An Interesting Site

While doing some updating to my Rush’s Lancers manuscript this evening to incorporate some of the material that I put up last night on Albert P. Morrow, I noticed that Morrow’s service records indicated that while he was a POW the last time, he was charged with a violation of Article 42 of the Articles of War. Now mind you, I may be a lawyer, but I’m not particularly familiar with the Articles of War as they existed in 1863. In fact, my knowledge of them is minimal at best. So, in order to describe this episode accurately in the footnote, I had to find out precisely what he was being charged with doing.

Consequently, I did a Google search to see if I could find the 1863 version of the Articles of War in order to determine precisely the nature of the charges against Morrow. I found a nice AOL member site that includes both the Union and Confederate Articles of War. Both sets of Articles are repeated there verbatim, and it was interesting to compare and contrast them. They are quite similar, with the obvious exception of how they deal with the issue of runaway slaves and contrabands.

Article 42 of the Union version provides: “No officer or soldier shall be out of his quarters, garrison, or camp without leave from his superior officer, upon penalty of being punished, according to the nature of his offense, by the sentence of court-martial.” Thus, when Morrow was arrested, he was charged with being AWOL from the time he was captured on May 13 until he reported back to the regiment. Those charges were dropped immediately upon his showing that his being AWOL was as a result of his being a guest in Libby Prison.

It’s an interesting site that provides useful information.

Dr. Tom Lowry has done some interesting work on Lincoln’s interventions to commute the death sentences of soldiers sentenced to die by courts-martial, on the court-martials of 50 Union surgeons, and on the court-martials of 50 Union lieutenant colonels and colonels. Obviously, the Articles of War–long since supplanted by the Uniform Code of Military Justice–provided the framework for these court-martials, so it’s clear that there is interest in these legal issues. Lowry’s done good work. Check it out if this legal stuff interests you.