Ungentlemanly Acts: The Army's Notorious Incest Trial

by Louise Barnett

  What is most disturbing about this miscarriage of justice is the apparent sincerity of those who upheld Orleman and condemned Geddes. It was a simple case for them: a man who could be labelled a “vile seducer” brought a terrible charge against another officer, merely—it seemed—to gratify his own immoral appetites. Geddes’s past, and the gynecological examination of Lillie Orleman, convicted Geddes, but had the captain lived an exemplary life the result would have been the same. A stronger motive led the court to accept uncritically the flimsy story of the father and daughter: the desire to preserve their idea of fatherhood as beneficent and incest as both unspeakable and unimaginable.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Acknowledgments” is a pale word for the debts that historians accumulate. Without the generous help of Brian Pohanka, this book would not exist. He brought the 1879 trial of Andrew Geddes to my attention and then provided help and encouragement during every stage of my research. I am more grateful than I can express for his patience and knowledge, both seemingly inexhaustible. Other researchers have also shared their expertise unstintingly and deserve far greater thanks than I can articulate. I would have had to abandon the idea of writing about the Geddes trial had not David Wallace found the missing trial transcript at the National Archives. Other archivists there, Michael Musick and Michael Meier, ran down any number of obscure matters for me, and it was always heartening to find former archivist DeAnn Blanton on duty in the military archives room.

  Glenna Matthews, in calling my attention to the Byron-Stowe furor, substantially increased my knowledge of the mid-nineteenth century’s attitude toward incest, while Janis Johnson enlightened me on incest in twentieth-century America. For interest and help I am also grateful to Leanna Biles, Historic Fort Stockton; John Slonaker, Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks; and Susan Lintel-mann, United States Military Academy Archive. Dr. Thomas P. Lowry and Beverly Lowry have shared their formidable knowledge of Civil War courts-martial with me and have always provided supportive friendship.

  The advice of my editor, Lauren Osborne, has resulted in a stronger book, as has that of my brother, Stephen Kennamer, and my husband, Robert Barnett. As usual, I have relied on my agent, Gerry McCauley, for professionalism that meets the highest standard.

  In accessing secondary sources I am indebted to the Shadek-Fackenthal Library of Franklin and Marshall College, particularly the services of Thomas A. Karel and Mary K. Shelly. A year’s fellowship at the Rutgers University Center for Historical Analysis aided my research, and I especially thank co-directors Deborah Gray White and Mia Bay for presiding over a richly inspiring intellectual experience.

  My thanks to all of these generous people, and to Michael O’Keefe for sharing some Texas family history with me.

  After the hardcover edition of Ungentlemanly Acts had gone to the printer, I heard from Jane Orleman, a great-granddaughter of Louis Henry Orleman, whose own book documents incest in another generation of her family. Her kindness put me in touch with Paul Orleman, who graciously made available to me photographs of the Orlemans. Between the publication of the book in hardcover and this paperback edition, a researcher in Iowa succeeded where I had repeatedly failed: Susan Trout Reisdorph found and shared with me photographs of Andrew Geddes. Thanks to the generosity of these three people, the actors in the bitter triangle of my story now have faces.

  In this, as in other endeavors, I have been sustained by my husband, by my sons Rob and Greg, and my daughters-in-law Laura and Sylvia. This book is dedicated with love to my first grandchild, Nicholas Stephen Barnett.

  Absolute and perfect obedience to the Constitution of the United States is, and should be, the duty and pride of every good citizen. The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth amendments guarantee to the vilest criminal protection till duly convicted, and to no single man or community is given the right to set aside these fundamental principles of eternal justice.

  —William Tecumseh Sherman

  August 26,1869

  ALSO BY LOUISE BARNETT

  Touched by Fire: The Life, Death,

  and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer

  Authority and Speech: Language, Society,

  and Self in the American Novel

  Swift’s Poetic Worlds

  The Ignoble Savage: American Literary Racism, 1790–1890

  APPENDIXES

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  APPENDIX A

  Ranks of Commissioned Officers in the United States Army, from Highest to Lowest

  Major General

  Brigadier General

  Colonel

  Lieutenant Colonel

  Major

  Captain

  First Lieutenant

  Second Lieutenant

  APPENDIX B

  The Baird Report

  Headqrs. Mil. Div. of the Mo.

  Inspector General’s Office

  Chicago, May 1880.

  To the Adjutant General of the Division

  Sir:

  I have the honor to return herewith the papers referred to me from your office on March 12th. relative to charges preferred against Captain & Brevet Major Andrew Geddes, 25th Infantry, by the Colonel of his regiment, Colonel George S. Andrews—“for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman”: and “perjury to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” In this connection, I was ordered to visit Fort Stockton and other points in Texas, in order to ascertain for the information of the General of the Army whether the charges could probably be proved if the case should be brought to trial.

  In returning them, I have to report that I went first to San Antonio, Texas, in order to learn something of the case which appeared to have grown out of a previous trial of Capt. Geddes, but of which trial I had no official or other information beyond that contained in the papers given to me. From that point I proceeded to Fort Stockton and ultimately to Fort Davis, and I returned by the same route.

