Lincoln's Code

by John Fabian Witt

  79 “I would barely remark”: PAJ, 4: 149.

  79 “a prisoner of war had a right”: John Reid & Henry Eaton, The Life of Andrew Jackson: Major General in the Service of the United States (Philadelphia: M. Carey & Son, 1817), 12.

  80 deep wound: PAJ, 1: 9 n. 4.

  80 left him utterly alone: Sean Wilentz, Andrew Jackson (New York: Times Books, 2005), 17.

  81 “We might have been taken”: Raymond Walters, Jr., Alexander James Dallas: Lawyer—Politician—Financier (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1943), 160–61.

  82 “forbearance and urbanity”: G. Edward White, The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815–1835 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 208.

  82 long vindication of American rights: Robert Goodloe Harper, Observations on the Dispute Between the United States and France, Addressed by Robert Goodloe Harper, of South Carolina, to His Constituents, in May, 1797 (Philadelphia: Philanthropic Press, 1798). Harper was also one of the strongest advocates of building a strong navy to protect American commercial rights. See Craig L. Symonds, Navalists and Antinavalists: The Naval Policy Debate in the United States, 1785–1827 (Wilmington: University of Delaware Press, 1980), 77.

  82 immediately serialized: American Law Journal (Philadelphia) 3, no. 2 (1810): i–218.

  82 foundational elements of the curriculum: David Hoffman, A Course of Legal Study: Respectfully Addressed to the Students of Law in the United States (Baltimore: Coale & Maxwell, 1817), 242.

  83 “progress of civilization”: Henry Wheaton, Elements of International Law: With a Sketch of the History of the Science (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1836), 254.

  83 “common standard of right and duty”: James Kent, A Lecture, Introductory to a Course of Law Lectures in Columbia College, Delivered February 2, 1824 (New York: Clayton & Van Norden, 1824), 15.

  83 Story was doubtless the most learned justice: See R. Kent Newmeyer, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985).

  83 a technical book for lawyers: Joseph Story, A Selection of Pleadings in Civil Actions (Salem, MA: Barnard B. Macanulty, 1805).

  83 two classic English law books: Joseph Chitty, A Practical Treatise on Bills of Exchange, Checks on Bankers, Promissory Notes, Bankers’ Cash Notes, and Bank Notes, ed. Joseph Story (Boston: Farrand, Mallory & Co., 1809); Charles Abbott, A Treatise of the Law Relative to Merchant Ships and Seamen, ed. Joseph Story (Newburyport, RI: Edward Little & Co., 1810).

  83 “of more transcendent dignity”: Joseph Story, An Address Delivered Before the Members of the Suffolk Bar, at Their Anniversary: On the 4th of September, 1821, at Boston (Boston: Freeman & Bowles, 1821), 30.

  84 a professional training ground: James L. Morrison, Jr., “The Best School in the World”: West Point, the Pre–Civil War Years, 1833–1866 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1986); William B. Skelton, An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 103–72.

  84 in Vauban’s conception: Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, The New Method of Fortification as practiced by Monsieur de Vauban, Engineer-General of France: Together with a new Treatise of Geometry (6th edn.; London: C. Hitch & L. Hawes, 1762).

  84 “a small number of fundamental principles”: Baron de Jomini, Summary of the Art of War, or a New Analytical Compendium of the Principal Combinations of Strategy, of Grand Tactics and of Military Policy (New York: Putnam, 1854), 14.

  84 “ten positive maxims” . . . “natural genius” . . . “mechanism of determined wheelworks”: Jomini, Summary of the Art of War, 10, 14, 16.

  85 for 100 years: “The New Infantry Tactics,” Army & Navy Chronicle 1 (1835): 332–33.

  85 “rule and compass”: Skelton, An American Profession of Arms, 169.

  85 standard writings of Vattel: Skelton, American Profession of Arms, 171.

  85 switched to Kent’s Commentaries: Skelton’s American Profession of Arms, p. 171, gives the date 1825 for West Point’s adoption of Kent’s Commentaries, but Professor Daniel Hulsebosch of NYU, the leading authority on Kent’s books, believes the adoption could not have happened before 1826. In 1829, the Military Academy’s assignment of the book helped prompt a second print run—Hulsebosch, “An Empire of Law,” 386–87 n. 28.

