Head quarters, Seventh
Army Corps, Fort Monroe, Va.,
August 16,1862.
Brigadier-general J. K. [F.] Mansfield, commanding at Suffolk:
General,—I have received your letter of the 14th instant,
with a list of prisoners sent by you to Fort Wool, and a brief statement of the
charges against them. This is the first specification of their offences I have
seen, and I know that several citizens have been sent here without any
memorandum of the causes for which they were imprisoned.
The crimes specified by you as having been committed by
Secessionists in general deserve any punishment we may think proper to inflict.
But the first question is, in every case of imprisonment, whether the party has
actually been guilty of any offence; and this is a question to be decided upon
proper evidence. If the guilt is not clearly shown the accused should be
released. There is nothing in your position or mine which can excuse either of
us for depriving any man of his liberty without a full and impartial
examination. My duties are at least as arduous as yours, and I have never
shrunk from the labor of a personal examination of every case of imprisonment
for which I am responsible.
In regard to arrests in your command, there was at least one,
and I think more, for which there was not, in my judgment, the slightest cause.
I speak from a personal examination of them. The arrests were made without your
order, as I understood, but acquiesced in by you subsequently. The parties
referred to were released nearly a month ago. Had I not looked into their cases
they would, no doubt, have been in prison at this very moment. When Judge
Pierrepont and I examined the cases of political prisoners in their various
places of custody from Washington to Fort Warren, we found persons arrested by
military officers who had been overlooked, and who had been lying in prison for
months without any just cause. For this reason, as well as on general
principles of justice and humanity, I must insist that every person arrested
shall have a prompt examination, and, if it is considered a proper case for
imprisonment, that the testimony shall be taken under oath, and the record
sent, with the accused, to the officer who is to have the custody of him. This
is especially necessary when the commitment is made by a military commission,
and the party accused is sent to a distance and placed, like the prisoners at
Fort Wool, under the immediate supervision of the commanding officer of the
Department or Army Corps. The only proper exception to the rule is where
persons are temporarily detained during military movements, in order that they
may not give information to the enemy. I consider it my duty to go once in
three or four weeks to the places of imprisonment within my command, inquire
into the causes of arrest, and discharge all prisoners against whom charges,
sustained by satisfactory proof, are not on file. I did not enter into a minute
examination of the prisoners sent here by your order, nor did I release any one
of them, but referred the whole matter to you for explanation; and it is proper
to suggest that an imputation of undue susceptibility on my part, or a general
reprobation of the conduct of faithless citizens, for whom when their guilt is
clearly shown I have quite as little sympathy as yourself, is not an answer to
the question of culpability in special cases. The paper you sent me is very
well as far as it goes, but it is no more complete, without a transcript of the
evidence on which the allegations are founded, than a memorandum of the crime
and the sentence of a military prisoner would be without the record of the
proceedings of the Court. You will please, therefore, send to me the testimony
taken by the military commissions before whom the examination was made.
It is proper to remark here that a military commission not
appointed by the commanding General of the Army or the Army Corps is a mere
court of inquiry, and its proceedings can only be regarded in the light of
information for the guidance of the officer who institutes it, and on whom the
whole responsibility of any action under them must, from the necessity of the case,
devolve.
In regard to persons whom you think right to arrest and
detain under your immediate direction I have nothing to say. You are personally
responsible for them; and, as your attention will be frequently called to them,
the duration of their imprisonment will be likely to be influenced by
considerations which might be overlooked if they were at a distance. I am,
therefore, quite willing to leave them in your hands. But when a prisoner is
sent here, and comes under my immediate observation and care, I wish the whole
case to be presented to me.
The Engineer Department has called on me to remove the
prisoners from Fort Wool, that the work may not be interrupted. I have sent
away all the military prisoners, and wish to dispose of those who are confined
for political causes. When I have received from you a full report of the cases
which arose under your command I will dispose of them, and send to you all the
persons whom I do not release. Or, if you prefer it — and it would be much more
satisfactory to me — I will send them all to you without going into any
examination myself, and leave it to you to dispose of them as you think right.
If you have no suitable guard-house, there is a jail near your head-quarters,
where they may be securely confined.
I am, respectfully,
your obedient servant,
john A. Dix.
SOURCE: Morgan Dix, Memoirs of John Adams Dix,
Volume 2, p. 44-6
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