|
Article Excerpt
While at camp on Folly Island, South Carolina, on May 1, 1864, Wallace Baker of the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry mutinied against Lt. Thomas F. Ellsworth, a twenty-three-year-old from Massachusetts. Slightly younger and hailing from Kentucky, Baker's outburst arose when Ellsworth sent him to his quarters for arriving at an inspection unprepared. Baker returned before Ellsworth dismissed the company and, exasperated at his command's laughter, the lieutenant repeatedly ordered Baker to his tent. In response, Baker muttered that he would "be damned" to do so before manifesting his racial frustration and demand for equal standing: "Lieutenant," Baker exclaimed, "I won't stand to attention for you or any other damned white officer." At that, Ellsworth angrily seized Baker by the collar and the incident turned into a full-out brawl before the lieutenant gained the advantage and escorted Baker to the guardhouse. (1)
Baker's commanders knew why trouble simmered within the unit. The men refused to accept the pay offered them because it was lower than that paid to whites and now, letters from home reached the troops. The fact that "parents, wives, children and sisters" suffered while "we, their natural protectors, are fighting the battles of the nation" weighed heavily on many black soldiers' minds. Recounting the tears one comrade shed upon reading a letter from his sick wife, a member of the 55th vowed that "patience has an end," though he also declared that black soldiers could not accept anything except equal pay from the federal government if they were to stand as American citizens and assured that "we have been tried in the fire both of affliction and of the rebels, and nothing remains but pure metal." Alternating between impatience, anger, defiance, and pride, this soldier ran the gamut of emotions connected with his unit's act of resistance, a microcosm of the experience of black troops during the war. (2)
The pay disparity undermined army discipline but also energized black soldiers' demands for equal treatment. In February 1864, Col. Alfred Hartwell received an anonymous letter declaring that his 55th Massachusetts would stack arms if they did not soon receive pay. Less than two weeks before Baker's incident, a mutiny erupted as Sampson Goliah defied white officers, while other soldiers revolted. A week after Baker's mutiny, Hartwell and another officer testified at Goliah's court-martial and cited the pay issue as the salient cause of tension within the regiment. In a successful plea to spare the defendant from execution, the prosecutor did the same. As other white officers came to realize, black soldiers mutinied not out of nervous energy generated by camp malaise or the privations of combat service but as political action undertaken by men who felt newly entitled by their wearing of the uniform. (3)
A court-martial comprised mostly of the same officers who tried Goliah convened to try Baker for mutiny; the same man who prosecuted and successfully argued against punishing Goliah with death served as judge advocate. Influenced by its perception of an increasingly rebellious spirit in the regiment, however, the court went beyond simple imprisonment in Baker's case. Instead, as did many other courts-martial that dealt with black mutineers, the panel that tried Baker attempted to balance between the legitimacy of the men's frustration while also maintaining the rule of law and military discipline and it sentenced Baker to death. (4)
Nonetheless, Baker, a black soldier accused of committing grave crimes, received due process, an opportunity for defense counsel, and questioned both a white officer and fellow African Americans--a level of procedural fairness surprisingly typical of general courts-martial of black soldiers. Ellsworth testified first and, having declined counsel, Baker directly questioned him with assistance from Judge Advocate James M. Walton, a twenty-five-year-old Philadelphia lawyer. Although ineffective as a defense, the moment proved significant in that a black soldier cross-examined his white lieutenant in judicial proceedings. Similarly dramatic was Pvt. Henry Way's testimony, not so much for his corroboration of Ellsworth's testimony but because he, as a black witness for the prosecution, played an integral role in the judicial proceedings. Baker then questioned several black defense witnesses, who admitted that they considered Baker "awkward" and "foolish," with a "strange" way of addressing people and a tendency to reply to officers as if they were ordinary men. (5)
Baker offered no final statement and the court found him guilty and condemned him to death, a sentence well within its purview regardless of any mitigating factors about Baker's mental sophistication. However, both George Stephens, a black soldier of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, and Charles Fox, lieutenant colonel of the 55th Massachusetts Infantry, squarely blamed Baker's insubordination in the first place on the unjust treatment and racism endured by black soldiers. Meanwhile, Baker's execution in June did little to quell dissidence within the regiment: in July, seventy-four of its soldiers wrote President Lincoln and ominously warned that if their grievances went unresolved, "we will Resort to more stringent mesures." (6)
Traditional generalizations assume that racism pervaded the treatment of black Civil War soldiers even in the official military justice system. Historians examining this particular issue, however, have differed on whether general courts-martial provided black defendants with procedural fairness and treatment equal to that afforded white soldiers. Ira Berlin noted that army regulations applied to both whites and blacks and provided both with safeguards. He additionally noted that general courts-martial accordingly afforded blacks substantially more rights than slaves ever claimed. Joseph T. Glatthaar saw the general courts-martial of black soldiers as less consistent in procedure and sentencing than Berlin and maintained that race represented a critical factor in executions, but he also admitted that a review of capital-level courts-martial proceedings revealed a "surprising degree of fairness." (7)
Steven J. Ramold more critically appraises the army's administration of justice, contrasting "intense racism and stereotyping" in the Union army with the navy's "highly credible record of race relations during the Civil War" based on integrated crews, equal pay, benefits, and health care. Ramold overstates his position, however, by contending that the army "frequently" failed to follow proper procedures. While finding that the navy went to "great lengths to preserve individual rights," and possibly granted black sailors preferential treatment in courts-martial, Ramold cites the same safeguards that army general courts-martial provided defendants. (8)
While endemic racism in the Union army tainted the disciplinary process on other levels, the records reveal that officers on general court-martial panels wrestled with providing fair judicial process to black defendants while maintaining discipline so that African American soldiers received equal treatment and justice in cases involving capital-level crimes. While most mutineers' protests were well grounded in legitimate grievances (and for that reason some may argue with merit that they were unfairly punished at all), that did not change the gravity of their crime in the eyes of military law. Nonetheless, in many cases, authorities consciously tried to avoid imposition of the death penalty even where the Articles of War called for it.
