Note 12 — Chapter II · THE CONCEPT OF EMERGENCY IN DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL THOUGHT

Id. It is this idea that emergency may require executive action contrary to the law, i.e., a suspension of law which is most dangerous to constitutional morality. It presents the executive with false alternatives: “Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution?... I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the nation.” Abraham Lincoln, letter to A. C. Hodges, April 4, 1864, Henry J. Raymond, The Life and Public Service of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Derby & Miller, 1865), p. 767.