Lincoln's Code

by John Fabian Witt

  103 approval of European diplomatic corps: Ibid., 1094.

  103 “learned Puffendorffs”: John H. Schroeder, Shaping a Maritime Empire: The Commercial and Diplomatic Role of the American Navy, 1829–1861 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 28.

  103 “I, too,” hate the “tomahawk”: Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd. sess., 638.

  104 “I have passed”: Heidler & Heidler, Old Hickory’s War, 218.

  104 “to give no quarter”: Weeks, John Quincy Adams, 144.

  104 “an unnecessary act”: ASP: Military Affairs, 1: 743.

  104 “a strong advocate for neutral rights”: Ibid., 1: 742.

  104 “in direct opposition”: Ibid., 1: 742.

  104 “a wound”: Ibid., 1: 743.

  105 “among the most immediate”: Weeks, John Quincy Adams, 168.

  105 “gratitude” of the American people: PAJ, 4: 294–96.

  105 to thank Jackson for his great successes: Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of New Hampshire, at Their Session, Begun . . . on the First Wednesday of June . . . 1819 (Concord, NH: Hill & Moore, 1819), 298.

  105 “have been with you”: PAJ, 4: 294–96.

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

  106 “the laws of civilized nations”: Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2nd. sess., 639.

  106 “our rule had been”: Ibid., 736.

  106 “technical niceties”: Ibid., 745.

  107 “that great general”: Ibid., 1115.

  107 booty and plunder: John Missall & Mary Lou Missall, The Seminole Wars: America’s Longest Indian Conflict (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), 132–33.

  107 using flags of truce: John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835–1842 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967), 214–17.

  107 “unprecedented violation”: Missall & Missall, The Seminole Wars, 141.

  107 “another breach”: “Another Breach of National Honor,” The Philanthropist, Jan. 30, 1838, p. 4.

  107 Seminole named Coacoochee: Missall & Missall, The Seminole Wars, 141.

  108 bloodhounds to track: Ibid., 171.

  Chapter 4. Rules of Wrong

  109 “What is war”: Charles Sumner, The True Grandeur of Nations: An Oration Before the Authorities of the City of Boston, July 4, 1845 (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1893), 48.

  109 Crisp uniforms: Anne-Marie Taylor, Young Charles Sumner and the Legacy of the Enlightenment, 1811–1851 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 177.

  109 local military academy: David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), 11.

  109 novels of Sir Walter Scott: Ibid., 16.

  109 Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Ibid., 23.

  110 took over Story’s course: Ibid., 34.

  110 the Continent’s most distinguished: Ibid., 68.

  110 “trial of right”: Ibid., 16.

  110 “be ranked as crime”: Ibid., 17.

  110 “Laws of war” . . . “contradictory combination”: Charles Sumner, The True Grandeur of Nations: An Oration Before the Authorities of the City of Boston, July 4, 1845 (Boston: J. H. Eastburn, 1845). Sumner edited the wording of this passage in subsequent editions. For the variation, see Sumner, The True Grandeur (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1893), 28–29n.

  110 “Viewed in the unclouded”: Sumner, The True Grandeur (1893), 48.

  110 “comfort to wretchedness”: Ibid., 9.

  110 “absorbed in feats” . . . “Christian brotherhood”: Ibid., 10.

  110 “so many lions”: Taylor, Young Charles Sumner, 187–89.

  110 “criminal and impious custom”: Sumner, The True Grandeur (1893), 45.

  111 “Our country cannot”: Ibid., 128.

  111 group of pacifists: Valerie H. Ziegler, The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).

  111 using force in any way: Charles DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 49.

  111 The episode began in late 1837: Kenneth R. Stevens, Border Diplomacy: The Caroline and McLeod Affairs in Anglo-American-Canadian Relations, 1837–1842 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989).

  112 “necessity of self-defence”: PDW: Diplomatic Papers, 1: 67.

  112 to conclude that Nazi Germany: Yoram Dinstein, War, Aggression, and Self-Defence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 4th ed., 2005), 249; Timothy Kearley, “Raising the Caroline,” Wisconsin International Law Journal 17 (1999): 325.

  113 passenger named Amos Durfee: R. Y. Jennings, “The Caroline and McLeod Cases,” American Journal of International Law 32, no. 1 (1938): 82, 84.

