War Crimes and Punishment

When discussing war crimes during the War between the American States, it seems that only the United States soldiers who are guilty of war crimes are discussed among groups. The reason I believe Confederate soldier related war crimes are never discussed is *not* because all the Confederates were Southern gentlemen like others have suggested to me before. It's because the full transcripts of Confederate courts-martial were sent to Richmond, Virginia for filing and at the fall of Richmond, Virginia in April of 1865, any pretense of record preservation went out the window.....literally.

 

Official documents, pamphlets, etc were scattered in the streets of Richmond. Confederate bonds, Confederate notes, bank checks, and bills flecked and whitened the street in every direction. All so worthless that the boys would not pick them up. Shortly there after, the Confederates set fire to their own capital and it would seem that the full texts of Confederate court-martial's are gone forever.......There is some proof of Confederate-related war crimes however.

 

Some clarification of the issue is seen in a letter from Confederate Secretary of the State, Judah P. Benjamin to the governor of Virginia, John Letcher:

 

"There are in the (Confederate) Army, unfortunately, some desperate characters--men gathered from the outskirts and purlieus of large cities--who take advantage of the absence of civil authorities to commit crimes, even murder, rape, and highway robbery, on the peaceful citizens in the neighborhood of the armies. For these offenses, the punishment should be inflicted by civil authorities...The crimes committed by these men are not military offenses. If a soldier, rambling through the country murders a farmer or violates the honor of his wife or daughter (i.e. rape), courts-martial cannot properly take cognizance of the offense..."

 

In the disruption of war, the Virginia state and county governments were hardly able to catch, confine, and punish these miscreant Confederate soldiers. Judah begged the Virginia state legislature for "..."protection to Virginians". This would seem to be a major abdication of responsibility by the Confederate War Department. Judah's letter may be the key to the paucity of recorded Confederate rapes: the Confederate armies would not prosecute and the Confederate States could not prosecute. Certainly the United States punished U.S. soldiers for crimes against civilians, hanging and shooting dozens of Federal soldiers, and there are tons of documents that prove that.

 

An example of the official U.S. position is seen in General Orders No. 12, form the Department of the Rappahannock on May 16th, 1862 issued by Major General Irwin McDowell.

 

"The punishment for rape will be death; and any violence offered a female, white or colored, with the evident intent or purpose to commit a rape, will be consider one, and punished accordingly."

 

The Division commanders were empowered to order immediate execution by hanging--or by shooting "if hanging should not be convenient."

 

The problem with the United States Military however in regards of war crimes is that in many, MANY cases.....the men in charge would look the other way when crimes by their men were committed. Or there were corrupt judges, and in some cases, men who were found guilty were given *VERY* light punishments.

 

One of the many disturbing things that often would happen is whenever a white Union soldier would rape a white or black woman, in some cases, as I typed, his commanding officer would either look the other way or give him a light punishment, BUT if a *black* Union soldier raped a white woman - He was dead. In every case. He'd either get shot on the spot, or he'd be brought up on charges, and hang. But it was okay for black men of course to rape black women. His superiors would look the other way then.....but if he touched a white woman, Southern woman or not, he was a dead man. I've yet to read a case of where a black Union troop ever got a light punishment for raping a white woman during the American Civil War, but there are plenty of cases of white Union soldiers getting away with raping white women.

 

That scene in "Glory" where Col. James M. Montgomery (played by Cliff De Young) laughs as he watches one of his black soldiers hurting a black woman, but then gets real serious and shoots that same soldier before warning him - ("Hey fella! Take your hands off the white lady!") for hurting a white woman.....depicts this disturbing case of racism and injustice very well.

 

All rapists deserve death in my view, including the white ones. And there were indeed cases of justice and evidence of United States troops of all colors being punished properly for their crimes, and that evidence is found in the records.

 

In closing -

 

The Union (*officially*) hanged rapists; The Confederacy ignored them. Why the Confederacy chose to give free rein to the brutal crime of rape is a deeply disturbing mystery. If it was a manifestation of states rights, the consequence was to protect criminals who wore gray.

 

Now again - I am not saying that it excuses what some of the U.S. troops did. I am just trying to make a point that this is a sad case of human nature, and where a man lives or a man's accent or the color of his uniform or clothing or the color skin he wears has nothing to do with what choices he makes.

 

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Misbehavior-Civil-War-Compendium/dp/142571949X

Originally posted by Scamp Zeeboe, what is  your opinion on the kidnapping of hundreds of Confederate women from the Roswell Georgia mill by General Sherman's army? No one of the Union soldiers was punished for this. The thread appears on this very page.

