North Jersey Civil War Roundtable Presents: Annual Civil War Legal Issues Presentation

Military Justice and the Civil War (ON ZOOM)

 During the  Civil War, the Union forces frequently used military tribunals as an alternative forum instead of civilian courts to maintain law and order in both the North and areas in the South under their control. Their use raised serious constitutional and civil liberty concerns. Nevertheless, they were an important feature of the laws of war that were then being developed by the Lincoln Administration. The program will focus on the notorious 1865 trial by military tribunal of Confederate Captain Henry Wirz, the commandant of Andersonville Prison, who was the only person executed for the wartime atrocities. It will also  examine the limitations on the use of military tribunals established in the famous Supreme Court case, Ex parte Milligan (1868). Along the way, we will explore the fairness of military tribunals and their use  in enforcing individual responsibility for wartime atrocities - questions that would surface again in the war-crimes trials of the 20th century.