S. history there have, unfortunately, been several occasions that the government has found reason to suspend that writ. During the Civil War, John Merryman - a legislator from Maryland - attempted to hinder Union troops and was held at Fort McHenry. President Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to military leaders, said if they found "resistance which renders it necessary to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for the public safety, you personally. are authorized to suspend that writ" (CITATION 7). His letter later became law in what Congress passed as the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1863 (CITATION 8).
On Dec. 7, 1941 an attack by the Empire of Japan on Pearl Harbor led to another famous suspension of habeas corpus, when more than 100,000 American residents of Japanese descent were placed in internment camps around the U.S. The U.S. Supreme Court later upheld that suspension in the case of Korematsu v. The United States when Justice Hugo Black delivered the courts' opinion that "conditions of modern warfare.the power to protect must be commensurate with the threatened danger" (CITATION 9). We are currently in another situation where the United States has suspended habeas corpus, but in a much more long-term situation. On Sept. 11, 2001, a group of terrorists hijacked jets and crashed them into buildings in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania resulting in the death of more than 3,000 U.S. civilians. Almost immediately afterwards, American troops made there way to Afghanistan to launch what was described as a "War on Terror." However, since the combatants of Al Qaeda weren't troops of a foreign government, and the members of the Taliban "allegedly failed to wear distinctive insignia and abide by the laws of war" (CITATION 10), these prisoners were never labeled as prisoners of war - if they were, they could have been afforded certain habeas corpus rights by the Geneva Convention - instead they were labeled as enemy combatants, deprived of many Geneva protections and habeas corpus rights.
