David
Hunter was born in Washington on 21st
July, 1802. He graduated from the Military Academy at West
Point in 1822 and saw action in the Seminole
War (1838-42) and the Mexican War
(1846-48).
A strong opponent of slavery Hunter corresponded
with Abraham Lincoln on the subject and
was invited to Washington in January,
1861. On the outbreak of the American Civil
War he joined the Union Army and
became colonel of the 3rd United States Cavalry and was severely wounded
at Bull Run (July, 1861). After he
recovered from his wounds he replaced Major General John
C. Fremont as commander of the Western Department.
In March, 1862, Hunter was appointed Commander of the Department of
the South. After the successful campaign at Fort Pulaski he began
enlisting black soldiers in the occupied districts of South Carolina.
He was ordered to disband the 1st South Carolina (African Descent)
but eventually got approval from Congress for his action.
Hunter also issued a statement that: "The persons in these three
States - Georgia, Florida and South Carolina - heretofore held as
slaves, are therefore declared forever free." Abraham
Lincoln quickly ordered Hunter to retract his proclamation as
he still feared that this action would force slave-owners in border
states to join the Confederates. President Jefferson
Davis and the he leaders of the Confederate
Army were furious when they heard of Hunter's actions and orders
were given that he was a "felon to be executed if captured."
Horace Greeley, editor of the New
York Tribune, wrote an open letter to Abraham
Lincoln defending Hunter and criticizing the president for failing
to make slavery the dominant issue of the war and compromising moral
principles for political motives. Lincoln famously replied: "My
paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not
either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing
all the slaves, I would do it."
Hunter served on the court-martial of Fitz-John Porter and the committee
that looked into the loss of Harpers Ferry. He also served on several
other boards and commissions before replacing Major General Franz
Sigel during his Shenandoah Valley
campaign in May, 1864. Hunter fared little better than Sigel and was
defeated by Major General Jubal Early
at Lynchburg in June. He now resigned his commission and was replaced
by Philip Sheridan.
Hunter accompanied the body of Abraham Lincoln
to Springfield and afterwards was invited by President Andrew
Johnson to be a member of the nine-man military
commission to try the conspirators to assassinate President Lincoln.
It was argued by Edwin M. Stanton, the
Secretary of War, that the men should be tried by a military court
as Lincoln had been Commander in Chief of the army. Several members
of the cabinet, including Gideon Welles
(Secretary of the Navy), Edward Bates
(Attorney General), Orville H. Browning
(Secretary of the Interior), and Henry
McCulloch (Secretary of the Treasury), disapproved, preferring
a civil trial. However, James Speed,
the Attorney General, agreed with Stanton and therefore the defendants
did not enjoy the advantages of a jury trial.
The trial began on 10th May, 1865. As well as Hunter the military
commission included leading generals such as Lewis
Wallace, Robert Foster, August
Kautz, Thomas Harris and Alvin
Howe. The Attorney General, James Speed,
selected Joseph Holt and John
Bingham as the government's chief prosecutors.
Mary Surratt, Lewis Paine, George
Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel
Mudd, Michael O'Laughlin, Edman
Spangler and Samuel Arnold were
all charged with conspiring to murder Lincoln. During the trial Holt
attempted to persuade the military commission that Jefferson
Davis and the Confederate government had been involved in conspiracy.
Joseph Holt attempted to obscure the fact
that there were two plots: the first to kidnap and the second to assassinate.
It was important for the prosecution not to reveal the existence of
a diary taken from the body of John Wilkes
Booth. The diary made it clear that the assassination plan dated
from 14th April. The defence surprisingly did not call for Booth's
diary to be produced in court.
On 29th June, 1865 Mary Surratt, Lewis
Paine, George Atzerodt, David
Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael
O'Laughlin, Edman Spangler and
Samuel Arnold were found guilty of being
involved in the conspiracy to murder Abraham
Lincoln. Surratt, Paine, Atzerodt and Herold were hanged at Washington
Penitentiary on 7th July, 1865. Surratt, who was expected to be reprieved,
was the first woman in American history to be executed.
The decision to hold a military court received further criticism when
John Surratt, who faced a civil trial
in 1867, was not convicted by the jury. Michael
O'Laughlin died in prison but Samuel Mudd,
Edman Spangler and Samuel
Arnold were all pardoned by President Andrew
Johnson in 1869.