  85 the Army’s Articles of War: An Act for Establishing Rules and Articles for the Government of the Armies of the United States, Stat, 2: 359 (1806).

  86 “little exposure to”: Matthew Moten, The Delafield Commission and the American Military Profession (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 36.

  86 a subject of ridicule: Skelton, An American Profession of Arms, 171–72.

  86 the ubiquitous Vattel: General Regulations for the Army; or, Military Institutes (Philadelphia: M. Carey & Sons, 1821), title page.

  86 “under the safeguard”: Ibid., 139.

  86 “a strict observance of good order”: Ibid., 147.

  87 “treaties, the laws of the United States”: Marine Rules and Regulations (Philadelphia: John Fenno, 1798), 27.

  87 Congress invoked: Stat., 2: 45–53.

  87 ship chaplains were required: John H. Schroeder, Matthew Calbraith Perry: Antebellum Sailor and Diplomat (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 13.

  87 the new Naval Academy: Peter Karsten, The Naval Aristocracy: The Golden Age of Annapolis and the Emergence of Modern American Navalism (New York: Free Press, 1972), 34–35.

  87 “judicious apprehension”: Acts for the Government of the U.S. Navy Together with an Outline of the Course of Study in Political Science for the Graduating Class of the U.S. Naval Academy (Newport, RI: Frederick A. Pratt, 1865), 5.

  87–88 often knew as much about the laws of war: See generally David F. Long, Gold Braid and Foreign Relations: Diplomatic Activities of U.S. Naval Officers, 1798–1883 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988).

  88 John Paul Jones: Stephen Howarth, To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy, 1775–1991 (New York: Random House, 1991), 41; Charles Oscar Paullin, Diplomatic Negotiations of American Naval Officers, 1778–1883 (Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1967), 26–37.

  88 Latin American wars of independence: John H. Schroeder, Shaping a Maritime Empire: The Commercial and Diplomatic Role of the American Navy, 1829–1861 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 16–17.

  88 “enlightened knowledge”: “U.S. Naval Lyceum,” The Naval Magazine 1, no. 1 (1836): 15–16.

  88 A vast chasm: See, e.g., Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784–1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 77–102, 167–81; Skelton, An American Profession of Arms, 39.

  88 the Heart-of-the-Sky God: Polly Schaafsma, “Head Trophies and Scalping: Images in Southwest Rock Art,” in Richard J. Chacon & David H. Dye, eds., The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians (New York: Springer, 2007), 109.

  89 In pre-contact California: Patricia M. Lambert, “Ethnographic and Linguistic Evidence for Human Trophy Taking in California,” in ibid., 66–67.

  89 cut the fingers and toes: Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 3.

  89 fed their male children: Schaafsma, “Head Trophies,” 113.

  89 necklaces from the fingertips: Douglas Owsley et al., “Human Finger and Hand Bone Necklaces from the Plains and Great Basin,” in Chacon & Dye, eds., The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts, 124–66.

  89 eating the hearts: Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Long-House: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 32–38; Barbara Graymont, The Iroquois in the American Revolution (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1972), 18.

  89 roasted the heads: Nancy J. Curtin, The United Irishmen: Popular Politics in Ulster and Dublin, 1791–1798 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 217.

&
nbsp; 89 heads impaled on spikes: David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States: Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 32; Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 88.

  89 cut off the head: John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835–1842 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967), 218.

  89 bounties for Indian scalps: Nicholas Parrillo, Against the Profit Motive (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012).

  89 shipped the heads: Robert M. Utley, The Indian Frontier, 1846–1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 170.

  89 “known rule of warfare”: Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., The Writings of John Quincy Adams (New York: Macmillan, 1913–17), 5: 125–26.

  90 the “mourning war”: Richter, The Ordeal of the Long-House, 32–38.

  90 excruciating forms of torture killing: Daniel K. Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience,” William & Mary Quarterly (3d series): 40 (no. 4): 540–44, 558–59.

