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Lambdin Purdy Milligan (March 24, 1812 – December 21, 1899) was a lawyer and farmer who was known for his extreme opinions on states' rights and his opposition to the Lincoln administration's conduct of the American Civil War. Believing that the Confederate states of the South had the power under the U.S. Constitution to secede from the Union, he opposed the war to reunite the nation. Milligan became a leader of the secret Order of American Knights (formerly the Knights of the Golden Circle and later the Sons of Liberty) and advocated violent revolution against the U.S. government. U.S. Army forces arrested him at his home and tried him and other conspirators by military commission for disloyalty and conspiracy. Found guilty, he was sentenced to death. A habeas corpus appeal made its way from the federal circuit court in Indianapolis to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1866 ruled that the application of military tribunals to citizens when civil courts are open and operating was unconstitutional. See Ex parte Milligan 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2 (1866). Following the Court's ruling on April 3, 1866, Milligan and the others were released from custody. He returned home and practiced law in Huntington, Indiana, where he later filed a civil suit claiming damages for the military arrest and trial. On May 30, 1871, the jury found in Milligan's favor, but federal and state statutes limited the award for damages to five dollars plus court costs.

... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.