Today in History:

441 Series I Volume XXXIV-II Serial 62 - Red River Campaign Part II

Page 441 Chapter XLVI. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-UNION.

the adherents and supporters of the Confederate States. this law martial is nothing more nor less than the laws and usages of war, as established by the law of nations, modified to suit the particular service (military necessity) by the Commander-in-Chief of the nation.

Second. Missouri, as a political community, not having gone into rebellion against the Federal Government, the loyal citizens thereof are not subject to the law martial, as in the belligerent States. The loyal citizens of Missouri are entitled to all the constitutional guaranties and protection secured to citizens of the United States by the Constitution and law of the Federal Government; and for all offenses against law which do not change their character to insurgents against the Government, they should be, and of right ought to be, tried by the civil laws of the land and before the civil courts. Wherefore, the loyal people of Missouri, so long as they shall remain loyal, who may be charged with offenses against the laws, should be remitted and turned over to the civil courts having the proper jurisdiction. And I suggest that an order to that effect could no much to relieve the loyal people from oppression and intolerance of which they justly complain, and relieve the commander of the department from one of the causes of former complaints.

Third. Those who are disloyal and commit crimes in the character of insurgents, marauders, or guerrillas should be recognized as public enemies violating the laws of war, and punished by sentence of military commission. I use the term public enemy because it has a defined meaning, and fixes the character of those to whom it is applied. this contest is a civil war. For three years the Confederate States have maintained their declaration of independence by force of arms; although they have met with sad defeats, they are a belligerent power. The great powers of Europe have acknowledged them such, and what is still more, we have acknowledged them as belligerent ourselves. We have blockaded their ports, a belligerent. We have exchanged prisoners were bound together by a compact, a treaty obligation, which constituted them, perpetually, one government and one people, called the "Constitution." The war has cut asunder, de facto, all these obligations. When a republican nation is divided into two opposite factions, and both sides take up arms, this is called a civil war. the sovereign, indeed, never fail to bestow the appellation of rebels on all such of his subjects as openly resist him; but when the latter have acquired sufficient strength to give him effectual opposition, and oblige him to carry on the war against them according to the established rules, he must necessarily submit to the use of the term "civil war."

On earth they have no common tribunal; they stand precisely in the same predicament as two nations who engage in a contest, and being unable to come to an agreement, have recourse to arms. (Vattel, pp. 424, 425.)

The convention, the treaties made with a nation,a re broken or annulled by a war arising between the contending parties. (Ibid. B. 3, ch. 10, sec. 125.)

As a general rule, the obligation of treaties are dissipated by hostilities, &c. (1 Kent, 175, 176.)

The parties belligerent in a public war are independent nations, for all the purposes of the war. (Judge Grier.)

It is no loose, unorganized insurrection, having no defined boundaries or possession. It has a boundary marked by lines of bayonets, and which can be crossed


Page 441 Chapter XLVI. CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-UNION.