Наш сайт посвящён изучению истории и культуры Северной Америки XIX века: Техасской революции и Республике Техас (1836-1845 гг.), Американо-Мексиканской войне (1846-1848 гг.), войне Севера и Юга США (1861-1865 гг.), периоду Реконструкции Юга (1865-1877 гг.), освоению Дикого Запада (период между 1865-1890 гг., в который происходило заселение западных территорий штатов: Северная и Южная Дакота, Монтана, Канзас, Вайоминг, Небраска и Техас), и другим событиям на Североамериканском континенте. Будем рады если вы поможете нам в сборе материала по этой интересной и увлекательной теме.
Few punishments were specified in the American Articles of War of 1775. The death penalty was limited to specified offenses—"nor shall any punishment be inflicted at the discretion of a court‐martial, other than degrading, cashiering, drumming out of the army, whipping not exceeding thirty‐nine lashes, fine not exceeding two months pay of the offender, imprisonment not exceeding one month.” The articles' naval counterpart similarly relied on custom rather than specifying punishments. The most noticeable characteristic of the "old” (pre–Civil War) army and navy is the fact that deterrence seems to have been punishment's only goal. This policy is exemplified by the navy's practice of summarily executing seamen who left their posts in battle. Because a jailed soldier or sailor was considered to be evading the hardships of military life, commanders relied on flogging as the punishment. The maximum number of lashes allowed to army courts‐martial was increased to 100 in the 1776 articles and then curtailed to 50 in 1806. In 1812, Congress eliminated flogging as a permitted punishment in the army, reinstated it for desertion in 1833, and finally abolished it in 1861.
Flogging and "colting” (striking with a rope end) were the main punishments used in the navy. Naval regulations permitted up to 12 lashes as nonjudicial punishment; naval courts‐martial awarded 100 lashes for drunkenness and mutinous behavior. Branding with a hot iron or tattooing was permitted until Congress forbade the practice in 1872. Army records confirm the wearing of irons, placarding, gagging, standing on or wearing a barrel, and tarring and feathering. The navy imposed similar punishments after flogging was abolished by Congress in 1850 following a campaign waged by the author Herman Melville, who had served on the "hell ship” United States. Sweatboxes, dousing with bilge water, tricing to the rigging, or hanging from a boom were other naval punishments. Not all punishments were, to modern eyes, barbaric: dismissal or dishonorable discharge; demotion, fines, or forfeitures (the last from pay prospectively due); confinement; and, for officers, suspension from command or active command or active service were also permitted.
The military courts' discretion, in noncapital cases, to impose punishment was gradually curtailed. In 1855, when Congress established naval summary courts‐martial, limits on minor punishments—confinement and re‐duced rations—were included in the statute. In 1862, PresidentAbraham Lincoln issued a list of maximum pun ishments that could be imposed for various offenses, and in 1890, Congress ordered that, where an article provided that punishment would be left to the discretion of the court, the punishment could not exceed that directed by the president.
The army and navy codes limited the death penalty to specified offenses, or those made capital by local state law, and required a higher percentage of the court members to agree on the sentence than was required for lesser punishments. Statutes required presidential approval of the penalty if it had been imposed by a court‐martial within the United States; when, in 1849, Commodore Thomas Jones of the Pacific Squadron permitted the hanging of two mutineers in California, he was court‐martialed and received five years' suspension from duty. Nineteenth‐century army tradition dictated that capital military offenses, with the exception of desertion, be punished by shooting, while hanging was dictated for civilian capital crimes, or for desertion or spying. Naval tradition called for hanging from the fore yardarm of the vessel. The 1917 Texas Mutiny Cases, in which black American soldiers were hastily hanged after their court‐martial, led to a revision of the 1916 Articles of War, as the World War II execution of Private Eddy Slovik after the Battle of the Bulge led to postwar reform efforts, although the death penalty is still permitted by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
After 1916, the army articles, unlike those of the navy, required a Board of Review if the sentence included the death penalty or dismissal of an officer (which required presidential approval in the navy) or dishonorable discharge (there was no similar provision in the navy). However, in the post–World War II period, when manpower requirements exceeded enlistments, prisoner rehabilitation units were established in each of the armed services. With the advent of the All‐Volunteer Force in 1973 and its higher standards of pay and performance, such units were disbanded.
Bibliography John S. Hare, Military Punishments in the War of 1812, Journal of American Military History, 4 (Winter 1940), pp. 225–29. Leo F.S. Horan, Flogging in the United States Navy, Unfamiliar Facts Regarding Its Origins and Abolition, United States Naval Institute Proceedings, 76 (1950), pp. 969–75. Frederick B. Wiener, Crime and Justice in the Days of Empire, History, Numbers, and War, 2 (1980), pp. 23–28. Robert I. Alotta, Civil War Justice, Union Army Executions Under Lincoln, 1989. Mark A. Vargas, The Military Justice System and the Use of Illegal Punishments as Causes of Desertion in the U.S. Army, 1821–1835, Journal of Military History, vol. 55, no. 1 (1991), pp. 1–19