 

My opinion is, is that it was horrible. Just like war crimes commited against Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops during the Vietnam War were horrible, and the war crimes commited at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib by U.S. troops were horrible. However, all of the above actions do not and should not reflect the entire United States of America, the entire United States Military, and the entire United States Government.

 

Originally posted by Cryptic I think it has far more to do with the fact that Confederates had far fewer opportunities to rape women than their union counterparts.

 
Or......

Originally posted by Zeeboe The full transcripts of Confederate courts-martial were sent to Richmond, Virginia for filing and at the fall of Richmond, Virginia in April of 1865, any pretense of record preservation went out the window.....literally.   Official documents, pamphlets, etc were scattered in the streets of Richmond. Confederate bonds, Confederate notes, bank checks, and bills flecked and whitened the street in every direction. All so worthless that the boys would not pick them up. Shortly there after, the Confederates set fire to their own capital and it would seem that the full texts of Confederate court-martial's are gone forever.......There is some proof of Confederate-related war crimes however.   Some clarification of the issue is seen in a letter from Confederate Secretary of the State, Judah P. Benjamin to the governor of Virginia, John Letcher:   "There are in the (Confederate) Army, unfortunately, some desperate characters--men gathered from the outskirts and purlieus of large cities--who take advantage of the absence of civil authorities to commit crimes, even murder, rape, and highway robbery, on the peaceful citizens in the neighborhood of the armies. For these offenses, the punishment should be inflicted by civil authorities...The crimes committed by these men are not military offenses. If a soldier, rambling through the country murders a farmer or violates the honor of his wife or daughter (i.e. rape), courts-martial cannot properly take cognizance of the offense..."   In the disruption of war, the Virginia state and county governments were hardly able to catch, confine, and punish these miscreant Confederate soldiers. Judah begged the Virginia state legislature for "..."protection to Virginians". This would seem to be a major abdication of responsibility by the Confederate War Department. Judah's letter may be the key to the paucity of recorded Confederate rapes: the Confederate armies would not prosecute and the Confederate States could not prosecute.

The United States of America was born out of revolution, and if Southerners had been injured seriously, and were being governed without their consent, they had no less a natural right of revolution then the Americans of 1776 had.

Originally posted by Scamp Originally posted by Cryptic   I agree. As a side note, the U.S. military as a whole (ubber patriots aside) has never demanded that U.S. civilians blindly affirm or blindly support military actions. Instead, they have simply requested is that criticism be repectful. During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration arrested thousands and thousands of US civilians who dared not to blindly support Lincoln's war. Some of these people merely spoke out against the war. These civilians were arrested for disloyalty and held in military prisons without trial, some for years.

The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is justified by the Constitution for the United States of America. The United States Constitution says in Article I, Section 9, Clause 2, that the writ of habeas corpus may be suspended in time of a foreign invasion or a domestic rebellion if the public safety requires it, and if there ever was a case of a domestic rebellion against the United States of America, it was the American Civil War.

 

To remind ourselves of the dangers confronting President Lincoln and the United States Government in early 1861, I would like, if I may please, to recall Mr. Lincoln's trip to Washington D.C., Maryland, prior to his inauguration and the first days of his presidency.
 
President Lincoln departed from his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, on February 11th, 1861, traveling by train on a meandering route to Washington D.C., Maryland, with multiple stops along the way. At that time, six southern states had already passed ordinances of secession. (Texas would soon become the seventh on February 23), and rumors were spreading that Southern sympathizers might attempt to harm President Lincoln and prevent his inauguration.
 
When President Lincoln's train stopped in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he received credible reports of a plot to assassinate him. This persuaded him to take precautions during the reminder of the trip. Mr. Lincoln arrived in Washington, D.C., safely under the cover of the night, but his troubles only grew worse.
 
The day after his inauguration on March 4th, he received word from Major Robert Anderson, the commanding officer of the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter located in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, that the provisions for troops there would last no more then four weeks. The fort was badly in need of resupply. After agonizing about whether to send provisions, and unaware that Secretary of State, William Seward had already promised emissaries to the Confederacy, without presidential authorization, that the fort be abandoned, President Lincoln finally decided to send supplies by ship. But before they could reach Fort Sumter, early in the morning of April 12th, General P.G.T. Beauregard of the Confederate forces in Charleston, South Carolina opened fire, bombarding the garrison until Anderson surrendered on the morning of April 14th.
 
President Lincoln had said in his inaugural address that the Federal Government would not assail anyone of the South, stating clearly to the Southerners, "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors."
 
With the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the South became the aggressor, and Mr. Lincoln quickly begin to prepare the U.S. Government to defend itself.
 
President Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteer troops. (Mr. Lincoln's old political nemesis, Mr. Stephen Douglas, spoke with him the night before and supported his decision to raise an army, but Mr. Douglas thought it would be wiser to call for two-hundred thousand volunteer troops.)
 