  I obtained important information at the Department Headquarters, and I had interviews with officers having knowledge of the facts involved both at Fort Stockton and Fort Davis. I caused Captain Geddes to be summoned to Fort Stockton to meet me, and I there gave him copies of the charges, and invited him to submit any statement in reply that he might choose to make. My letter to him and his letters in reply are enclosed, and I invite attention to them.

  I examined no witnesses for the reasons, first,—that my instructions gave me no authority to administer an oath, and second,—that any testimony I might take would be of no value on a trial of the case; besides which, it might be regarded as objectionable by one side of [sic] the other to tamper with witnesses by an examination of them in advance of a trial.

  The information obtained came mostly from officers having a general knowledge of circumstances—such as is generally made the ground for preferment of charges and a trial. It is my belief that every specification and each charge against Captain Geddes is true, and that they can be proved to be so to the satisfaction of any impartial Court without great effort in collecting the evidence.

  And in consideration of the enormity of the crime involved in the subject matter of the original accusations made against Lieutenant Orleman by Captain Geddes—that of incest by a father with his daughter—I do not think that a trial can be avoided, or that public sentiment, so far as the best people of the Army are concerned, will be satisfied until the truth or falsity of the accusation is pronounced upon by an official tribunal, and the criminal punished with all the severity due to his crime. The matter of cost in such a case should not I think be considered.

  In order that the General may the more readily decide whether the case should be brought to trial or not, there are a few incidents in the past history of some of the persons involved, which are not matters of proof, but only such as go to give to an individual a reputation in the community in which he lives—that it seems well that he should know. Captain Geddes, as appears from the Army Register, was bo
rn in Canada, but entered the Volunteer service of the United States in 1861 from the State of Iowa, as Captain of the 8th. Iowa Vols. He was afterwards appointed a lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infy. and later transferred to the 25th Infy., still as Lieutenant. He served in the Western Armies, and received a brevet of Major for services about Vicksburg. He says that he was but 15 years of age when first made an officer, and that he has held a commission ever since. General Ord, his present Department Commander, and other officer[s] who know him, esteem highly his activity, enterprise, and efficiency as a soldier. Genl. Ord regards him as more valuable for field duty than almost any other officer of his grade, and has no prejudice against him. But Capt. Geddes appears to be according to reports a man totally destitute of any sense of right and wrong, or of moral propriety as regards casual intercourse between men and women in the society into which his commission as an officer of the army has admitted him.

  It is said that his name appeared disreputably in the public prints in connection with that of Mrs. Baily, wife of Surgeon Baily of the Army, whose trial a few years ago brought great scandal on the service.

  It is also said that about eight years ago he married, under threats of personal violence from her male relatives, a young woman of Mississippi or Alabama whom he had seduced. She is now his wife but is not with him at his post.

  It is furthermore openly asserted that at the post of Fort Davis he formed an intimacy with the wife of a citizen in some civil employment of the Government living close upon the confines of the post, which intimacy led to such scandalous comment in the garrison and in the neighborhood that coming to the knowledge of the woman’s husband, he directed a loaded shot-gun at Capt. Geddes’ head and discharged it, and the life of the latter was saved only by the intervention of a bystander who threw up the muzzle of the gun.

  So far as I can learn, it was at Fort Clark, Texas, that his intimacy with Mrs. McLaughlen, the wife of the Lieutenant Colonel of the 10th Cavalry, stationed at the same post began. She is described as a woman of culture belonging to a family of high social standing in the City of New York, but no longer in the bloom of youth, formerly rather restrained and prudish in her intercourse with gentlemen, but Capt. Geddes soon succeeded in bringing both her name and his own into notoriety by the scandalous comments which their behaviour towards each other excited in the garrison.

  These relations between them were afterwards continued at Fort Stockton, where their most intimate associates were other persons both male and female of tarnished reputation, and the conduct of this set was such as to draw a social line across the garrison, separating from them all who cherished a regard for purity of life and a fair reputation.

  This line of social separation extended itself through other neighboring posts, to the great injury of the service, and the name of Fort Stockton became a bye word, a shame and a reproach throughout the Department of Texas.

  In the end Col. McLaughlen was compelled to take his wife back and deliver her over to her relatives in New York, where she soon gave birth to a child of which he is not the father while every circumstance seems to fix the paternity upon Capt. Geddes.

  It was during this period of the intercourse between Mrs. McLaughlen and Capt. Geddes at Fort Stockton that his attention seems to have been drawn toward the young Mexican girl, Josephine Nevares, a servant in the family of the post trader and his wife highly reputable.

  From a statement made by this girl, it would appear that Mrs. McLaughlen assisted in procuring her for Capt. Geddes, which probably it was not very difficult to do, although there is every reason to believe that she was perfectly pure until he debauched her.

  The last person so far as I have learned towards whom the lustful propensities of Capt. Geddes directed him was Miss Lilly Orleman, the daughter of Lt. L. H. Orleman, an officer of the 10th Cavalry stationed with him at Fort Stockton, the two officers occupying adjoining sets of quarters in the same adobe building.

