Lincoln's Code

by John Fabian Witt

  282 counted 173 of its men: Ibid., 128.

  282 booby-trapped false caches: Ibid., 126.

  282 ordered the execution of Confederate prisoners: Ibid., 152–53.

  282 only “corps commanders” were authorized: Sherman, Memoirs, 652.

  282 burned some 5,000 homes: Glatthaar, March to the Sea, 139.

  282 “almost as though there was a Secret”: Ibid., 140.

  282 “inexcusable and wanton”: James Reston, Jr., Sherman’s March and Vietnam (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 70.

  282 “I never ordered” . . . “Jeff Davis burnt them”: Ibid., 31.

  282 “the soldiers will take”: Royster, Destructive War, 344.

  282 “many acts of pillage”: Sherman, Memoirs, 659.

  282 cited Sherman’s approval in his defense: Royster, Destructive War, 343.

  283 “in particular places”: Frank Freidel, “General Orders 100 and Military Government,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 32, no. 4 (March 1947): 541, 552–53 (Halleck to Hurlbut); see also OR, series 1, 22 (part 2): 292 (Halleck to Schofield).

  283 “War is an uncivil game”: Glatthaar, March to the Sea, 136.

  283 “Truly”: Grimsley, Hard Hand of War, 185.

  283 “Boys, this is old South Carolina”: Ibid., 201.

  283 “country behind us”: Glatthaar, March to the Sea, 142.

  Chapter 10. Soldiers and Gentlemen

  285 With malice toward none: Basler, 8: 333.

  285 “one of the worst for which”: Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (1885–86); ed. James M. McPherson, New York: Penguin Books, 1999, 601.

  285 “the great mass”: Ibid., 603.

  285 Grant promised that: Ibid., 604.

  286 “a general oblivion”: See, e.g., Article I of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 at the end of the Seven Years’ War, available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/paris763.asp; see generally Lassa Oppenheim, International Law: A Treatise (New York: Longmans, Green, 1912), 2: 334–35.

  286 “forgetting and amnesty”: George Friedrich Muller, Das Krieges oder Soldatenrecht (Berlin: Petit- and Schöneschen Bookshop, 1789), §9, in box 7, Judge Advocate School Lieber Collection, Federal Research Division, LC.

  286 Sherman and General Joseph Johnston: OR, series 1, 47 (part 3): 243–45.

  286 the president issued an amnesty: Richardson, 6: 310–12; OR, series 2, 8: 578–60.

  286 “general amnesty of all past offences”: Kappler, 2: 920.

  286 the English Civil War: Barbara Donagan, War in England, 1642–1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Geoffrey Parker, “Early Modern Europe,” in Michael Howard, George J. Andreopulos, & Mark R. Shulman, eds., The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 50–51.

  286 the uprising in Scotland: Bruce Lenman, The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689–1746 (London: Eyre/Methuen, 1980).

  286 executed thousands of defeated Irish: Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 80.

  286 Napoleon imposed: Milton Finley, The Most Monstrous of Wars: The Napoleonic Guerrilla War in Southern Italy, 1806–1811 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 139–40; Charles J. Esdaile, Fighting Napoleon: Guerrillas, Bandits, and Adventurers in Spain, 1808–1814 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).

  286 it authorized treason prosecutions: Instructions, art. 154 & 157.

  287 cast Jefferson Davis: William J. Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 536–38.

  287 held his vice president: Thomas E. Schott, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 451.

  287 Union forces arrested: OR, series 2, 8: 529 (Ould), 539 (Vance), 550 (Hunter), 551 (Campbell and Stephens), 553–57 (Wirz), 560 (Cobb, Toombs, and Brown), 566–68 (Campbell, Reagan, and Seddon), 577 (Hill), 639 (Wirz), 658 (Allison), 662–64 (Trenholm and Mallory), 690 (Davis), 812–14 (Clay).

  288 “read the same Bible” . . . “with all nations”: Basler, 8: 333.

  288 “had been gentle & forgiving”: Charles Sumner to Elizabeth Georgiana Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, April 24, 1865, HM 51929, Charles Sumner Collection, HL. Sumner took Lincoln’s paraphrase of Matthew 7:1 and unconsciously reverted to the text of the King James Bible.

  288 he offered full pardons: Basler, 7: 53–56.

  288 “otherwise than lawfully”: Ibid., 7: 55.