Moreover, the records allow insight into the lives and voice of black soldiers on both a public and personal level as well as reveal how courts-martial became an important intersection and forum for debate at a moment when blacks and whites struggled with the fluid contours and definitions of African Americans' changing status. Thus, Brig. Gen. James S. Brisbin, a Pennsylvania abolitionist, newspaper editor, and attorney, who obtained a commission in the regular army early in the war, argued during his representation of a soldier accused of murder that the country's collective treatment of blacks transferred blame for their crimes to whites. Brisbin conceded proof of the crime but argued that the country held responsibility for it "because we have permitted this man to be made a beast of burden and an ignorant savage hesitating between right and wrong, vacilating [sic] between bad and good." The court should not sentence the defendant to death, Brisbin asserted, because its members had been party to the "barbarism of the age," which led to his degraded status. "We made him what he is," Brisbin continued, "We blinded him and that made him the ignorant wretch he is." The judge advocate, also a self-described "radical abolitionist," replied by offering that freeing and arming the slaves gave them individual responsibility and placed them on the path from subjugation to equality. The judge advocate effectively contended, 'I am not responsible when a negro commits murder. You are not responsible," and claimed it an error that "our object has been to free the slaves ... simply to allow them to run wild and kill people and then say, that they have been slaves and are irresponsible." "Our object has been to raise up the negro," reminded Lt. Col. William H. Coyl of the 9th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, "put a gun in his hand, and make him useful to free him; to make him a man, as responsible as we are, for every act." Because they now stood "on the broad platform of 'rights to all,' and say that the negro is able to take care of himself," Coyl found Brisbin's plea "miserable" and misplaced. These words clinched the defendant's death sentence and on June 13, 1865, a black Union soldier and a white civilian guerrilla were hanged together at Louisville, Kentucky. (9)
Both in the act of revolting as well as in defending against subsequent charges, black soldiers loudly entered this debate regarding their status, refuting their past as slaves now to claim rights as freedmen, soldiers, and citizens. African Americans thus turned the court into an important junction on the road to freedom and citizenship even where it punished those who violated military law. Some cases show the extent to which blacks protested perceived inequities committed by the government, particularly unequal pay or arbitrary treatment by superior officers. These cases reflect black anger at white discrimination, but they also demonstrate how the empowerment some African Americans felt upon donning the Union uniform led them to rebel against further injustice. These black soldiers demanded, sometimes at the cost of their lives, equal treatment and rights and, in so doing, made an argument that blacks had an equal place in the polity and in the army that protected it. In this way, African American mutineers embraced an alternative legal order, seeking to change laws distinguishing between whites and blacks and to bring official law and practices into conformity with their vision. These soldiers situated themselves as United States citizens by opposing discrimination, defying legal precedents that failed to acknowledge their equality, and actively supporting their interpretation of legal meanings and practices. (10)
Along with congressional legislation, the Articles of War defined the means by which the army administered justice during the Civil War. A regiment's or garrison's commander could appoint courts-martial consisting of three officers to try soldiers charged with noncapital crimes. Regimental or garrison courts-martial could order corporal punishment but could neither try a commissioned officer nor inflict a fine exceeding one month's pay, nor sentence to imprisonment or hard labor for a term longer than a month. A single officer in a regiment could be detailed to form a field officer court, created by Congress during the Civil War to allow for summary disposition of minor cases while a unit served on active field service. (The field officer court technically replaced regimental and garrison courts-martial, but regimental courts remained in use well after promulgation of the relevant legislation.) With identical jurisdiction as a regimental court-martial, the field officer court was to forward more serious cases to a general court-martial. General courts-martial also had jurisdiction over capital-level cases and those involving officers and could be appointed only by the commander of an army, military division, or department, or by the president. A general court-martial was to have thirteen members, though a lesser number could be detailed so long as the panel consisted of at least five members (and while members could be temporarily relieved for good cause, a panel could not conduct proceedings once its number fell below five sitting members). No death sentence could be imposed unless two-thirds of the members concurred, though other available punishments included confinement, hard labor, the wearing of a ball and chain, pay forfeiture, discharge, and reduction to the ranks for noncommissioned officers. Finally, military commissions could be convened with a minimum of three officers on the panel. These smaller bodies usually dealt with civilians in places where civil courts had ceased to function and had jurisdiction over soldiers during time of war or rebellion in cases of spying, murder, manslaughter, mayhem, robbery, arson, burglary, rape, and other serious crimes not of a purely military nature as defined in the Articles of War. Military commissions could impose capital punishment. (11)
While not provided for in the regulations, higher authorities occasionally ordered drumhead courts-martial, despite regulations that no soldier should suffer death except by concurrence of two-thirds of the members of a general court-martial. Although the availability of records and extent to which executions were reported makes certainty difficult, it seems that, contrary to conventional wisdom, few of the proceedings involving execution of black soldiers were drumhead in nature. More common, if just as severe, were instances in which officers lawfully shot men without trial. For example, Lt. Col. Harai Robinson of the First Louisiana Cavalry believed "decisive action" necessary when the Second Rhode Island Cavalry mutinied in late August 1863 to protest orders to consolidate with the Louisianan unit (both were white regiments). Robinson surrounded...
|