Soon, however, President Lincoln learned the extent of Confederate sympathy in places far removed from the Deep South, including Maryland, a slave state that bordered Washington, D.C., to the north. Maryland was critical for moving United States troops from Northern states to Washington, D.C., because the rail lines from New York City, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg went through Baltimore.
 
When the first numbers of U.S. troops arrived in Baltimore, Maryland on April 18th, 1861, Southern-sympathizing Marylanders stoned and harassed them. The following day, a full-scale riot broke out in the streets of Baltimore, Maryland.
 
In his book on President Lincoln and civil liberties, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist describes what happened when the next wave of troops attempted to pass through Baltimore, alarming the administration:
 
"Four days after Lincoln issued his call for volunteers, a Massachusetts regiment arrived from Philadelphia at Baltimore's President Street Station....The ninth car stopped momentarily, and in a trice all of it's windows were broken by rocks and stones....The mob placed rocks and sand on the horse-car tracks, and the solider's alighted and fell back to the station whence they had come....
 
[In front of them] was a mob of twenty-thousand Confederate sympathizers. The troops decided to fight their way through on foot, and the mob closed in behind as they marched...Soon the crowd loosed a volley of stones at the soldiers, who finally turned and fired their rifles into the crowd. In the final tally, sixteen people were killed, four soldiers and twelve civilians."
 
After that, Confederate sympathizers burned railroad bridges leading into Baltimore, effectively cutting off rail transportation into and through the city, and cut the telegraph lines between Baltimore and Washington to prevent further troops from entering the state.
 
On April 22, 1861, President Lincoln responded to a Baltimore committee that had requested he secure peace in Baltimore by stopping all U.S. troop movement through the city. Mr. Lincoln's frustration is manifested in his language:
 
"You, gentlemen, come here to me and ask for peace on any terms, and yet have no word of condemnation for those who are making war on us.
 
You express great horror of bloodshed, and yet would not lay a straw in the way of those who are organizing in Virginia and elsewhere to capture this city.
 
The rebels attack Fort Sumter, and your citizens attack troops sent to the defense of the Government, and the lives and property in Washington, and yet you would have me break my oath and surrender the Government without a blow.
 
There is no Washington in that – no Jackson in that – no manhood, nor honor in that. I have no desire to invade the South; but I must have troops to defend this Capital. Geographically it lies surrounded by the soil of Maryland; and mathematically the necessity exists that they should come over her territory.
 
Our men are not moles, and can't dig under the earth; they are not birds, and can't fly through the air. There is no way but to march across, and that they must do. But in doing this there is no need of collision.
 
Keep your rowdies in Baltimore, and there will be no bloodshed. Go home and tell your people that if they will not attack us, we will not attack them; but if they do attack us, we will return it, and that severely."
 
- President Abraham Lincoln
 
Believing that unless the mob violence in Baltimore was immediately contained, it might become impossible to transport troops to Washington, D.C. President Lincoln finally decided to suspend the writ of habeas corpus allowing rioters and those attacking troops and preventing their safe transportation through the city to be detained without approval from any court or judge.
 
On April 27, 1861, President Lincoln sent the following to General Winfield Scott, the commanding General of the Army of the United States.
 
"You are engaged in repressing an insurrection against the laws of the United States. If at any point on or in the vicinity of the military line which is now used between the city of Philadelphia via Perryville, Annapolis City and Annapolis Junction you find resistance which renders it necessary to suspend the writ of habeas corpus for the public safety, you personally or through the officer in command at the point where resistance occurs are authorized to suspend that writ."
 
Text of Mr. Lincoln's order:
 
"Whereas, It has become necessary to call into service, not only volunteers, but also portions of the militia of the States by draft, in order to suppress the insurrection existing in the United States, and disloyal persons are not adequately restrained by the ordinary processes of law from hindering this measure, and from giving aid and comfort in various ways to the insurrection.
 
Now, therefore, be it ordered, that during the existing insurrection, and as a necessary measure for suppressing the same, all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to the rebels against the authority of the United States, shall be subject to martial law, and liable to trial and punishment by courts-martial or military commission.
 
Second: That the writ of habeas corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested, or who are now, or hereafter during the rebellion shall be, imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prisons, or other place of confinement, by any military authority, or by the sentence of any court-martial or military commission.
 
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this Twenty-fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By the President.
 
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."
 
President Lincoln offered the first full explanation of his emergency wartime measures and addressed publicly the question of whether he had violated the United States Constitution in his July 4, 1861, message to the United States Congress assembled in special session. The most potent charge against Mr. Lincoln held that he had no authority to suspend the write of habeas corpus and thereby allow the detainment of citizens without benefit of judicial process. The charge stemmed from the assumption that the authority to suspend habeas corpus belonged strictly to the United States Congress because the provision is found in Article I of the United States Constitution, which creates and enumerates the power of the U.S. Congress.
 