  90 Colonel William Crawford: Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2008), 281–82; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 395.

  91 “earned posthumous esteem”: Adam J. Hirsch, “The Collision of Military Cultures in Seventeenth-Century New England,” Journal of American History 74 (1988): 1187, 1192.

  91 The logic of mourning war: Richter, “War and Culture,” 540–44; see also Wayne E. Lee, “Peace Chiefs and Blood Revenge: Patterns of Restraint in Native American Warfare, 1500–1800,” Journal of Military History 71, no. 3 (2007): 701.

  91 “farre lesse bloudy”: Hirsch, “Collision of Military Cultures,” 1191.

  91 “stamped and tore”: Ibid., 1202.

  91 the Wampanoag of New England: Patrick Malone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics Among the New England Indians (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1991).

  91 “hundreds of fields”: Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practices, 1763–1789 (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 326–27.

  92 “The reason”: John Winthrop, Winthrop’s Journal “History of New England,” 1630–1649, ed. James K. Hosmer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 1: 218–19.

  92 “manage their warr fairly”: Hirsch, “Collision of Military Cultures,” 1208.

  92 smallpox-infected blankets: Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 5.

  92 “he would never spare”: John D. Barnhart, ed., Henry Hamilton and George Rogers Clark in the American Revolution with the Unpublished Journal of Lieut. Gov. Henry Hamilton (Crawfordsville, IN: R. E. Banta, 1951), 189; Gregory T. Knouff, “An ‘Arduous Service’: The Pennsylvania Backcountry Soldiers’ Revolution,” Pennsylvania History 61 (1994): 45, 64.

  92 “nothing less than a war”: Skelton, American Profession of Arms, 320.

  92 “all the rights of war”: Francisco Vitoria, Vitoria: Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden & Jeremy Lawrance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 283.

  92 “all men believe must be true”: Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, ed. Richard Tuck (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2005), 1: 161.

  92 “When we are at war”: Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations, trans. Joseph Chitty (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson & Co., 1867), bk 3, §141, p. 348.

  93 “the Christian nations of Europe”: James Kent, Commentaries on American Law (New York: O. Halsted, 1826), 1: 3–4.

  93 “savage state”: Ibid., 1: 52.

  93 “can only spring up among nations”: Henry Wheaton, Elements of International Law: With a Sketch of the History of the Science (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1836), 43.

  93 “entirely overlooked”: Ibid., 140.

  93 “Why do we attempt”: David S. Heidler & Jeanne T. Heidler, Old Hickory’s War: Andrew Jackson and the Quest for Empire (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), 17.

  93 “cases of necessity”: PAJ, 4: 149.

  93 Historians have been too quick: For a recent example in an otherwise excellent article, see Deborah Rosen, “Wartime Prisoners and the Rule of Law: Andrew Jackson’s Military Tribunals During the First Seminole War,” Journal of the Early Republic 28, no. 4 (2008): 559, 593.

  94 In the just war tradition: Stephen C. Neff, War and the Law of Nations: A General History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  94 “rules that shall be more certain”: Vattel, Law of Nations, bk 3, §189, p. 381.

  94 “sure and easy”: Ibid., bk 3, §173, p. 369.

  94 “continual accusations” . . . “utterly destroyed”: Ibid., bk 3, §173, p. 369.

  95 “the so-called laws of war”: Higginbotham, War of American Independence, 13.

  95 tiny fraction of the size: David M. Kennedy, “War and the American Character,” The Nation, May 3, 1975, p. 522.

  95 “free born sons” . . . “national vengeance”: Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Empire, 1767–1821 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 168–69—cited hereafter as Remini, Andrew Jackson (I).

  95 executed captured Indian combatants: J. C. A. Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 216, 220, 225.

  95 inside the stockade at Fort Mims: Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 354–55.

  95 “We shot them like dogs”: Remini, Andrew Jackson (I), 193.

  95 “Half-consumed human bodies”: Ibid., 193.

  96 close to 2,000 Creek Indians: Ibid., 206, 216.

  96 At Horseshoe Bend: Armstrong Starkey, European and Native American Warfare, 1675–1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 159.

