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 [House No. 10.] 
 
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 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.— Febuary 9, 1863.— Read 
 first and second times, laid on the table, and ordered to be printed. 
 
 [ By Mr. Smith, of Alabama.] 
 
 MEMOKIAL 
 
 OF 
 
 J. S. HARWELL AND EUGENE MCAA. 
 
 Cumberland Gap, Jan. 27th, 1563, ) 
 
 Camp of 43d Regiment Alabama Volunteers. > 
 
 r To the Congress of the Confederate S'ates of America : 
 
 The undersigned, citizens of Alabama, now serving as volunteer 
 soldiers in the amy of the Confederate States, would respectfully 
 ask your attention to the following statements : 
 
 They are free citizens of an independant and sovereign State ; they 
 have voluntarily left their homes and fire sides to join the army, not 
 as hired mercenaries, but as freemen, to battle for the rights and liber- 
 ties of their native land, and they therefore claim that they are enti- 
 tled to be treated with that respect and courtesy which is due to gen- 
 tlemen. They claim, too, that as white men they are fighting for the 
 privileges of their race, and do therefore protest against every law 
 and usage which has the tendency to reduce them to the level of the 
 negro. 
 
 For the punishment of various offences, the Articles of War pro- 
 vide, that the offender " shall suffer such punishment as shall be in- 
 flicted on him by the sentence of a court martial." Assuming that 
 this gives the auth >rity, court martials have sentenced men, in seve- 
 ral instances, to the degrading and disgraceful punishment of the 
 lash, to be stripped, tied and whipped with a cowhide, until the blood 
 ran from their lacerated backs, and they had to be sent to the hospi- 
 tals for treatment ! This is no overdrawn picture. Such a case has 
 been witnessed by your memorialists, and they think the outrage de- 
 mands prompt redress by an act of Congress. 
 
 In no free State have the citizens ever been liable to be punished by 
 the lash, if we except the punishment sometimes inflicted by the com- 
 mon law of England. No Athenian could be beaten with stripes, be- 
 cause the high spirited Greek felt that such punishment was only 
 suitable for barbarians and slaves. One of the principal charges 
 against Verres, was that he had caused Roman citizens to be whipped 
 
like slaves — and in making this charge against him, the orator proud- 
 ly boasted of the privileges of a Roman citizen, and denounces the 
 man, who in his capacity of a military officer, had dared to set at de- 
 fiance one of the most valued rights of citizenship. Never durin^ the 
 Middle Ages were the free feudatories of the king subject to cor- 
 poreal punishment, lie might be executed for crime ; might be hung, 
 drawn and quartered for treason, but for no misdemeanor, could the 
 freeman be subjected to the lash, without usurpation and abuse of 
 power. It was not until a decay of the feudal system ; until the kings 
 ceased to rely on their own retainers, and began to hire mercenaries, 
 and form standing armies, that whipping began to be practised in the 
 armies of Europe. Then they began to inflict punishment by orders 
 from courts martial, and men were whipped for military misdemeanors. 
 So jealous, however, were the English of their liberties, that they 
 carefully guarded against the recognition of any court martial, or any 
 power to punish, except through the regular courts of common law, 
 that courts martial were unknown to the English law until after the 
 Revolution of 1G8S. Even then, although the times imperatively 
 demanded a change in the military code, yet it was with great diffi- 
 culty that the government succeeded in passing the first military 
 bill Even now this bill has to be passed at each session of Parlia- 
 ment. The Congress of the United States prohibited whipping both 
 in the army and navy. Why then should the infamous practice be 
 perpetuated in the Confederate States ! Are we desirous of rivalling 
 the Russians in the use of the knout, or the Austrians in the bar- 
 barities which they inflicted in Hungary and Italy"! 
 
 There is one reason, if there were no other, which is sufficient to 
 cause the abolition of this degrading punishment at the South. Hero 
 the white man is by nature a superior being; the influence of casU 
 has a powerful influence both upon him and over the negro popula- 
 tion. He feels his superiority, and feels that in this war he is fight- 
 ing for the supremacy of his race. In every regiment from the South 
 there arc a number of negroes, many of them belong to the privates. 
 No court martial can sentence an officer to be whipped. But any 
 gentleman, by some accident, or even by the wilful commission of 
 some trilling offence, whose person does not happen to be protected 
 by a piece of gold lace on the sleeve and collar, may be sentenced to 
 be flogged like a common slave ! Now will any negro, who has seen 
 his master flogged, have any respect for him again ! Will such a 
 negro not be a dangerous man, when he returns home, and tells his 
 fellow-slaves how the white man was stripped, tied and whipped more 
 severely than any negro on the plantation has ever' been. 
 
 Your memorialists believe that the courts martial have usurped au- 
 thority, and that there is no act of Congress, no regulation of the 
 army, no power whatever that can subject a volunteer to the disgrace- 
 ful punishment of the lash. Your memorialists, therefore, earnestly 
 beg that the matter may be inquired into, and th^t a stop may be put 
 to this infamous, cruel and degrading practice. 
 
 J. S. HARWELL, 
 EUGENE M'CAA. 
 
Hollinger Corp. 
 P H8.5