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Civil War Justice: Union Army Executions Under Lincoln

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In recent years there has been a tendency toward revisionism of the Civil War's most sainted heroes, especially President Abraham Lincoln. The revisionist beef with Lincoln is that he allegedly over reacted to political dissent by imposing martial law throughout the Union and ordering the arrest and indefinite incarceration in military prisons of thousands of political prisoners, including Democrat Congressmen, and perhaps even going so far as threatening the arrest of the Supreme Court.

The standard history, of course, is that Lincoln was a compassionate man whose instincts for humanity and mercy led him to mitigate many excesses of his over-zealous military commanders who were often prone to imposing overly harsh justice on their own authority. This view holds that Lincoln acted with extreme restraint and justice during an unprecedented national calamity for which there was no precedence.

I thought that CIVIL WAR JUSTICE would shed light on which viewpoint of Lincoln is more correct. Its Preface is decidedly anti-Lincoln: "This book...is a factual account of how Lincoln's lack of management skills, his vacillation in regard to military justice decisions, and his complete disregard of the Constitution caused the deaths of many Union soldiers...It is a frightening account of justice denied to hundreds of poor, uneducated soldiers who were tried, convicted, and executed for military offenses, sometimes trivial."

The rest of the book REFUTES this very premise! The first refutation is in the numbers. Out of over 2,000,000 men who served in the Union armies only 276 were executed for the crimes of murder, rape, desertion, and insubordination. That would be a remarkably low number for a civilian population in time of peace. it is astounding that in an army under military discipline in time of war that so few people were executed.

Statistics show that there were over 200,000 desertions from the Union armies, nearly 10% of those who served. In 1864 desertions from the Union armies averaged over 7,000 PER MONTH. Yet during the entire war only 147 men were executed for desertion. The book shows that most of these were for the most flagrant cases such as "bounty-jumpers" who deserted multiple times or men who deserted their posts during combat, endangering their comrades. Union commanders usually showed extreme leniency on the men who deserted and were later apprehended. There are many cases documented where President Lincoln pardoned deserters who were brought to his attention. In only ONE case that I read was there any indication that an execution was unjustified.

The Preface should have read: "This book...is a factual account of how justice was maintained in the Union armies during time of war, and of how the military commanders, often encouraged by Lincoln's own reputation for clemency, acted with extreme leniency toward most offenders."

This most interesting aspect of this rather dull book is the case-by-case study of the 200+ Union soldiers who were executed. As might be expect the overwhelming majority were men who committed heinous crimes against other soldiers or civilians, or men whose desertion was so blatant that NOT to execute them would have demoralized the entire army. Nothing thought-provoking about that.

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I've written my own novel Fire in the Heartland that explores Lincoln's character and administration of justice