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Lincoln's Code Page 62

by John Fabian Witt


  214 Bates had long worried: Gideon Welles, Lincoln and Seward: Remarks Upon the Memorial Address of Chas. Francis Adams on the Late Wm. H. Seward (New York: Sheldon, 1874), 211; Gideon Welles, “The History of Emancipation,” Galaxy 14, no. 6 (1872): 838, 844.

  214 “stretching forth its hands” . . . “our last shriek”: F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1866), 20–22. Seward’s comments echoed Psalm 68:31 (“Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God”).

  215 “gave us the victory” . . . “in favor of the slaves”: Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, 1: 143.

  215 “forever free” . . . “actual freedom”: Basler, 5: 434.

  215 “We say we are for” . . . “God must forever bless”: Ibid., 5: 537.

  215 “The dogmas” . . . “save our country”: Ibid., 5: 537.

  216 “inflict on the non-combatant population”: OR, series 4, 2: 211.

  216 “not only his approval”: OR, series 1, 15: 907.

  216 “seeking to bring upon us”: Francis Richard Lubbock, Six Decades in Texas: or Memoirs of Francis Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in War Time, 1861–1863 (Austin, TX: Ben C. Jones & Co., 1900), 476.

  216 “that our homes should be burned”: Kate Mason Rowland and Agnes E. Croxall, eds., The Journal of Julia LeGrand, New Orleans 1862–1863 (Richmond, VA: Everett Waddey Co., 1911), 132.

  216 “an invitation to servile war”: “Domestic Intelligence,” Harper’s Weekly, October 18, 1862, p. 659.

  216 “all rules of civilized warfare” . . . “suffer death”: “The Rebel Congress on the Emancipation Proclamation—The Rules of Civilized Warfare to Be Ignored,” Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), October 29, 1862.

  216 “inconsistent with the spirit”: OR, series 2, 5: 940–41.

  216 “fight for such an accursed doctrine”: Sears, ed., Civil War Correspondence, 481.

  216 Louisville Journal observed angrily: Weekly Mountain Democrat (Placerville, CA), January 17, 1863 (quoting the Louisville Journal).

  216 “a servile war”: Thomas M. Monroe, “Slavery: Considered in Its Moral and Social Aspects,” Dubuque Herald, March 19, 1863.

  216 “the lusts of freed negroes”: Allen C. Guelzo, “Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863,” Civil War History 48, no. 4 (2002): 313, 320.

  216 “scenes of bloodshed”: Benjamin R. Curtis, Executive Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 1862), 13.

  217 Joel Parker: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 211.

  217 the salons of Britain and France: “Clip from London Paper,” Liberator, November 21, 1862; “Louis Napoleon’s Foreign Policy,” Independent, December 11, 1862, p. 4.

  217 “inviting the negroes”: Weekly Mountain Democrat (Placerville, CA), November 29, 1862.

  217 “under no circumstances”: Report of the Secretary of War, House Exec. Doc. no. 1, 37th Cong., 3d sess., in Executive Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives During the Third Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1863), 4: 19.

  217 “are, and henceforward” . . . “for reasonable wages”: Basler, 6: 29–30.

  217 “No servile insurrection”: Ibid., 7: 50.

  218 “as a fit and necessary” . . . “Almighty God”: Ibid., 6: 29–30.

  218 “merely a war measure”: John G. Whittier, Letters of Lydia Maria Child (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883), 171.

  218 “all the moral grandeur”: Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), 149.

  219 “vast and momentous”: Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, 70.

  Chapter 8. To Save the Country

  220 “To save the country”: Instructions, art. 5.

  220 As the moon sank low: Stephen V. Ash, Firebrand of Liberty: The Story of Two Black Regiments That Changed the Course of the Civil War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2008), 105–09.

  220 “not the phantom”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1870), 99.

  221 admirer of John Brown: Ibid., 4.

  221 Kansas jayhawker: Mary Thacher Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846–1906 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), 186. See also Keith Wilson, “In the Shadow of John Brown: The Military Service of Colonels Thomas Higginson, James Montgomery, and Robert Shaw in the Department of the South,” in John David Smith, ed., Black Soldiers in Blue: African-American Troops in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 306.

  221 arming Florida’s freedmen: OR, series 1, 14: 226.

