South Central Review

On June 13, 1864, Maj. Gen. Samuel Jones, Confederate Commander of the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, placed fifty Union officers, all of them prisoners of war, in a section of Charleston enduring constant fire from the Union guns besieging the city. He then sent a brief note to his antagonist, Maj. Gen. John G. Foster of the United States Army, which was simultaneously information and subtle accusation. The prisoners of war were “provided with commodious quarters in a part of the city occupied by non-combatants, the majority of whom are women and children,” Jones wrote. “It is proper, however, that I should inform you that it is part of the city which has been for many months exposed day and night to the fire of your guns.” Union officials were outraged. They had followed the recognized protocols when they began the bombardment of Charleston nine months before, including notifying Confederate officials before the first guns were fired in order to give them opportunity to remove women and children from the city. Charleston was a legitimate military target with a large arsenal, military foundries, and facilities that produced iron clads.

Foster asked his subordinates for advice. One of them believed that Jones had inadvertently revealed how desperate the Confederates defending Charleston were. “In my opinion the endeavor of the enemy to force us to give up the bombardment should be the reason for its continuation. At the same time, as a means to force him to give up his barbarous practices, the simple fact of retaliation can be made effectual, as I have as many places where his shells fall as he has in Charleston where mine fall.” Foster agreed. On June 16, he wrote Jones to protest the “indefensible act of cruelty” that “can be designed only to prevent the continuance of our fire on Charleston.” Foster accused Jones of violating the standards of “honorable warfare” and informed Jones that he had requested President Lincoln to send him fifty Confederate prisoners of war to place in positions within the Union lines where they would be exposed to the fire of Confederate guns. On June 27 the Confederate prisoners arrived. Foster wrote Jones to ascertain the kind and quantity of food issued to the Union officers so that he could treat the Confederate officers in the “exact manner.”¹ [End Page 21]

Foster’s act of retaliation was consistent with the code that governed the conduct of Union armies in the field, General Order 100, issued on April 24, 1863. Article 27 proclaimed that “civilized nations acknowledge retaliation as the sternest feature of war. A reckless enemy often leaves to his opponent no other means of securing himself against the repetition of a barbarous outrage.” The next article cautioned that retaliation was not revenge but rather a means of “protective retribution.” Retaliation was only legitimate if it was done “cautiously and unavoidably” and only after “careful inquiry into the real occurrence.” The author of the code, Francis Lieber, an expert on the international laws of war, cautioned that “unjust or inconsiderate retaliation removes the belligerents farther and farther from the mitigating rules of regular war, and by rapid steps leads them nearer to the internecine wars of savages.”²

The decisions and actions of Federal and Confederate commanders during the siege of Charleston were guided by their conception and application of “civilized warfare.” They littered their correspondence with references to its rules and to accusations of barbarity on the part of the other. Similar acts of retaliation and the rhetoric of civilization were ubiquitous during the American Civil War. Lowly privates, the presidents of both the United States and the Confederate States, military commanders issuing official orders, and citizens writing in the pages of their personal diaries, used this language to understand and to describe what was happening around them. Both sides claimed to stand among the civilized nations of the world; both sides accused the other of degenerating to savagery. Northerners and southerners agreed that one mark of a civilized nation was that its people and its government contained and channeled human passion...