"Lincoln should have had Taney shot..."
I'm surprised he didn't. Lincoln was doing pretty much as he liked and he didn't need no stinking executive order to do it.
He should have called Congress into session to suspend habeas corpus - as required by the Constitution - but he didn't want them meddling in his power plays. It's all in the history books.
Thank goodness there were Union judges willing to stand up to him, even if they couldn't totally rein him in.
_________
"If Lincoln obeyed the Court’s order thousands of those arrested illegally would have been freed. Lincoln and most Northerners, during the war, accepted the Machiavellian doctrine that the end justified the means, when the end was to preserve the Union, and was to be achieved regardless of the Constitution and rulings of the Supreme Court. Lincoln expressed that policy to a Chicago clergyman:
"As commander in chief of the army and navy, in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy."
Taney continued to irritate the Lincoln administration after his Ex parte Merryman decision. When Lincoln was ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling, Taney sent copies of his opinion to other judges, urging them to issue writs of habeas corpus, and many of them did, even enforcing writs against military arrests of civilians. In his circuit in Maryland, Taney delayed a number of treason trials, as it was his right to do controlling the docket, because with the passion of the times, he doubted a fair trial could be had."
- Charles Adams