  288 the offer remained open: Ibid., 8: 152.

  288 “reaccept the Union”: Ibid., 8: 151.

  288 Privately he hoped Davis: David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 583.

  288 In February 1865, Lincoln even: Basler, 8: 260–61.

  289 “If you go to war”: Cong. Globe, 38th Cong., 2nd sess., 364; see also Bruce Tap, Over Lincoln’s Shoulder: The Committee on the Conduct of the War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 207; H. L. Trefousse, Benjamin Franklin Wade (New York: Twayne, 1963), 237; Harry Williams, “Benjamin F. Wade and the Atrocity Propaganda of the Civil War,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 68 (1939): 33–43.

  289 Sumner disagreed: Cong. Globe, 38th Cong., 2nd sess., 381–82.

  289 “If they take a tooth”: Cong. Globe, 38th Cong., 2nd sess., 517.

  289 he aimed to adapt: On Holt, see Elizabeth D. Leonard, Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt of Kentucky (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Elizabeth D. Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers: Justice, Revenge, and Reunion After the Civil War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2004).

  289 Stanton personally launched: Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers, 8–11.

  290 The new attorney general . . . agreed: For the cabinet discussion, which appears to have been cursory, see Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 2: 303–04. Only Welles and Benjamin McCulloch, the new secretary of the Treasury, disagreed with the decision to use a military commission.

  290 “one of the feeblest men”: Charles Fairman, Mr. Justice Miller and the Supreme Court, 1862–1890 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 118.

  290 “If the persons charged”: AG Opinions, 11: 297, 317.

  290 reached his conclusion by May 1: Edward Steers, Jr., The Trial: The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 17.

  291 They were dressed in black: Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers, 69.

  291 spared the indignity of the hood: Edward Steers, Jr., & Harold Holzer, The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: Their Confinement and Execution, As Recorded in the Letterbook of John Frederick Hartranft (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009), 88–90 (pp. 19–21 of the MS letterbook). Precisely who among the accused were wearing hoods and shackles has long been a source of minor controversy. John Hartranft, who commanded the military prison where the prisoners were held and who wrote letters contemporaneous with the events, denied that Mudd or Surratt wore hoods. On the other hand, commission member August Kautz recalled that all the accused conspirators wore hoods. See August V. Kautz, “Reminiscences of the Civil War: Transcribed from the Original Manuscripts and Presented to the Army War College Library,” unpublished MS, NYHS.

  291 “I was quite impressed”: Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers, 69.

  291 The secrecy rule was lifted: Ibid., 71.

  291 George Atzerodt . . . weapons and a bankbook: Pitman, 144.

  291 Lewis Powell . . . was identified: Ibid., 155–56.

  291 convincingly connected: Ibid., 235.

  291 Edman Spangler: Ibid., 75–76, 79–80.

  291 had sought medical assistance: Ibid., 168.

  292 Weichman further testified that he had spent time together with Mudd and Booth: Ibid., 114.

  292 all frequented the Surratt boardinghouse: Ibid., 113
–15.

  292 left guns and ammunition: Ibid., 85.

  292 The charges named: Ibid., 18.

  292 had jurisdiction only over soldiers: Ibid., 22, 251–63.

  293 Thomas Ewing, Jr. . . . argued: Ibid., 245–47.

  293 “By what law”: Ibid., 352.

  293 “the civil courts have no more right”: AG Opinions, 315.

  294 “the common law of war”: Instructions for Armies of the United States, art. 13; Ex parte Vallandigham, 68 U.S. 243, 249 (1864).

  294 By “what code or system of laws”: Pitman, 246.

  294 “the common law of war”: Ibid., 247.

  294 he offered into evidence: Ibid., 243–44. The leading publisher of the trial proceedings included the entire text of Lincoln’s 1863 instructions as an appendix to the trial transcript. See ibid., 410–19.

  294 returned guilty verdicts for all eight: Ibid., 247–49.

  294 Judge Andrew Wylie: The Trial of the Assassins and Conspirators at Washington, D.C., May and June, 1865, for the Murder of President Abraham Lincoln (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 1865), 209–10; see also Pitman, 250, which (though usually superior to the Peterson edition of the transcript) is less useful on this point. I am grateful to Andrew Wylie, great-grandson of Judge Wylie, for helping me with the family history here.