  According to the Army Register, Lieut. Orleman is a native of Germany who entered the service of the United States as a private of New York Volunteers in 1862 and served until 1865, having in the meantime become a Captain.

  Soon after his discharge, he was appointed lieutenant of the 10th Cavalry, in which regiment he continued to serve until retired in November of last year.

  He is described as a man of little force or energy of character and lacking in bodily strength.

  Having a wife and several children whom he could not well care for in the quarters to which his rank entitled him at his post, he located his family at Austin, Texas, but took with him this one daughter, a girl between 17 and 18 years of age at the date of the present trouble. Having but one sleeping apartment they occupied it in common—the position of the bed of each is shown on a diagram given in evidence on the first trial. That this fact of a father sleeping in the same chamber with his daughter already on the verge of womanhood should excite remark is not strange, but it is natural that the father would be the last one to perceive the change from childhood to maturity in his own child, and so far as I can learn the only persons who did comment on this particular matter are persons talked about as loose in their own lives and their own conduct.

  Upon the presumed want of force of character in Lieut. Orleman, and confidence in his own power, Capt. Geddes appears to have calculated in his approaches toward the daughter.

  I invite the attention of the General to two statements from Miss Orleman, copies of which are forwarded.

  It is evident from these that the girl had passed completely under the influence of Capt. Geddes and was mentally in his power. All that was wanting was a favorable opportunity in order to accomplish her ruin.

  Lieut. Orleman, in spite of his presumed stupidity, was sharp enough to think that the intimacy of a married man with his young daughter was not proper, and the opportunity sought for by Capt. Geddes was prevented.

  Geddes then applied to the Department Commander for a leave of absence on the ground of severe illness in his family living East of the Mississippi, and obtained it while the girl got her father’s consent to return to her mother, the two having arranged to leave the post on the same stage. When Lieut. Orleman discovered this, he prohibited his daughter from going, and thus frustrated Capt. Geddes went boldly to Lieut. Orleman and charged him with having long lived in a state of incest with his daughter and threatened that if he Geddes was not permitted to rescue the girl and take her to her mother, he would make an exposure.

  There was no threat of exposure, but an implied promise to suppress everything, provided Lieut. Orleman would deliver his daughter over to Geddes in order that he might take her from the post and rescue her from the unhallowed relations in which she was compelled to live.

  Contrary to expectation Lieut. Orleman, stunned and stupefied by the frightful accusation, went at once to the commanding officer, told him of it, and demanded an investigation. An inquiry was ordered, but the commanding officer for reasons of his own permitted Geddes to depart on his leave. He arrived at San Antonio and at once engaged the service of a lawyer, although there was no accusation against him, and he delayed there so long as to attract the attention of the Department Commander, who had granted his leave in consideration of severe illness requiring his presence with his family East of the Mississippi.

  He explained to General Ord that he was awaiting intelligence from Fort Stockton, but soon after left for his home.

  Report of the inquiry at Fort Stockton began to arrive, and at the same time the lawyer of Capt. Geddes so pressed himself upon General Ord that the General was forced to say that any communication Capt. Geddes might wish to make must be official and in writing.

  Following this came the sworn statement of Capt. Geddes, specifying the circumstances of the criminal acts charged against Lieut. Orleman.

  Orleman in turn appeared before a retiring board at San Antonio for examination as to retirement, his breaking down in health being unquestionably hastened by the charges of crime against him made b
y Capt. Geddes.

  General Ord, unwilling to overlook these accusations against Orleman and not disputing the possibility of their truth, determined that he should not be placed on the retired list while they were hanging over him. He accordingly sent the affidavit of Capt. Geddes and the other reports to the Board and directed them to be considered.

  After a full investigation, the Board recommended that Capt. Geddes should be tried for false swearing in the matter, and the President of the Retiring Board, Colonel Andrews, who is also the Colonel of Capt. Geddes’ regiment, preferred the charges.

  A long and tedious trial before an impartial Court ensued, and the young girl, Miss Orleman, was subjected during a long examination to all the cruel torture which unscrupulous lawyers employ to shield guilty clients from just punishment.

  The result was that Captain Geddes was found guilty on each of the three charges on which he was tried, and was sentenced to be cashiered and to be imprisoned in a penitentiary for a period of three years.

  Such was the judgement of the second body of officers who inquired into the facts of this case, fully sustaining the opinion of the Retiring Board.

  Captain Geddes’ lawyer made no defense before the Court, to which, had he done so, the Judge Advocate might have replied. The Court had granted him access to the record during the progress of the trial, so that he might be fully aware of what he had to answer without the trouble of keeping a record himself. This privilege he failed to avail himself of until after the case was closed, the sentence fixed, and the proceedings, certified to by the President and Judge Advocate, were forwarded to the Department Commander. Then an application to see the record was made and General Ord refused to grant it. The lawyer followed it to Washington and there according to his statement in the Office of the Judge Advocate General the record was placed in his hands and he was given facilities to reply to it.