Lincoln on Trial: Southern Civilians and the Law of War by Burrus M. Carnahan (review)

BOOK REVIEWS FALL 2010 87 Was Lincoln guilty of war crimes? Burrus M. Carnahan’s thoughtful analysis of the North’s treatment of southern civilians during the Civil War effectively demonstrates that “[u]nder the standards of his time, President Lincoln did not authorize or condone any violations of the laws of war against enemy civilians” (119). Moreover, “throughout the war, President Lincoln was continually concerned that military actions be undertaken only for valid military reasons , and never for motives of revenge or cruelty” (33). A former Air Force Judge Advocate General officer and currently a lecturer at the George Washington University law school, Carnahan is familiar with military law, past and present. Francis Lieber codified the laws of war in the 1860s in General Order 100, issued in April 1863. For many decades, the U.S. Army relied on the Lieber Code, which stipulated that “military necessity . . . allows of all destruction of property , and . . . the appropriation of whatever an enemy’s country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the army.” So the seizure or destruction of property by Phillip Sheridan, William Tecumseh Sherman, and other Union generals, insofar as it was military necessity (or, as the term was understood in the nineteenth century, expedient ), was lawful. Sherman’s march to the sea did involve excesses (such as the burning of Millen and Sandersville), but Lincoln did not know about nor did he authorize them. While acknowledging that the shelling of besieged cities was somewhat problematic by standards of the Geneva Convention of 1949, Carnahan shows that such actions adhered to nineteenth-century standards. Union troops often used harsh measures to combat guerrillas. Lincoln apparently approved orders to hold civilians responsible for guerrilla attacks in their neighborhoods. Among the punishments meted out to civilians were the burning of their houses and the imposition of fines, both of which international law sanctioned. A more drastic antiguerrilla tactic involved expelling civilians from their homes. Lincoln has been severely criticized for authorizing such forced removals . The most egregious example of that policy , Gen. Thomas Ewing’s 1863 Order 11, Lincoln on Trial: Southern Civilians and the Law of War Burrus M. Carnahan Burrus M. Carnahan. Lincoln on Trial: Southern Civilians and the Law of War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010. 176 pp. ISBN: 9780813125695 (cloth), $30.00. BOOK REVIEWS 88 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY expelled twenty thousand residents of western Missouri. But Ewing had good military grounds for the order, which he issued shortly after Confederate guerrillas massacred one hundred and eighty men and boys in nearby Lawrence, Kansas. While Lincoln did not overrule Order No. 11, he suggested to Ewing’s commander, John Schofield, that only those people known to have aided and abetted guerrillas be expelled. Upon receipt of this suggestion, Schofield promptly withdrew Order 11. Earlier in that year, Lincoln twice canceled expulsion orders, stopping the deportation of hundreds from the Eastern Shore of Virginia and of all Jews in Ulysses S. Grant’s military department. While Lincoln issued an order of retaliation calling for the execution of Confederate prisoners of war if Confederates killed captured black Union soldiers, he never implemented it. Grant based his July 1864 order to David Hunter to devastate the lower Shenandoah Valley and to force its residents to move out not on revenge, but on “sound military reasons” (81)—namely, to prevent Confederates from sweeping up the Valley yet again to attack the North. Some critics have considered Hunter guilty of war crimes because he exceeded Grant’s order by burning houses for no good military reason and ordered the expulsion of disloyal residents in Frederick, Maryland, far from the Shenandoah. Repeatedly, Lincoln intervened in individual cases to prevent such abuses of power, but curiously he did not promulgate general orders outlawing such conduct after the issue of the Lieber Code. Some allege that in 1864, Lincoln authorized the burning of Richmond and the assassination of Jefferson Davis and his cabinet . Allegedly, cavalry under young Col. Ulric Dahlgren was to carry out these tasks. Carnahan analyzes the evidence and sensibly concludes: “The political and military disadvantages of killing Davis and burning Richmond clearly outweighed the insubstantial benefits, as both Lincoln and Stanton...