Second short essay, due Monday, September 24

President Lincoln said in his War Address on July 4, 1861:

"Must [the whole of the laws] be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the questions more directly, are all the laws but one to go unexecuted and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?"

Justice Davis in Ex parte Milligan stated:

". . . a country, preserved at the sacrifice of all the cardinal principles of liberty, is not worth the cost of preservation."

In the context of exigencies crated by war, specifically the Civil War and World War I, which position do you agree with more? Is it necessary to curtail, or even forfeit, civil liberties in wartime? Where do you draw the line? Be sure to focus on the Civil War and World War I and not on the present War on Terror.