The UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History

Throughout the American Civil War, the administration of President Abraham Lincoln used military commissions in an unprecedented fashion to prosecute civilians from Northern and Border states, and those from Union-occupied Southern states on charges of disloyal speech. Analyzing records of the military commissions from the National Archives, this paper reassesses the role of the commissions and the trials concerning disloyal speech in particular to evaluate the political character of the Civil War tribunals. By comparing cases of disloyal speech in which the defendant resided in loyal states with those in which the defendant came from seceded Southern states, this paper argues that civilians within the Union prosecuted by Northern and Border state commissions were essentially treated the same as Confederates prosecuted by Southern commissions convened in occupied territories. By using the same legal system to try civilians in ostensibly loyal states as was used in disloyal states, the Lincoln administration blurred the lines of assumed loyalty and disloyalty. In doing so, the government stigmatized civilian defendants from the Union by equating them with secessionists. That stigma was made more obvious when those found guilty were expelled from within the Union. These trials and judgements were political acts that redefined conceptions of loyalty and speech during a time of disunity and war, illuminating the ways in which the military commissions during the Civil War were themselves political.