  221 stunned residents: Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, March 27, 1863.

  221 “in mortal dread”: “Interesting from Port Royal,” New York Times, March 22, 1863.

  221 “a great volcano”: Higginson, Army Life, 99.

  221–22 “wretched business” . . . “force in the field”: “The Higginson Expeditions,” Newark Advocate (Newark, OH), March 27, 1863 (reprinted from the New York World).

  222 Stanton . . . in August: Higginson, 277–80.

  222 “consistent with the usages”: Ibid., 99.

  222 “partisan warfare”: Ibid., 167.

  222 “have none but civilized warfare”: Higgison, Letters and Journals, 207.

  222 Even before the announcement: E.g., OR, series 2, 3: 898–99.

  222 made execution or re-enslavement: OR, series 2, 5: 940–41.

  222 “Dere’s no flags” . . . “he fight in earnest”: Higginson, Army Life, 151.

  222 with such speed and skill: OR, series 1, 13: 227.

  222 “something far different”: Boston Daily Advertiser, March 31, 1863.

  223 The Confederacy had no need: On the Confederacy’s approach to law of war questions, see Daniel W. Hamilton, The Limits of Sovereignty: Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy During the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Stephen C. Neff, Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); and William Morrison Robinson, Justice in Grey: A History of the Judicial System of the Confederate States of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), 359–405.

  223 “the usages of civilized warfare”: Sequestration Act Passed by the Congress of the Confederate States, Approved August 30, 1861 (Richmond, VA: Tyler, Wise, & Allegre, Printers, 1861), 3; James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy (Nashville, TN: United States Publishing Co., 1905), 1: 104–05 (“usages of civilized nations”).

  223 championed broad rights for neutral shipping: Montague Bernard, A Historical Account of the Neutrality of Great Britain During the American Civil War (London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1870), 101; Richardson, ed., Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, 1: 104–12.

  223 an unlawful paper blockade: “Blockade,” Daily Picayune (New Orleans), July 14, 1861, 2.

  223 Declaration of Paris: Bernard, Historical Account, 185.

  223 gleefully mocked: Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, 1: 281.

  224 “departed from the usages”: Sequestration Act, 3.

  224 retaliatory Sequestration Act: Hamilton, Limits of Sovereignty, 89–139.

  224 “the desire of this Government”: Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, 2: 115–16.

  224 deny prisoner of war status: OR, series 2, 3: 898–99.

  224 “be no longer held and treated”: OR, series 1, 14: 599.

  224 bills that would have treated: Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1905), 5: 535–49; “The Rebel Congress on the Emancipation Proclamation,” Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), October 29, 1862.

  224 “negro slaves”: OR, series 2, 5: 795–97.

  225 John Stuart Mill had forcef
ully observed: John M. Robson, ed., Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–91), 21: 118.

  225 not the slaves but the slaveholders: J. E. Cairnes, The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs (New York: Carleton, 1862), 151–54.

  225 No state founded on: Basler, 6: 176–77.

  226 “It is not the North that is against you”: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Life and Letters of Francis Lieber (Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1882), 235.

  226 polygamy and concubinage: Ibid., 243.

  226 “The whole movement of history”: Ibid., 267.

  226 spent $1,150 on two slaves: Hartmut Keil, “Francis Lieber’s Attitudes on Race, Slavery, and Abolition,” Journal of American Ethnic History 28, no. 1 (2008): 13.

  226 “good looks”: Ibid.

  226 carefully checking their teeth: Ibid., 21.

  226 “fully one thousand dollars”: Frank Freidel, Francis Lieber: Nineteenth-Century Liberal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1947), 236.

  227 Lieber excused his ownership: Keil, “Francis Lieber’s Attitudes,” 13–14.

  227 defended southern slaveowners’ treatment: FL to Charles Sumner, October 27, 1835, box 40, FLP HL.

  227 “a proslavery man”: Perry, Life and Letters, 297.

  227 an international congress of jurists: FL to Charles Sumner, December 27, 1861, in ibid., 324–25.

  227 “a little book”: FL to Charles Sumner, August 19, 1861, box 42, FLP HL.