  113 made Durfee a martyr: Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 15–25.

  113 McLeod was notorious: Ibid., 71–72.

  113 “aggravate beyond measure” . . . “long since banished”: PDW: Diplomatic Papers, 1: 43.

  113 “To hold the prisoner guilty”: People v. McLeod, 1 Hill. 377, 514 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1841).

  114 “under any obligation”: McLeod, 1 Hill. at 533.

  114 “a mistake”: McLeod, 1 Hill. at 592.

  114 New York’s attorney general: McLeod, 1 Hill. at 535–36.

  114 “informal and illegitimate”: Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations, trans. Joseph Chitty (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson & Co., 1867), bk. §68, 320.

  114 “the hazards of war”: McLeod, 1 Hill. at 558.

  114 “outrage of our rights”: Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 97.

  114–15 Palmerston instructed Fox: Howard Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty: A Study in Anglo-American Relations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 51.

  115 “war would be the inevitable”: Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 88.

  115 Peel was holding secret: Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 62, 68.

  115 James Henry Hammond: Robert V. Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 541.

  115 to sustain the country’s honor: Richard N. Current, “Webster’s Propaganda and the Ashburton Treaty,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 34 (1947): 187–88.

  115 “the whole frontier”: Jennings, “Caroline and McLeod,” 92 n. 37.

  115 to prepare for the impending conflict: Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 87.

  115 “a principle of public law”: PDW: Diplomatic Papers, 1: 47.

  115 “would become a pirate”: Review, North American Review 142 (January 1849): 1, 30–31.

  115 dispatched Attorney General John Crittenden: Stevens, Border Diplomacy, 95–97.

  115 pressed New York’s governor: Ibid., 93–95.

  115–16 asked the U.S. district attorney: Ibid., 123.

  116 Governor William Henry Seward: Jones, To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 55–56.

  116 “no musty volumes”: Cong. Globe, 27th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 43.

  116 a verdict of not guilty: Marcus Tullius Cicero Gould, The Trial of Alexander Mcleod, for the Murder of Amos Durfee (New York: Gould’s Stenographical Reporter, 1841), 358.

  116 arrested another alleged participant: David Bederman, “The Cautionary Tale of Alexander Mcleod: Superior Orders and the American Writ of Habeas Corpus,” Emory Law Journal 41 (1992): 515, 526.

  117 “Mexico”: Messages of the President of the United States, House Exec. Doc. no. 60, 30th Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1848), 8.

  117 “unjust, illegal”: House Exec. Doc. no. 60, p. 423.

  118 Taylor and his Mexican counterpart: Ibid., p. 140.

  118 through white truce flags: E.g., ibid., p. 346.

  118 formal capitulation agreements: E.g., ibid., p. 346.

  118 readily exchanged prisoners: K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 81.

  118 routinely paroled captured Mexican: Paul J. Springer, America’s Captives: Treatment of POWs from the Revolutio
nary War to the War on Terror (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 75–77.

  118 “as prisoners of war”: House Exec. Doc. no. 60, p. 292.

  118 “kindness and attention”: Ibid., p. 292.

  118 “protected in their rights”: Ibid., pp. 166–68.

  118 “We come to make no war”: Ibid., p. 166.

  118 “within the rules”: Ibid., p. 2.

  118 known locally as the “Killers”: Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 42.

  118 “a lawless set”: Felice Flannery Lewis, Trailing Clouds of Glory: Zachary Taylor’s Mexican War Campaign and His Emerging Civil War Leaders (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 2010), 93.

  119 “G-d d——d” thieves: Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 123.

  119 “Goths and Vandals”: Justin H. Smith, “American Rule in Mexico,” American Historical Review 23, no. 2 (January 1918): 287, 296.

  119 “like a body of hostile”: Marcus Cunliffe, Soldiers and Civilians: The Martial Spirit in America, 1775–1865 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), 84.

  119 “to make Heaven weep”: Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 35.

  119 “was everywhere marked”: Abiel Abbott Livermore, War with Mexico Reviewed (Boston: American Peace Society, 1850), 140.

  119 “inhumanities”: Mary R. Block, “ ‘The Stoutest Son’: The Mexican-American War Journal of Henry Clay, Jr.,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 160, no. 1 (2008): 5, 20.

