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The promotion of the new class of brigadiers of which John Basil Turchin was a member represented the close of business for the United States Senate. On Thursday, July 17, it con¤rmed the last of those appointments, wrapped up all of its other business, and adjourned until December, many of the members , their staffs, and hangers-on catching trains for distant cities and other objectives. Frank P. Blair, for example, headed to St. Louis to raise yet another regiment. Taking for granted the validity of Turchin’s promotion, the Chicago Tribune put it to one of its intended purposes—the encouragement of recruiting through praise of the new general as an example of a warrior rewarded for¤ghting a war the way volunteers ought to ¤ght it. For example, a July 26 editorial said, “Out of the long list of generals whose nominations were not acted upon by the Senate, exceptions were made of two names, which were pushed through. The ¤rst of these, J. B. Turchin, 19th Illinois, belongs to as skillful and brave a soldier as our army contains. He was believed to make war as war should be made, and to hit a head wherever he saw it. To these peculiarities and to the persecution that he is enduring from others who lack his faith, his promotion was due.” Likely in response to the congressional fervor exempli¤ed in the action on Turchin, the Tribune also reported that the Chicago Board of Trade Battery had by that date “raised a bounty fund of $30,000 and have recruited a full battery of artillery and are rapidly ¤lling up a regiment.”1 Though word of the promotion reached members of the court-martial board as early as Saturday, July 19, the news did not slow its progress. On July 20 orders transferred the proceedings from Athens to Huntsville, where 14 The Verdict Colonel Turchin is in his third week of trial for not dealing quietly enough with rebels and their property. —Brigadier General James A. Gar¤eld, July 24, 1862 they went forward at a pace Gar¤eld and Beatty found unbearably slow. Nine days later General Buell took formal note of the question of the court’s continued validity and issued his General Order 36 in response. There he af-¤rmed the court without specifying it by its caption and admonished the members: “Courts-martial in the army shall proceed industriously and continuously with the business before them until it is completed.” Then he made his real point clear. “Discipline, and consequently the honor, and ef¤ciency of the army is in no [in]considerable degree dependent on courts-martial. Nominal penalties for grave offenses avail nothing, and are neither wise nor merciful.” To General Buell, the undisciplined behavior of Turchin’s men in Athens would never be a passing matter. Turchin’s style of command had no place in his army. Buell’s orders, plain and direct, had been disregarded. His brigade commander had countenanced the precise behavior from his volunteers that the general most wanted to avoid. This court had been formed to roll heads.2 Insofar as Major General Don Carlos Buell was concerned, the action of the Senate had no effect. His warning to Stanton may have gone unheeded. His messenger to the Senate may have been ignored and repudiated . Nonetheless, General Gar¤eld’s court-martial panel still could do justice where it most needed to be done. A story is told, from much later than these events, about the credibility of the witness Turchin and Gazlay picked to begin their defense. In 1862 William B. Curtis, then a twenty-¤ve-year-old lieutenant, served as Turchin ’s adjutant. In 1874 he refereed a major championship rowing race in New York City. He could have entered a ruling for the Halifax team, representing America, giving it the world championship in four-oar shells. (Rowing competitions were wildly popular sporting events at that time, and competitors could go to great lengths to ¤x a race, even so far as to saw opponents’ shells in half.) Curtis ruled for the opposition, the Thames, representing Britain and, reported The New York Times, “it is enough to say that his ef¤gy was burned in Halifax.” As for the basis for his decision, Curtis said, “I couldn’t help it. It was the only thing I could do. If they don’t want me to referee fairly, they need not ask me at all.” The...

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