Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2: From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860Blaine, James Gillespie
History
Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2: From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860
Blaine, James Gillespie
United States -- History; United States -- History -- 1865-1898
--Sixth, "All who have been engaged in treating otherwise than as
lawful prisoners of war, persons found in the United-States service as
officers, soldiers, or seamen." This was specially directed against
those who had maltreated negro troops and attempted, by personal
cruelty, to frighten them from the National service.
--Seventh, "All persons who have been, or are, absentees from the
United States for the purpose of aiding the Rebellion." The men who
had misled public opinion in England, and who hovered along the
Canadian border during the war, concocting schemes for burning Northern
cities, and for spreading the infection of yellow-fever and the plague
of small-pox in the loyal States, were especially aimed at in this
exclusion.
--Eighth, "All officers in the rebel service who had been educated at
the United-States Military or Naval Academy." These men had received
the bounty of the Government, shared its confidence, and were under
peculiar obligation to defend it.
--Ninth, "All men who held the pretended offices of governors of
States in insurrection against the United States." As the civil war
had for its basis the dogma of _State-rights_, the chief executive
officers of States represented in an especial manner the guilt of the
Rebellion.
--Tenth, "All persons who left their homes within the jurisdiction and
protection of the United States, and passed beyond the Federal military
lines into the pretended Confederate States for the purpose of aiding
the Rebellion." The personal guilt of these men lay in the fact that,
according to their own theory of _State-rights_, they were traitors.
They did not adhere to the States which gave them birth, or to the
States of which they were citizens.
--Eleventh, "All persons who have been engaged in the destruction of
the commerce of the United States upon the high seas, and all persons
who have been engaged in destroying the commerce of the United States
upon the lakes and rivers that separate the British Provinces from the
United States." The acts of these men were specially reprobated
because they did not proceed according to the laws of war. In the
popular mind they were held amenable to the charge of piracy.
--Twelfth, "All persons who, at the time when they seek to obtain
amnesty and pardon, are in military, naval, or civil confinement, as
prisoners of war, or persons detained for offenses of any kind either
before or after conviction." Many prisoners in the custody of the
Government were charged with acts of peculiar cruelty or perfidy,
especially with the committal of personal outrages which did not, in
any degree, affect the fortunes of the war, and were not therefore
entitled to the excuse of having been the necessities of a bad cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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