" Lincoln eviscerated the U.S. Constitution. He illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus; started the war without the consent of Congress; made mass arrests of tens of thousands of political dissenters (not spies) across the North without due process; declared martial law; confiscated private firearms; shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers; imprisoned their editors and owners; censored all telegraph communications; nationalized the railroads; invoked military conscription, yet another form of slavery; orchestrated the secession of West Virginia from Virginia without the consent of the latter, as required by the Constitution; denied the Southern states representative government while they were under federal occupation; ordered federal troops to interfere in elections in the Northern states; deported Democrat Clement L. Vallandigham, a congressional critic from Ohio, to the Confederacy; effectively nullified the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution; and more. All of this was supposedly justified by Lincoln’s novel theory that the Constitution had to be suspended, if not destroyed, in order to save it. "

― Thomas J. DiLorenzo , The Problem with Lincoln