Asking Professor John Yoo: What is the Evidence that John Merryman “sympathized” with the confederacy?

 

John Yoo’s 2025 Publication Discussing John Merryman (1861): 

At the outset of the [American] Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln refused to obey a writ of habeas corpus issued by Chief Justice Roger Taney regarding confederate sympathizer John Merryman.

John Yoo, Rational Judicial Review: Constitutions as Power-sharing Agreements, Secession, and the Problem of Dred Scott, 76 UC Law SF L.J. 1227, 1230–31 (2025), <https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol76/iss4/6>. What is the evidence or support that Merryman “sympathize[d]” with the confederacy? What? But see ‘Merryman, John, of Hayfields,’ in 1 The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and District of Columbia 312, 312 (Baltimore, National Biographical Publishing Company 1879) (explaining that shortly before Merryman’s seizure by the U.S. Army, Merryman “was introduced to [U.S.] Major Belger, and offered to render him or the [Union] troops any service required; and if necessary would slaughter his [Merryman’s] cattle to supply the[] [Union troops] with food”). 

Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘Asking Professor John Yoo: What is the Evidence that John Merryman “sympathized” with the confederacy?,’ New Reform Club (Sept. 28, 2025, 5:45 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2025/09/john-yoos-2025-publication-discussing.html>.