  119 “had committed offenses”: Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 123.

  119 Taylor’s popular quartermaster: John S. D. Eisenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York: Random House, 1989), 65 n.

  119 “The weapon used”: George Wilkins Kendall, Dispatches from the Mexican War, ed. Lawrence Delbert Cress (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 413.

  120 switched their tactics: Irving W. Levinson, Wars Within Wars: Mexican Guerrillas, Domestic Elites, and the United States of America, 1846–1848 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2005), 34–35; Mark Saad Saka, Peasant Nationalism and Social Unrest in the Mexican Huasteca, 1848–1884 (Houston: University of Houston Press, 1995), 176–85.

  120 “for the establishment of”: Levinson, Wars Within Wars, 34–35.

  120 stunning attack: Bauer, Mexican War, 218.

  120 “an indiscriminate slaughter”: S. Compton Smith, M.D., Chile Con Carne; or, The Camp and the Field (New York: Miller & Curtis, 1857), 161–62.

  120 tied to a prickly pear: Livermore, War with Mexico Reviewed, 145–46.

  121 “dreadfully wounded”: Smith, Chile con Carne, 107–09.

  121 “murder the soldiers”: J. Jacob Oswandel, Notes on the Mexican War (Philadelphia: J. Jacob Oswandel, 1885), 215–16.

  121 the guerrillas were heroes: Albert C. Ramsay, ed., The Other Side; or, Notes for the History of the War Between Mexico and the United States (New York: John Wiley, 1850), 441.

  121 while they huddled inside: Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 124.

  121 twenty-four Mexicans: Bauer, Mexican War, 220; Joseph Wheelan, Invading Mexico: America’s Continental Dream and the Mexican War (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007), 293.

  121 “wave of vengeance” . . . “desolation and ruin”: Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, 36.

  121 “desolation and death”: Ramsay, ed., The Other Side, 442.

  122 captured by the British: Allan Peskin, Winfield Scott and the Profession of Arms (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003), 27–29.

  122 In the decade thereafter: Ibid., 63–67.

  122 the Napoleonic Wars of Europe: Timothy D. Johnson, Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 166–69.

  122 Taylor had long complained: House Exec. Doc. no. 60, p. 1138; Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair, 121–23.

  123 “to take cognizance”: House Exec. Doc. no. 60, pp. 369–70, 1265.

  123 Scott thought Marcy’s advice: Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-Gen. Winfield Scott (New York: Sheldon & Co., 1864), 2: 392–93 n.

  123 no need for legislation: Henry O. Whiteside, “Winfield Scott and the Mexican Occupation: Policy and Practice,” Mid-America 52 (1970): 102, 106.

  123 “too explosive”: Scott, Memoirs, 2: 393.

  123 “the terrier mumbles”: Ibid., 2: 394.

  123 “military commissions”: General Orders No. 20, February 19, 1847, BL.

  123 He distributed the order widely: General Orders No. 87, April 1, 1847, House Exec. Doc. No. 56, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 104 (Vera Cruz); General Orders No. 190, June 26, 1847, NARA (Puebla); General Orders No. 287, September 17, 1847, NARA (Mexico City).

  123 303 Americans: David Glazier, “Precedents Lost: The Neglected History of the Military Commission,” Virginia Journal of International Law 46 (2005): 5, 37.

  124 “chivalric generosity”: Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas, 32.

  124 “Mexican capital was not conquered”: Emma Willard, Last Leaves of American History: Comprising a Separate History of California (New York: George P. Putnam, 1849), 97–98.

  124 “It would be a blessing”: Ethan Allen Hitchcock, “Commentary on Winfield Scott’s Campaign” (n.p., n.d.), 89–90, BL.

  124 “inhabitants of the hostile country”: House Exec. Doc. no. 60, p. 1266.

  124 a term of art that excluded soldiers: See Charles James, A Collection of the Charges, Opinions, and Sentences of General Courts Martial (London: T. Egerten, 1820), 191, 569 (describing parties as either soldiers or “inhabitant[s]”); William Hough, The Practice of Courts-Martial (London: Kingsbury, Parbury & Allen, 2nd ed., 1825), 368, 796 (same as James, also listing names in index as “inhabitant” if not a soldier); Thomas Frederick Simmons, Remarks on the Constitution and Practice of Courts Martial (London: F. Pickney, 2nd ed., 1835), 27, 41–44 (describing parties as either soldiers or “inhabitant[s]”).

