Gold Fringe Flag = Martial Law
The Civil War being safely over, however, a divided Court, in the elaborately argued Milligan case,228 reverting to the older doctrine, pronounced President Lincoln’s action void, following his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in September, 1863, in ordering the trial by military commission of persons held in custody as “spies” and “abettors of the enemy.” The salient passage of the Court’s opinion bearing on this point is the following: “If, in foreign invasion or civil war, the courts are actually closed, and it is impossible to administer criminal justice according to law, then, on the theater of active military operations, where war really prevails, there is a necessity to furnish a substitute for the civil authority, thus overthrown, to preserve the safety of the army and society; and as no power is left but the military,