On Feb. 5, 1867 Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867. Congress had suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus in 1863 in response to the Confederate rebellion. This act significantly expanded the Writ by allowing a Federal court jurisdiction:
“in all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the constitution, or any treaty or law of the United States.”
Prior to 1867, prisoners held under state laws could only file for a habeas corpus review of their confinement in state detention in a state court. Federal courts could now entertain petitions for a writ involving a prisoner in a state jail. The act was designed to allow Federal judges to review the detention of Blacks held in state jails. A number of Southern states had seen arrests of Blacks in order to suppress labor and political dissent. Those confined were often forced to work without pay on the plantations where they had formerly been enslaved.
Here is a 1965 article from the University of Chicago Law Review on this:
The Habeas Corpus Act of 1867: The Supreme Court as Legal Historian by Lewis Mayers
The article looks at the origins of the 1867 Habeas Corpus Act in one of the last acts of President Lincoln designed to rescue black family members of USCT still held in slavery:
On March 3, 1865, the last day of the 38th Congress, President Lincoln signed a joint resolution which, by declaring wives and children of persons in the armed forces to be free, purported to confer freedom on a number of slaves in the slave states still in the Union and in areas of the Confederacy not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. Ratification of the thirteenth amendment was still some months distant. On December 19, 1865, the day after the thirteenth amendment became effective and shortly after the opening of the 39th Congress, the House passed without discussion a resolution directing its Committee on the Judiciary “to inquire and report to the House, as soon as practicable, by bill or otherwise, what legislation is necessary to enable the courts of the United States to enforce the freedom of the wives and children of soldiers of the United States under the joint resolution of March 3, 1865, and also to enforce the liberty of all persons under the operation of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.”
The article continues:
Some three weeks later, on January 8, 1866, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee introduced a “bill to secure the writ of Habeas Corpus to persons held in slavery or involuntary servitude contrary to the Constitution of the United States.” Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, the bill read:
“Be it enacted … that all persons who are held in slavery or involuntary servitude otherwise than for crime whereof they are convicted shall be discharged on Habeas Corpus issued by and returnable before any court or judge of the United States; and if the court or judge refuse the discharge the petitioner may forthwith appeal to the Supreme Court, which court if then sitting or if not at its next term shall hear the case on the first motion day after the appeal is docketed and discharge the petitioner if he shall appear to be held in slavery or involuntary servitude contrary to the constitution of the United States.’ “
The bill discussed above was not voted on, but four months later a revised bill was introduced and passed. According to the article:
The section of the bill relating to habeas corpus provided that “in addition to the authority already conferred by law,” the federal courts “shall have power to grant the writ of habeas corpus in all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the Constitution, or of any treaty or law of the United States.” The bill did not speak, as did the three existing habeas corpus statutes, of “prisoners in jail”; it spoke instead of “any person … restrained of his or her liberty,” a phrase apt for describing an ex-slave held in bondage or peonage. On July 25, three days before the close of the session, the bill, with amendments, was reported orally to the House and passed. With a further trifling amendment, it passed the Senate in the next session of Congress and became law on February 5, 1867.
Representative Lawrence, believed to have drafted the bill, explained its origins in the earlier legislation:
On the 19th of December last, my colleague [Mr. Shellbarger] introduced a resolution instructing the Judiciary Committee to inquire and report to the House as soon as practicable, by bill or otherwise, what legislation is necessary to enable the courts of the United States to enforce the freedom of the wife and children of soldiers of the United States, and also to enforce the liberty of all persons. Judge Ballard, of the district court of Kentucky, decided that there was no act of Congress giving courts of the United States jurisdiction to enforce the rights and liberties of such persons. In pursuance of that resolution of my colleague this bill has been introduced, the effect of which is to enlarge the privilege of the writ of habeas [sic] corpus, and to make the jurisdiction of the courts and judges of the United States coextensive with all the powers that can be conferred upon them. It is a bill of the largest liberty, and does not interfere with persons in military custody or restrain the writ of habeas corpus at all. (p. 36)
In reporting the bill in the Senate, Sen. Trumbull offered a different explanation for the bill, saying:
[T]he habeas corpus act of 1789, to which this bill is an amendment, confines the jurisdiction of the United States courts in issuing writs of habeas corpus to persons who are held under United States laws. Now, a person might be held under a State law in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, and he ought to have in such a case the benefit of the writ, and we agree that he ought to have recourse to the United States courts to show that he was illegally imprisoned in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States. (p. 39)
Feature Cartoon Source: NY Bar
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