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[268] being as precise and as scrupulously observed in America as in Europe, served as a corrective to the accidents which converted the superior officer of to-day into a subordinate of to-morrow. These rules assigned the command among officers of the same grade to the senior of those who held their commissions from the President, whether they belonged to the regular army or to the volunteer staff, in preference to those who had been appointed by the governors of States, in special contingents. With regard to the law instituting courts-martial to pronounce upon the slightest breaches of discipline, it met with the fate of all laws that are too bad to be applied; a thousand ways were found to evade it. The officer who neglected his duty was placed under arrest, as if to prepare for trial, and at the end of eight days he was released and told that the matter should not be pursued any further—a decision in which he naturally hastened to acquiesce. Or in more serious cases he was to be put in arrest for three or four weeks within his tent, and warned that if he made any complaints against such illegal proceeding the President would be requested to dismiss him. Being thus relieved from matters of which they should never have taken cognizance, the courts-martial had yet another laborious duty to perform. Their functions were of a double character, according to the gravity of the charges brought before them. As simple courts they recommended the President to suspend or dismiss the party accused. As military tribunals, invested by the Constitution itself with judiciary power to try special cases, they imposed pecuniary fines and corporal penalties extending even to death, such sentences being subject to the revision of the President. In these courts-martial the volunteers were tried by volunteers, the regulars by regulars; but they were all subject to the same military code, the Articles of War, a small collection, rather vague, which, like nearly all Anglo-Saxon laws, leave a great deal to jurisprudence. The establishment of examining commissions operated largely in favor of discipline, and raised the dignity of the epaulette in the estimation of the soldiers by purging the personnel of the list of officers. It was impossible to confer all the ranks upon educated officers, as there were very few such; but all the
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1876.
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