White Jacket; Or, The World on a Man-of-War
Page 74
CHAPTER LXXI.
THE GENEALOGY OF THE ARTICLES OF WAR.
As the Articles of War form the ark and constitution of the penal lawsof the American Navy, in all sobriety and earnestness it may be well toglance at their origin. Whence came they? And how is it that one arm ofthe national defences of a Republic comes to be ruled by a Turkishcode, whose every section almost, like each of the tubes of a revolvingpistol, fires nothing short of death into the heart of an offender? Howcomes it that, by virtue of a law solemnly ratified by a Congress offreemen, the representatives of freemen, thousands of Americans aresubjected to the most despotic usages, and, from the dockyards of arepublic, absolute monarchies are launched, with the "glorious starsand stripes" for an ensign? By what unparalleled anomaly, by whatmonstrous grafting of tyranny upon freedom did these Articles of Warever come to be so much as heard of in the American Navy?
Whence came they? They cannot be the indigenous growth of thosepolitical institutions, which are based upon that arch-democrat ThomasJefferson's Declaration of Independence? No; they are an importationfrom abroad, even from Britain, whose laws we Americans hurled off astyrannical, and yet retained the most tyrannical of all.
But we stop not here; for these Articles of War had their congenialorigin in a period of the history of Britain when the Puritan Republichad yielded to a monarchy restored; when a hangman Judge Jeffreyssentenced a world's champion like Algernon Sidney to the block; whenone of a race by some deemed accursed of God--even a Stuart, was on thethrone; and a Stuart, also, was at the head of the Navy, as Lord HighAdmiral. One, the son of a King beheaded for encroachments upon therights of his people, and the other, his own brother, afterward a king,James II., who was hurled from the throne for his tyranny. This is theorigin of the Articles of War; and it carries with it an unmistakableclew to their despotism.[4]
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[FOOTNOTE-4] The first Naval Articles of War in the English languagewere passed in the thirteenth year of the reign of Charles the Second,under the title of "_An act for establishing Articles and Orders forthe regulating and better Government of his Majesty's Navies,Ships-of-War, and Forces by Sea_." This act was repealed, and, so faras concerned the officers, a modification of it substituted, in thetwenty-second year of the reign of George the Second, shortly after thePeace of Aix la Chapelle, just one century ago. This last act, it isbelieved, comprises, in substance, the Articles of War at this day inforce in the British Navy. It is not a little curious, nor withoutmeaning, that neither of these acts explicitly empowers an officer toinflict the lash. It would almost seem as if, in this case, the Britishlawgivers were willing to leave such a stigma out of an organicstatute, and bestow the power of the lash in some less solemn, andperhaps less public manner. Indeed, the only broad enactments directlysanctioning naval scourging at sea are to be found in the United StatesStatute Book and in the "Sea Laws" of the absolute monarch, Louis leGrand, of France.[4.1]
Taking for their basis the above-mentioned British Naval Code, andingrafting upon it the positive scourging laws, which Britain was lothto recognise as organic statutes, our American lawgivers, in the year1800, framed the Articles of War now governing the American Navy. Theymay be found in the second volume of the "United States Statutes atLarge," under chapter xxxiii.--"An act for the _better_ government ofthe Navy of the United States."
[4.1] For reference to the latter (L'Ord. de la Marine), _vide_Curtis's "Treatise on the Rights and Duties of Merchant-Seamen,according to the General Maritime Law," Part ii., c. i.
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Nor is it a dumb thing that the men who, in democratic Cromwell's time,first proved to the nations the toughness of the British oak and thehardihood of the British sailor--that in Cromwell's time, whose fleetsstruck terror into the cruisers of France, Spain, Portugal, andHolland, and the corsairs of Algiers and the Levant; in Cromwell'stime, when Robert Blake swept the Narrow Seas of all the keels of aDutch Admiral who insultingly carried a broom at his fore-mast; it isnot a dumb thing that, at a period deemed so glorious to the BritishNavy, these Articles of War were unknown.
Nevertheless, it is granted that some laws or other must have governedBlake's sailors at that period; but they must have been far less severethan those laid down in the written code which superseded them, since,according to the father-in-law of James II., the Historian of theRebellion, the English Navy, prior to the enforcement of the new code,was full of officers and sailors who, of all men, were the mostrepublican. Moreover, the same author informs us that the first workundertaken by his respected son-in-law, then Duke of York, uponentering on the duties of Lord High Admiral, was to have a grandre-christening of the men-of-war, which still carried on their sternsnames too democratic to suit his high-tory ears.
But if these Articles of War were unknown in Blake's time, and alsoduring the most brilliant period of Admiral Benbow's career, whatinference must follow? That such tyrannical ordinances are notindispensable--even during war--to the highest possible efficiency of amilitary marine.