OCR Text |
Show Released by Western Newspaper Union. Spy Trial WHEN President Roosevelt, as commander - in - chief ol the army and navy, appointed a military commission, headed by Maj. Gen. Frank R. McCoy, to try the eight German saboteurs landed on American Ameri-can soil from submarines, he was following a precedent established just 80 years ago. On February 27, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued is-sued an executive order creating a similar tribunal and it was the first of a number of such military commissions com-missions established by both the Union Un-ion and Confederate governments to try the cases of draft evaders, blockade-runners and others whose offenses of-fenses thwarted the war effort. The term "court martial" is a familiar fa-miliar one in military history and in other nations it had the power to try all forms of offenses in war time. But in the United States the power of a court martial was limited limit-ed to the trial of offenses by members mem-bers of flie armed forces. So the "militay commission," established in 1862 and having jurisdiction over all types of offenses, whether committed com-mitted by the military or by civilians, civil-ians, was an innovation. The commission appointed by President Lincoln was made up of only two men, both New Yorkers. York-ers. One was a leading member of the legal profession pro-fession in that state, Judge Edwards Ed-wards Pierre-pont, Pierre-pont, who later became attorney-general attorney-general in President Presi-dent Grant's cabinet. cab-inet. The other was Ma. Gen. John A. Dix, who Edwards had had a varied Pierrepont career. He had been an officer in the army during the War of 1812, held several state offices in New York and served for a brief time as secretary of the treasury treas-ury under President Buchanan. At the outbreak of the Civil war he was commissioned a major-general of volunteers. Placed in command of the department of Maryland he had much to do with holding that state in the Union. While Dix was commanding at Fortress Monroe, he was recalled J ''Hit ..... to Washington to serve with Judge Pierrepont on President Lincoln's Lin-coln's military commission. Its duties were to ex-. ex-. amine prisoners who had been ar-1 ar-1 rested for various - offenses and de-i de-i termine whether Gen. John A. Dix leased, held in prison on civil charges or turned over to the military mili-tary authorities. One of the first cases Pierrepont and Dix were called upon to try was that of a Washington society leader, Mrs. Rose Greenhow, the handsome young widow of a Virginian. She was a relative of Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas and lived in a mansion across Lafayette park from the White House. There she entertained cabinet members, senators, congressmen con-gressmen and especially Union army officers. In fact she was such a charmer that the information which she wheedled out of some of the latter and passed on to her Confederate Con-federate friends is said to have played an important part in the Southern victory at the first Battle of Bull Run. Soon afterwards she was arrested by Allen Pinkerton, head of the Union Un-ion army secret service, held a prisoner pris-oner in her own home and then removed re-moved to the Old Capitol, a brick building which was used as a jail for political prisoners in 1861. Charged with being a spy, Mrs. Greenhow was, placed on trial on March 29, 1862, and the military commission soon found that it had "caught a Tartar." The dark, handsome hand-some widow, who swept into court with a queenly air, was extremely indignant in-dignant over the whole affair. She declared that "this is a mimic kind of court," she parried all the queries of the commissioners and asked them as many questions as they asked her. Finally she intimated inti-mated that if they really wanted her to talk freely she would give them information which would be highly embarrassing to many high officials in Washington. It was no doubt something of a relief to those officials whoever they might have been as well as to Dix and Pierrepont Pierre-pont when her "trial" ended and she was bundled off across the lines to her friends in the Confederacy. Perhaps the most famous military commission of this kind was the one appointed in 1865 by President Andrew An-drew Johnson to try the fellow-con-' spirators of J. Wilkes Booth after the assassination of Lincoln. Presided Presid-ed over by Maj. Gen. David Hunter, it was composed of Generals A. P. Howe, James A. Ekin, Robert S. Foster, T. M. Harris, Lew Wallace, A. V. Kautz and Henry L. Burnett; Colonels D. R. Clendenin and C. H. Tompkins and two federal judges, John A. Bingham and Joseph Holt, the latter serving as judge advocate, for the government. |