  227 Lieber took up the subject: “The Disposal of Prisoners,” New York Times, August 19, 1861.

  227 a creature of the laws: Law and Usages of War, No. VIII, 6 February 1862 [Notebook No. 8], folder 16, box 2, FLP JHU.

  227 “not exist in conquered Territories”: Perry, Life and Letters, 250.

  227 Lieber visited Fort Monroe: Matthew J. Mancini, “Francis Lieber, Slavery, and the ‘Genesis’ of the Laws of War,” Journal of Southern History 77, no. 2 (2011): 333.

  227 “contraband” . . . “amazingly”: Francis Lieber to Benson J. Lossing, January 21, 1866, box 2, FLP LC.

  227–28 “must be, and are” . . . “difference of skin”: FL to Charles Sumner, December 19, 1861, box 42, FLP HL.

  228 “step back and fight”: Francis Lieber to Benson J. Lossing, January 21, 1866, box 2, FLP LC.

  228 Following Montesquieu and Blackstone: Law and Usages of War, No. VII, 4 February 1862 [Notebook No. 7], folder 16, box 2, FLP JHU.

  228 “peculiar” laws: Law and Usages of War, No. VIII, February 6, 1862 [Notebook No. 8], folder 16, box 2, FLP JHU.

  228 collecting notes for his friend: FL to Charles Sumner, September 6, 1862, box 42, FLP HL.

  228 “men stand opposed” . . . “claiming our protection”: Francis Lieber, “The Duty of Provisional Governors,” New York Evening Post, June 20, 1862.

  228 “acknowledged law of war”: “Memoir on the Military Use of Colored Persons,” in FL to Henry Halleck, August 10, 1862, box 27, FLP HL.

  228 “one of the historic facts”: FL to Charles Sumner, June 10, 1863, FLP HL.

  229 armed “negro slaves”: OR, series 2, 5: 795–97.

  229 selling into slavery . . . begun to execute: FL to Charles Sumner, November 28, 1862, box 42, FLP HL.

  229 The reports, it turned out, were true: John David Smith, “Let Us All Be Grateful That We Have Colored Troops That Will Fight,” in Black Soldiers in Blue, 44.

  229 Radicals in the Senate: OR, series 2, 5: 9.

  229 The telegraph from Halleck: FL to Henry Halleck, December 7, 1862, box 27, FLP HL.

  229 “a code of regulations”: OR, series 3, 2: 951.

  229 “the most urgent issues”: FL to Henry Halleck, November 13, 1862, box 27, FLP HL; see also FL to Charles Sumner, August 18, 1861, box 42, FLP HL.

  229 confusion over the status of slaves: Francis Lieber to Benson J. Lossing, January 21, 1866, box 2, FLP LC; see Mancini, “Francis Lieber, Slavery, and the ‘Genesis’ of the Laws of War.”

  229 John Pope issued a set: James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 501.

  229 A second Confiscation Act: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 12 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1863), 589–92.

  230 reached out to Lieber: Joseph Holt to FL, February 20, 1863, box 11, FLP HL.

  230 a set of instructions for the treatment: Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field: Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U.S.A. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909), 441.

  230 new instructions: Paul J. Springer, America’s Captives: Treatment of POWs from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), 85.

  230 paroling thousands of U.S. troops: A manuscript roll of battlefield paroles from the Gettysburg campaign survives in the Huntington Library. See Isaac Avery, “List of Prisoners Captured at York, Penn., June 28, 1863,” box 2, Collection of James William Eldridge, 1797–1902.

  230 The Union protested: Mancini, “Francis Lieber, Slavery, and the ‘Genesis’ of the Laws of War”; FL to Charles Sumner, August 20, 1861, box 42, FLP HL.

  231 The board gave him wide discretion: R. R. Baxter, “The First Modern Codification of the Law of War,” International Review of the Red Cross 3 (1963): 171, 180–85; Memorandum: General Orders No. 100 of 1863, file no. 4275, box 23, Office of the Judge Advocate General Document File, 1894–1912, NARA.

  231 “I had no guide”: FL to Henry Halleck, February 20, 1863, in Perry, Life and Letters, 331.

  231 proliferation of military manuals: Peter Paret, The Cognitive Challenge of War: Prussia, 1806 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 88–91.