  295 The commission heard about surreptitious: Pitman, 53–54 (burn the North’s major cities); 47–49 (destroy civilian steamboats); 50–51 (Union supply lines at City Point); 54–57 (introduce infectious diseases); 57–62 (starve captured Union soldiers); 53 (St. Albans, Vermont).

  295 Holt relied on a man: Ibid., 28–33.

  295 “the plot to assassinate”: Ibid., 28.

  295 For Conover, whose real name: Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers, 86, 103–04, 215–36, 266–70.

  295 Toronto Globe published: “General News,” New York Times, June 26, 1865.

  295 New York Times reported: “Sanford Conover,” New York Times, June 18, 1865.

  295 warned Holt that Conover was a notorious character: Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers, 85.

  296 “Everybody”: Pitman, 239.

  296 “simply because they were Trojans”: Ibid., 267.

  296 “all the people of the United States”: Ibid., 266.

  296 to set fire to Chicago: OR, series 2, 8: 54; Stephen Z. Starr, Colonel Grenfell’s Wars: The Life of a Soldier of Fortune (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971).

  296 John Yates Beall at Fort Lafayette: The Trial of John Yates Beall as a Spy and Guerrillero, by Military Commission (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1865).

  297 “It is a murder”: Memoir of John Yates Beall: His Life; Trial; Correspondence; Diary; and Private Manuscript Found Among His Papers (Montreal: John Lovell, 1865), 87.

  297 Booth had hoped to avenge: James G. Randall, ed., The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning (Springfield, IL: Illinois State Historical Library, 1933), 2: 19.

  297 to set a great fire in Manhattan: Nat Brandt, The Man Who Tried to Burn New York (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986).

  297 P. T. Barnum’s museum: “Barnum’s American Museum” [advertisement], Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (New York), April 22, 1865, p. 66.

  297 in the Department of the Cumberland: E.g., Lewis C. Adams, General Court-Martial Order 17, General Court-Martial Orders: Department of the Cumberland, 1861–1865, Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections.

  298 in the Department of the East: E.g., Joseph V. Smedley and John P. Roberts, General Orders No. 5, Military Trials: Department of the East, 1865–1866, LC.

  298 in Virginia and North Carolina: E.g., Samuel Etheridge, James White, and Charles Bullock, General Court-Martial Order No. 7, General Orders: Department of Virginia and North Carolina, 1864–1865, U.S. Military Academy Library at West Point, Special Collections.

  298 in the Department of the Gulf: Charles Cavanac and S. U. Birt, General Orders No. 12, General Orders: Department of the Gulf, 1865, LC.

  298 and in Missouri: E.g., Joseph T. Weldon and George M. Tye, General Orders No. 40, General Orders: Department of Missouri, 1865, New-York Historical Society.

  298 tried and convicted Champ Ferguson: Thomas D. Mays, Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson’s Civil War (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008).

  298 another commission in Wilmington: Letter of the Secretary of War, Senate Exec. Doc. No. 11, 39th Cong.. 1st sess. (1866).

  298 a bleak seventeen-acre camp: Ovid L. Futch, History of Andersonville Prison (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1968); Charles W. Sanders, Jr., While in the Hands of the Enemy: Military Prisons of the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 198–317; J. H. Segars, Andersonville: The Southern Perspective (Atlanta: Southern Heritage Press, 1995).

  298 took in between 41,000 and 45,000: William Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), ix (41,000); Paul J. Springer, America’s Captives: Treatment of POWs from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 96 (45,000).

  298 As many as 32,899: Dora L. Costa & Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes & Cowards: The Social Face of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 126.

  298 Three quarters of the patients . . . 12,912 men: Springer, America’s Captives, 96.

  299 “when the animal is excited”: Norton Parker Chipman, The Tragedy of Andersonville: Trial of Captain Henry Wirz, the Prison Keeper (San Francisco: Blair Murdock Co., 2nd ed., 1911), 106.

  299 the trial got off to: Ibid., 28–30; Lewis L. Laska & James M. Smith, “ ‘Hell and the Devil’: Andersonville and the Trial of Capt. Henry Wirz, CSA, 1865,” Military Law Review 68 (Spring 1975): 77, 101.