David Hunter died in Washington on
2nd February, 1886.
(1)
General David Hunter, statement issued in May, 1862.
Slavery
and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible. The
persons in these three States - Georgia, Florida and South Carolina
- heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.
(2)
In 1862 Henry Villard
met General David Hunter. He wrote about him in his Memoirs:
Journalist and Financier (1904)
In the early spring of 1862, Major General
Hunter was assigned to the chief command of the Department of the
South. Hunter soon attracted general attention by the famous order
he issued on May 9, 1862, announced that "slavery and martial
law in a free country are incompatible." This act was nothing
less than the abolition of slavery by military authority. His strong
anti-slavery convictions doubtless prompted him to adopt this radical
measure. General Hunter had no special authority from the War Department
to issue the order, but promulgated it by virtue of his absolute powers
as military ruler over territory under martial law.
(3)
Abraham Lincoln, speech on 12th July,
1862.
General Hunter is an honest man. He was,
and I hope, still is, my friend. I valued him none the less for his
agreeing with me in the general wish that all men everywhere, could
be free. He proclaimed all men free within certain states and I repudiated
the proclamation. Yet in repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if
not offence, to many whose support the country can not afford to lose.
And that is not the end of it. the pressure, in this direction, is
still upon me, and is increasing.
(4)
Horace Greeley, letter to President Abraham
Lincoln (19th August, 1862)
I do not intrude to tell you - for you must
know already - that a great proportion of those who triumphed in your
election, and of all who desire the unqualified suppression of the
rebellion now desolating our country, are solely disappointed and
deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to
the slaves of the Rebels.
We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge
of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating
provisions of the new Confiscation Act. Those provisions were designed
to fight slavery with liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the
Union, and willing to shed their blood in the behalf, shall no longer
be held, with the nation's consent, in bondage to persistent, malignant
traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen
months have been fighting to divide and destroy our country. Why these
traitors should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice
of the dearest rights of loyal men, we cannot conceive.
Fremont's Proclamation and Hunter's Order favoring emancipation were
promptly annulled by you; while Halleck's Number Three, forbidding
fugitives from slavery to Rebels to come within his lines - an order
as unmilitary as inhuman, and which received the hearty approbation
of every traitor in America - with scores of like tendency, have never
provoked even your remonstrance.
(5)
President Abraham
Lincoln, letter to Horace
Greeley (22nd August, 1862)
If there be those who would not save the
Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery. I do not
agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the
Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save
the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could
save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do
it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.
(6)
David Hunter was criticized by the correspondent of the New
York World for his role in the trial of those accused of conspiring
to kill President Abraham
Lincoln (26th May, 1865)
The commission has collectively an imposing
appearance: the face of Judge Holt is swarthy; he questions with slow
utterance, holding the witness in his cold, measuring eye. Hunter,
who sits at the opposite end of the table, shuts his eyes now and
then, either to sleep or to think, or both, and the other generals
watch for the occasions to distinguish themselves.
Excepting Judge Holt, the court has shown as little ability as could
be expected from soldiers, placed in unenviable publicity, and upon
a duty for which they are disqualified, both by education and acumen.
Witness the lack of dignity in Hunter, who opened the court by a course
allusion to "humbug chivalry", of Lewis Wallace, whose heat
and intolerance were appropriately urged in the most exceptional English;
of Howe, whose tirade against the rebel General Johnson was feeble
as it was ungenerous! This court was needed to show us at least the
petty tyranny of martial law and the pettiness of martial jurists.
The counsel for the defense have just enough show to make the unfairness
of the trial partake of hypocrisy.
(7)
General David Hunter and the Military Commission that tried the Lincoln
conspirators sent a message to President Andrew
Johnson about the case of Mary Surratt (29th June, 1865)
The undersigned members of the Military
Commission detailed to try Mary E. Surratt and others for the conspiracy
and the murder of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United States,
do respectively pray the President, in consideration of the sex and
age of the said Mary E. Surratt, if he can upon all the facts in the
case, find it consistent with his sense of duty to the country to
commute the sentence of death to imprisonment in the penitentiary
for life.
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