  231 in Lieber’s private library: George Friedrich Muller, Das Krieges oder Soldatenrecht (Berlin: Petit- and Schöneschen Bookshop, 1789), in box 7, Judge Advocate School Lieber Collection, Federal Research Division, LC.

  231 flags of truce and safe-conducts: Instructions, art. 86–87, 111–14.

  231 “already wholly disabled”: Ibid., art. 71.

  231 It authorized the execution: Ibid., art. 83, 88, 104.

  232 conscription of local guides: Ibid., art. 93–97.

  232 rules for prisoner exchanges: Ibid., art. 105–10.

  232 special yellow markings: Ibid., art. 115.

  232 “an outlaw”: Ibid., art. 148.

  232 “peaceful pursuits” . . . “robbers or pirates”: Ibid., art. 82.

  232 only valid if approved: Ibid., art. 128–30.

  232 “so plainly characterizes”: [A Note on] War [n.d.], box 19, FLP HL.

  232 “all soldiers”: Instructions, art. 49.

  232 “disgrace, by cruel imprisonment”: Ibid., art. 56.

  232 “plain and wholesome food”: Ibid., art. 76.

  232 No violence could be used: Ibid., art. 80.

  232 “extort confessions”: Ibid., art. 16.

  232 “a man is armed”: Ibid., art. 57.

  233 was subject to retaliation: Ibid., art. 59.

  233 “chief commander” could “permit”: A Code for the Government of Armies in the Field as Authorized by the Laws and Usages of War on Land, §35, p. 12, register no. 243077, Y Halleck II, HL.

  233 “permitted to direct his troops”: Instructions, art. 60.

  233 “known or discovered”: Ibid., art. 62.

  233 fought in enemy uniforms: Ibid., art. 65 & 83.

  233 “without any plain”: Ibid., art. 63.

  233 “the unarmed citizen”: Ibid., art. 22.

  233 “not a relationship between”: Victor Gourevitch, ed., Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1: 46.

  233 “the citizen or native”: Instructions, art. 21.

  233 the starving of noncombatants: Ibid., art. 17.

  233 bombard cities: Ibid., art. 19.

  233 “throw the burden of the war”: Ibid., art. 156.

  233 “acknowledge and protect
”: Ibid., art. 37.

  233 It gave special protections: Ibid., art. 34.

  234 “seized and removed”: Ibid., art. 36.

  234 to tax the population or billet soldiers: Ibid., art. 10, 37, 153.

  234 “for temporary and military uses”: Ibid., art. 37.

  234 “over-trained idea” . . . “nor ought it to be”: Law and Usages of War [1862], folder 18, box 2, FLP JHU.

  234 “useless destruction”: Francis Lieber, Law and Usages of War, unpublished MS [n.d.], folder 18, box 2, FLP JHU.

  234 “All captures and booty”: Instructions, art. 45.

  234 Neither “officers nor soldiers”: Ibid., art. 46.

  234 “lawful only as a means” . . . “civilized people”: [Francis Lieber], War and Peace: Destruction and Obstruction Characterize War; Production and Expanding Inter-Communication Distinguish Peace Among the Nations (1863), unpublished MS, box 19, FLP HL.

  234 “Unnecessary or revengeful”: Instructions, art. 68.

  234 “in great straits”: Ibid., art. 60.

  234 “as much as the contingencies”: Ibid., art. 116.

  234 “all cruelty and bad faith”: Ibid., art. 11.

  235 “admits of all direct destruction”: Ibid., art. 15.

  235 “Military necessity”: Ibid., art. 14.

  236 “When war is begun”: [Newspaper clipping], New York Evening Post, folder 18, box 2, FLP JHU.

  236 “The more vigorously wars”: Instructions, art. 29.

  236 “conventional restrictions of the modes”: Ibid., art. 30.

  236 “self-imposed, imperceptible”: Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard & Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 75.

  236 “To save the country”: Instructions, art. 5.

  236 “The law of war”: Ibid., art. 30.

  236 “torture to extort confessions”: Ibid., art. 16, 80.

  236 “If Indians slowly roast”: FL to Henry Halleck, December 21, 1864, box 28, FLP HU; see also Law and Usages of War, No. IV, December 17, 1861 [Notebook No. 4], folder 16, box 2, FLP JHU.

 

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