  96 bridle reins: H. S. Halbert & T. H. Ball, The Creek War of 1813 and 1814 (Chicago: Donohue & Henneberry, 1895), 275–78.

  96 cut the tips of the noses: Ibid., 275–78.

  96 “unprovoked, inhuman”: Stat., 7: 120.

  96 killing the more than forty men: John K. Mahon, “The First Seminole War: November 21, 1817–May 24, 1818,” Florida Historical Quarterly 77, no. 1 (1998): 62, 64.

  96 smashed their skulls: Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (New York: Viking, 2001), 133.

  97 “mildness and humanity” . . . “impunity”: Waldo S. Putnam, Memoirs of Andrew Jackson, Major-General in the Army of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Division of the South (Hartford, CT: John Russell, Jr., 1818), 294.

  97 took them as prisoners: Remini, Andrew Jackson (I), 213.

  97 hundreds of scalps: ASP: Military Affairs, 1: 704, 736.

  98 war poles festooned: Ibid, 1: 699–700.

  98 luring them aboard: Ibid., 1: 700; Remini, Andrew Jackson (I), 354.

  98 “will end the Indian war”: ASP: Military Affairs, 1: 701.

  98 Arbuthnot and Ambrister on trial: Frank L. Owsley, Jr., “Ambrister and Arbuthnot: Adventurers or Martyrs for British Honor,” Journal of the Early Republic 5 (1985): 289.

  98 Jackson charged the two men: ASP: Military Affairs, 1: 721, 731.

  98 cruel in the extreme: Ibid., 1: 723–26.

  98 “as a nation more cruel”: Ibid., 1: 724.

  98 Witnesses with long-standing grudges: Owsley, “Ambrister and Arbuthnot,” 295, 303–04.

  99 “an established principle”: ASP: Military Affairs, 1: 734.

  100 Monroe submitted to Congress: Richardson, 2: 42–43.

  100 condemning the executions: Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd. sess., 584.

  100 Thomas Nelson of Virginia: Ibid., 515–17.

  100 Richard Mentor Johnson: Ibid., 518–27.

  100 John Marshall’s Supreme Court: Jean Edward Smith, John M
arshall: Definer of a Nation (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1996), 318–19.

  100 an outlaw of the Marquis de Lafayette: Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd. sess., 517, 586.

  100 “Where was the absolute necessity”: Ibid., 516.

  101 “In one day”: Ibid., 588.

  101 “one of the best speeches”: Robert Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991), 163.

  101 “fair and open”: Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd. sess., 637.

  101 “the laws of civilized nations”: Ibid., 639.

  101 “most cheerfully”: Ibid., 647.

  101 “The eyes of the whole world”: Ibid., 654.

  101 “our principles”: Ibid., 640.

  101 “sat stony-faced”: Remini, Henry Clay, 163.

  101 “clear principle”: Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd. sess., 657.

  101 “banditti” or “pirates on land”: Ibid., 664.

  102 “an advocate of mercy”: Ibid., 668.

  102 “let no false feeling”: Ibid., 673.

  102 “all the proceedings of Gen. Jackson”: Ibid., 674.

  102 “tribe of savages”: Ibid., 687–88.

  102 “whatever degree of force”: Ibid., 689.

  102 “these vagrant savages”: Ibid., 706.

  102 James Barbour of Virginia: Ibid., 764.

  102 “while we are searching our law books”: Ibid., 664.

  102 “General Jackson, in the wilds”: Ibid., 1039.

  102 “inflated appeals”: Ibid., 980.

  102 would cut off the ears: Heidler & Heidler, Old Hickory’s War, 218.

  103 “I was not prepared”: William Earl Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 144.

  103 “firebrands”: ASP: Foreign Relations, 539–46, esp. 541.

  103 appeared in the administration organ: Weeks, John Quincy Adams, 159–68.

  103 “a desperate clan of outlaws”: Waldo, Memoirs of Andrew Jackson, 281, 294, 299.

  103 “delicate fastidiousness”: Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd. sess., 655.

  103 “for the first time in their lives”: Weeks, John Quincy Adams, 159.

  103 “Sir,” he said indignantly: Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd. sess., 716.