Thursday, July 2, 2015

Francis Lieber to Major-General Henry W. Halleck, June 2, 1863

New York, June 2,1863.

. . . Is the threat of General Burnside true, that he would hang ten Confederate officers for every Union officer hung by the Confederates? Whether true or not, you are aware that this is the spirit which generally shows itself when a barbarous outrage is committed, but which it is very necessary promptly to stop. The wanton insolence of our enemy has been growing so fast, and is so provoking, that I am plainly and simply for quick and stern retaliation; but in retaliation it is necessary strictly to adhere to sections twenty-seven and twenty-eight of General Order 100, to the elementary principle which prevails all the world over, —tit for tat, or eye for eye, — and not to adopt ten eyes for one eye. If one belligerent hangs ten men for one, the other will hang ten times ten for the ten; and what a dreadful geometrical progression of skulls and crossbones we should have!  . . . You will decide what the general-in-chief has to do in this matter. Some distinct expression of the essential character of retaliation, whether by general order or by a proclamation of the President (intended for our side as well as for the other), or by a general letter of yours addressed to all generals, — I do not presume to decide.  . . . President King read yesterday to me a letter from Mr. Lawrence, in whieh he informs him that Broekhaua in Leipzig has made him a very liberal offer to publish in Germany a French translation of Lawrence's new edition of Wheaton. So we shall have a European edition of this secessionized American “Law of Nations.” It worries me. These two large volumes in French will be the universal authority in Europe concerning us.  . . . A first-rate work should be written as an antidote; but it would require a long time of absolute leisure for a great jurist, — as Halleck, if he had not the sword in his hand, taking Heffter as his basis, as Lawrence takes Wheaton. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 334-5

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