The War of the Rebellion A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies - nouveau livre

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: it not clear the guard must defend the prisoners? Same of a sale- guard. So jealous is the military law to protect and maintain " good faith" when pledged that the law adjudges death and no alternative punishment to one who violates a safeguard in foreign parts. (See Article of War, No 55.) For murder, arson, treason, and the highest military crimes, the punishment prescribed by law is death, or some minor punishment, but for the violation of a safeguard death and death alone is the prescribed penalty. I instance this to illustrate how, in military stipulations to an enemy, our Government commands and enforces "good faith." In discussing this matter I would like to refer to many writers on military law, but am willing to take Dalleck as the text. (See his chapter No. 27). In the very first article he pie- faces that "good faith" should always be observed between enemies iu war, because, when our faith has been pledged to him, so far as the promise extends, he ceases to be an enemy. He then defines the meaning of compacts and conventions, and says they are made sometimes for a general or a partial suspension of hostilities for the surrender of an army, andc. They may be special, limited to particular places, or to particular forces, but, of course, can only bind the armies subject to the general who makes the truce, and coextensive only with the extent of his command. This is all I ever claimed and clearly covers the whole case. All of North Carolina was in my immediate command, with General Schofield, its department commander, and his army present with me. I never asked the truce to have effect beyond my own territorial command. General Halleck himself, in his Orders, o. 1, defines his own limits clearly enough, viz, " Such part of North Carolina as was not occupied by the comman...