather than an accomplished fact.

The Proclamation applied only to areas in active rebellion against the United States, not to the loyal border states or Confederate regions already under Union control. Its enforcement depended entirely on Union military advances, meaning that most enslaved people in the South were not actually freed until Union troops arrived and enforced emancipation. 

In fact, by 1865, for the 250,00 enslaved people in the State of Texas, nothing had changed at all. Since the war had left Texas relatively unscathed and since military enforcement was scattered and ineffective, slavers from outside Texas had fled there in numbers. For the slavers, Texas was a safe haven.

And then Major General Gordon Granger came to town. And on June 19, 1865, General Granger stood on Texas soil, and from the wrought iron balcony of Ashton Villa,  read General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” 

“On plantations, masters had to decide when and how to announce the news—or wait for a government agent to arrive—and it was not uncommon for them to delay until after the harvest. Even in Galveston City, the ex-Confederate mayor flouted the Army by forcing the freed people back to work,” as historian Elizabeth Hayes Turner details in her comprehensive essay, “Juneteenth: Emancipation and Memory.” 

Slavery in the United States officially ended with the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865—almost 89 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, and nearly three years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. 

And then the ongoing struggle began.

I can’t make up my mind whether Juneteenth should be a joyful celebration or a sober commemoration. For me, Juneteenth seems like a good day to think about what Martin Luther King meant when he said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” and how those words apply to the serious moral challenges Americans face today. 

We have come a long way, but I for one would hesitate to say, job well done, mission accomplished, shining city on a hill. For my money, America is still in the process of becoming. And what becomes of America is forever and always up to We The People.

Now you know.

THE REVOLUTIONARY, Samuel Adams (Stacy Schiff. Publisher, Little, Brown and Company)

Thomas Jefferson, a man not known for his high praise of others, asserted that if there was any leader of the Revolution, “Samuel Adams was the man.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd, eloquent, and intensely disciplined man who supplied the moral background of the American Revolution.

“With incomparable wit, grace, and insight, Stacy Schiff narrates the birth of the American Revolution in Boston, and the artful, elusive magician who made it all happen.” Ron Chernow

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During his speech to the troops at Fort Bragg. Trump attempted to criticize former President Joe Biden’s intelligence, saying, “He’s never been the sharpest bulb.”

DESI LYDIC (The Daily Show): “What a wordsmith. See, see, most people would’ve gone with ‘brightest bulb,’ or ‘sharpest tool,’ but Donald Trump took half of both and smushed them together. That is what makes him the cream of the litter.” 

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