  124 “injuries committed . . .”: Correspondence Between the Secretary of War and Generals Scott and Taylor, House Exec. Doc. 56, 30th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1848), 127.

  124–25 “hardly recognized as a legitimate”: House Exec. Doc. no. 60, p. 1007.

  125 attacks by “robbers”: Ibid., p. 1201.

  125 “guerrilla parties”: Levinson, Wars Within Wars, 67.

  125 “as many Mexicans”: Walter P. Lane, The Adventures and Recollections of General Walter P. Lane, a San Jacinto Veteran (Marshall, TX: Herald Print, 1887), 48.

  125 to execute the guerrilla leader: Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress, at the Commencement of the Second Session of the Thirtieth Congress. December 5, 1848, House Exec. Doc. no. 1, 30th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Washington, DC: Wendell & Van Benthuysen, 1848), 100.

  125 styled as “councils of war”: Erika Myers, “Conquering Peace: Military Commissions as a Lawfare Strategy in the Mexican War,” American Journal of Comparative Law 35 (2008): 201, 229–30.

  125 Some 6,825 American soldiers: John Whiteclay Chambers III et al., eds., Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 212.

  125 twenty-one accused recruiters: Glazier, “Precedents Lost,” 37.

  125 “almost always death”: Myers, “Conquering Peace,” 230.

  126 “atrocious bands”: General Orders No. 372, Dec. 12, 1847, NARA.

  126 not a single surviving record: Myers, “Conquering Peace,” 230.

  126 “guerrilla warfare”: William Winthrop, Military Law and Precedents (Boston: Little, Brown, 2nd ed., 1896), 2: 1299.

  126 “without the sanction”: Myers, “Conquering Peace,” 233.

  127 “of guarding against the mischief”: Vattel, Law of Nations, bk 3, §179, p. 375.

  127 by k
nights from around Europe: M. H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965).

  127 dwindled into insignificance: William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1768; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 3: 68.

  127 charged him with treason: Sidney B. Fay, “The Execution of the Duc D’Enghien (II),” American Historical Review 4, no. 1 (1898): 21, 26 (describing the charge that d’Enghien had “borne arms against the republic”).

  127 “worse than a crime”: Ibid., 37.

  127 executed Don Giovanni Batista: Raoul Guêze et al., La Rivolta anti-Francese Delle Calabrie, 1806–1813 (Cosenza, Italy: Editoriale Progetto, 2000); Milton Finley, The Most Monstrous of Wars: The Napoleonic Guerrilla War in Southern Italy, 1806–1811 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 139.

  128 “to animadvert upon them”: Blackstone, Commentaries, 3: 68.

  129 elaborate taxonomies: Vattel, Law of Nations, bk 2, §§339–54, pp. 281–89.

  129 “the established usages”: Henry Wheaton, Elements of International Law: With a Sketch of the History of the Science (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard, 1836), 253–54.

  129 “a Penal or Criminal Law”: Francis Lieber to Henry Halleck, October 3, 1863, FLP HL.

  129 “the cold steel of the bayonet”: Elbridge Colby, “War Crimes,” Michigan Law Review 23 (1925): 482, 496.

  129 “soldiers who employ means”: G. F. von Martens, Summary of the Law of Nations: Founded on the Treaties and Customs of the Modern Nations of Europe, trans. William Cobbett (London: William Cobbett, 1795), bk 3, ch. 3, §6, pp. 284–85.

  129 “personally guilty”: Vattel, Law of Nations, bk 3, §150, p. 353.

  129 foreign military recruiters and assassins: Vattel, Law of Nations, bk 3, §15, p. 298; bk 3 §155, 357–61.

  129 “not a relationship”: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 46–47.

  130 “a universal right of war”: Scott, Memoirs, 575.

  130 “ought to be confined”: James Kent, Commentaries on American Law (New York: O. Halsted, 1826–30), 1: 88.

  130 “nothing wrong in the rule”: Thomas Maitland Marshall, “Diary and Memoranda of William L. Marcy,” American Historical Review 24, no. 3 (1919): 444, 459 n. 23.