  299 But Wirz’s two lawyers both: Trial of Henry Wirz, House Exec. Doc. no. 23, 40th Cong., 2nd sess., p. 9 (1866).

  299 threatened to walk off the case: “The Trial of Captain Henry Wirz,” American State Trials (St. Louis: F. H. Thomas Law Book Co., 1917), 8: 657, 691, 744.

  299 arrested James Duncan: American State Trials, 8: 730; Joshua E. Kastenberg, Law in War, War as Law: Brigadier General Joseph Holt and the Judge Advocate General’s Department in the Civil War and Early Reconstruction, 1861–1865 (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 258–59.

  299 sought to call Robert Ould: Kastenberg, Law in War, War as Law, 259.

  299 A court reporter delivered: American State Trials, 8: 741 & n.

  299 instances of abuse by Wirz: E.g., ibid., 8: 704–05, 718–19, 729–30, 734.

  300 to the attention of Richmond officials: OR, series 2, 8: 111 American State Trials, 8: 713, 732, 739.

  300 to improve the camp bakery . . . improve the water quality: Chipman, The Tragedy of Andersonville, 115–16; William Best Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons: A Study in War Psychology (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1930), 139–40; Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot, 80; see also OR, series 2, 7: 167–68, 207, 521.

  300 “a servant and instrument”: American State Trials, 8: 682.

  300 “tool of monsters”: OR, series 2, 8: 793.

  300 “in their present condition”: American State Trials, 8: 717; Chipman, The Tragedy of Andersonville, 115.

  300 Even Winder: Futch, History of Andersonville, 75.

  300 died of a heart attack: Arch Frederic Blakey, General John H. Winder, C.S.A. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1990), 201.

  300 Death rates in northern camps: See Roger Pickenpaugh, Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2009).

  301 worked to turn the attention back: The Demon of Andersonville or, the Trial of Wirz for the Cruel Treatment and Brutal Murder of Helpless Union Prisoners in His Hands (Philadelphia: Barclay & Co., 1865), 107.

  301 “where the responsibility rested”: American State Trials, 8: 749.

  301 “rather as a demon”: OR, series 2, 8: 781.

  301–302 expanding the use of military commi
ssions: OR, series 2, 8: 782–83; Mary Bernard Allen, Joseph Holt, Judge Advocate General, 1862–1875: A Study in the Treatment of Political Prisoners by the United States Government During the Civil War. PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1927, 146–47; Leonard, Lincoln’s Avengers, 161.

  302 “Where do you make the distinction”: The Trial of John Yates Beall as a Spy and Guerrillero, 65.

  302 it lacked jurisdiction to prosecute: Kastenberg, Law in War, War as Law, 262–64.

  302 acquitted Confederate general Hugh W. Mercer: OR, series 2, 8: 871.

  302 Major John H. Gee: “Major John H. Gee,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), June 27, 1866.

  302 worse even than at Andersonville: Costa & Kahn, Heroes & Cowards, 149.

  303 James Duncan . . . a commission: OR, series 2, 8: 926–28.

  303 When Duncan escaped: Robert Scott Davis, “An Historical Note on ‘The Devil’s Advocate’: O. S. Baker and the Henry Wirz/Andersonville Military Tribunal,” Journal of Southern Legal History 10 (2002): 25, 55 n. 46.

  303 Grant insisted: Kastenberg, Law in War, War as Law, 265.

  303 Wirz’s lawyers had made: American State Trials, 8: 681.

  303 Grant successfully prevented: Kastenberg, Law in War, War as Law, 266–67.

  303 “the terms of the parole”: Ibid.

  303 the formal end of the insurrection: Richardson, 6: 429–32.

  303 “seemed like skipping”: Kastenberg, Law in War, War as Law, 261.

  303 “no responsibility”: “The Acquittal of Major Gee,” Boston Daily Advertiser, September 4, 1866.

  304 President Johnson had been appointing: Richardson, 6: 312–14; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 183–216.

  304 “Siamese twins”: Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st sess., 523; Foner, Reconstruction, 243–47.

  305 “status of the rebel States”: Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st sess., 24.

  305 “Unless the law of nations”: Ibid., 73.

  305 “views on this point coincide”: Ibid., 117.

  305 would preclude prosecuting any: Ibid., 121.

  305 would characterize: Ibid., 121.

  305 Yet the most commonly cited alternative: William M. Wiecek, The Guarantee Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972); Bruce Ackerman, We The People 2: Transformations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998), 168.