A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 6, part 2: Andrew Johnson
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A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 6, part 2: Andrew Johnson
Johnson, Andrew, 1808-1875; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
The subjects over which this military jurisdiction is to extend in every
part of the United States include protection to "all employees, agents,
and officers of this bureau in the exercise of the duties imposed" upon
them by the bill. In eleven States it is further to extend over all
cases affecting freedmen and refugees discriminated against "by local
law, custom, or prejudice." In those eleven States the bill subjects any
white person who may be charged with depriving a freedman of "any civil
rights or immunities belonging to white persons" to imprisonment or
fine, or both, without, however, defining the "civil rights and
immunities" which are thus to be secured to the freedmen by military
law. This military jurisdiction also extends to all questions that may
arise respecting contracts. The agent who is thus to exercise the office
of a military judge may be a stranger, entirely ignorant of the laws of
the place, and exposed to the errors of judgment to which all men are
liable. The exercise of power over which there is no legal supervision
by so vast a number of agents as is contemplated by the bill must, by
the very nature of man, be attended by acts of caprice, injustice, and
passion.
The trials having their origin under this bill are to take place without
the intervention of a jury and without any fixed rules of law or
evidence. The rules on which offenses are to be "heard and determined"
by the numerous agents are such rules and regulations as the President,
through the War Department, shall prescribe. No previous presentment is
required nor any indictment charging the commission of a crime against
the laws; but the trial must proceed on charges and specifications. The
punishment will be, not what the law declares, but such as a
court-martial may think proper; and from these arbitrary tribunals there
lies no appeal, no writ of error to any of the courts in which the
Constitution of the United States vests exclusively the judicial power
of the country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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