In response President Lincoln noted that "the attention of the country has been called to the proposition that one who is sworn to "take care that the laws he faithfully executed', should not himself violate them." Mr. Lincoln emphasized that the oath he had taken as president required him to ensure that the laws were executed in ALL states, yet they "were being resisted, and failing of execution, in nearly one-third of the States." He then asked -
 
"Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear, that by the use of the means necessary to their execution, some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen’s liberty, that practically, it relieves more of the guilty, than of the innocent, should, to a very limited extent, be violated? To state the question more directly, are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?"
 
President Lincoln's question reveals the incredible dilemma of his situation as president. If a president faces the choice of violating one law or allowing all the laws of the U.S. Constitution and the constitutional union to go unenforced, what should he do? If he does nothing to resist the rebellion and allows the Union to fall, on the one hand, he fails to execute the laws and violates his oath of office.
 
On the other hand, if he suspends the writ of habeas corpus in order to detain those actively rebelling against the government or those offering assistance to the rebellion, he then will be accused of usurping constitutional powers assistance to the U.S. Congress, not the president.
 
President Lincoln believed that the United States Constitution was flexible enough to meet the extraordinary threats to it's own preservation.
 
In an 1864 letter to Albert Hodges, Mr. Lincoln explained:
 
"By general law, life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation."
 
In closing -
 
It is hard to imagine today, but in President Lincoln's time (when the United States government was much smaller and did much less then it does now) an entire session of Congress might last only a few months, or even only a few weeks. The Thirty-seventh Congress, which had been elected in November of 1860, was not slated to convene until more then a year later in December of 1861. With the bombing of Fort Sumter in April of 1861, President Lincoln had little choice but to begin fighting the war without approval from, or consultation with Congress. Exercising his power under Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, he called for Congress to convene in special session scheduled for July 4th, 1861, in order to ask for congressional approval for his emergency actions (which Congress promptly granted) and to request additional funding for the war effort.

 

 

 

Certainly everyone has a right to an opinion.

 

 

Even the southern secessionist revisionist...I have already noted that.

 

 

However he or she is quickly identified as a non user of the method and a practitioner of distortion..obsfucation...inaccurate factual statements and or a failure to present the record in an objective and sufficient fashion. In order... to supplant his or her apologia, revisionist agenda...hence the serious student, layman or professional and even beginner, rejects them and disregards their rhetoric.

 

 

This is mainstream academia and you should already know this.

 

If one chooses to accept that the more sensitive liberal position that POV and cultural development (while important factors for both the sociologist, anthropologist and historian) should trump the method. Then they are not only in error but are willingly and knowingly, or other, contributing to the perpetration of the uniformed or deliberately evasive and or blatantly fraudulent revisionists agenda imo. Consequently they, imo also, become failed revisionists as well. As well as demonstrating either their inexperience and or lack of educational qualifications and subject matter expertise, in a topic area, to render an opinion of either merit or value as that which would be demonstrated in academia even at the layman level. 

 

 

Or it's, as noted, a covert or overt willingness to render aid and comfort to the fraud. 

 

 

 

 

As for your constant penchant  disclaimers reference labelling and or identification of an individuals position or background, educational level-experience etc....we have had this discussion before. That's a common practice in life in general; not to mention academia at large...science and social sciences in particular, business, law and theology...and blogs and chat lines or historical forums to name but a few.

 

You might not approve but you will neither end it or discontinue it's use in the aforementioned areas of life.  At the level beyond k-8 it serves an identification purpose for discussion and the credibility of a response or position and not necessarily as you might advocate and or desire a detraction.

 

You often mention and I paraphrase.... that if you don't know much to offer an opinion you don't....but rather you wait and learn and gain more experience and knowledge.....sound advice.

 

 

And in the case of southern secessionist revisionists a necessary requirement......which alas they continue to ignore. Because in their non-objective crusade in defense of their POV and cultural development; they generally and inherently are demonstrating, known to themselves or not, the bigotries and rejections of countering opinions, facts, or representations and positions they either overtly and or covertly adhere to.

 

Consequently whether they are entitled to opinion or not and they are; they will, in most cases, continue to be rejected dismissed and identified....labelled if you will.... as not being of credible merit and value.

 

So in conclusion.... others might pursue this more sensitive approach as a course of action. I will continue to reject it for the charade it is....and supports.... when it's being used to support a fradulent agenda or a poorly attempted effort to revise history... along subjective and non method-objective use lines.