Ambrose Burnside Quotes
The commanding general publishes, for the information of all concerned, that hereafter all persons found within our lines who commit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country will be tried as spies or traitors, and, if convicted, will suffer death.
United States, War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Series I, Vol. 23, Part 2, Government Printing Office, 1889, p. 237.
President Lincoln reversed this order. Most Northerners however sided with Burnside on this point. They saw little point to protecting traitors who were helping to kill their neighbors by encouraging the Southerners.
The problem that was facing the nation in the early 21st century was when we captured a terrorist, was he a combatant or was he accused by a personal enemy, and had he been tortured to say he was a terrorist. The issue grew more complicated when terrorist suspects were brought to American territory at Guantanamo Bay, and the Courts have always held that a foreigner on American soil had a right to have access to the Federal Courts just as Citizens do. Complicating the situation more was the fact that a few American citizens had joined the terrorists and were they entitled to a civilian trial as all other Americans were.
While most modern armies treat officers and enlisted men who desert equally or even favor the officers, the Visigoths made desertion by an officer the severest of crimes. A centurion was the officer in charge of 100 men. There were 10 decurians (leaders of 10) under him, They were the modern equivalent of the Sergeants—non-commissioned officers. Their penalty for desertion was only the paying of a heavy fine. It was the officers who had to set the example. This set of laws is the most formalized and sophisticated compendium of laws of the so-called “barbaric peoples” of Europe. The compilation was in many ways a documentation of the traditional laws of the Visigoths that had evolved over hundreds of years.
When the Confederate Government realized that the Union was planning to arm escaped slaves and induct them into the Union Army, they quickly passed a law that declared any escaped slave who joined the Union Army or wore its uniform was guilty of Treason and would be executed. Most Union Generals one way or another got word to the Confederate Officers that they had better treat all Negro Union Soldiers as prisoners of war. Even President Lincoln warned the South. Butler, however, had a large number of Negro troops in his area and had heard threats of some of the Southerners to execute Black prisoners of war. He had a way of making things very clear, and he was able to prevent murder of any of his Negro troops despite the Treason law.
Power to legislate had just been given to Hitler and his cabinet.
When the Union army began using Blacks as recruits, the South threatened to execute any Negro soldier they captured. Some Southerners opposed execution but favored enslavement of captured Northern Black soldiers. The Lincoln threat seems to have worked, although Lincoln opposed executing Southern officers in retaliation for the atrocities at southern prisoner of war camps
Vallandigham was urging Union soldiers to refuse to fight and serve. Lincoln had to approve all the death sentences of deserters from the army and there were few duties that troubled him more … so much so that he even violated the 1st Amendment responsiblities he had sworn to uphold. Based in this precedent and others, President Woodrow Wilson jailed critics of the First World War including the labor leader Eugene Debs.
Ironically, until after the assassination of JFK, the United States did not have a specific crime against killing the President.
This is the earliest surviving attempt of the Romans to formulate a legal code.
This is a very important quotation historically. There are a few historians and many politicians who claim that the rebellion of the South in the Civil War was motivated by a number of principles having little or nothing to do with slavery, while most historians have found that slavery was the only major issue. This quote further supports that view. This is the only Union General Officer would be executed if captured by the South. What crimes did he perform to warrant such exceptional treatment? He issued an order Emancipating the Slaves of the Southern Department of which he was the Commanding General. See {619331} . Lincoln quickly countermanded the order, but the act of freeing slaves was to the Southern government so heinous that it deserved the death penalty.
Ambrose Everett Burnside was an American soldier, railroad executive, inventor, industrialist, and politician from Rhode Island. He served as the Governor of Rhode Island from 1866 to 1869, and as a United States Senator for Rhode Island from 1875 until his death.
