J .0- o c ^- Si I : "^ .^ ^/ .<*^^., ,$ << ^-^ ,-r A^' ^ 'J^, *;^' o N' 5- ^ -^-^ \ ^\d^ o ,r^--^^' V^ ,0o 1%^ V <- ^ ' « -,. ' " . - .0^ ,o>.,c°;;«;--<.^ ^f, A^ 5 -7-^ k^' <.\^{:%^^r '-e. ^#' ^i^ . "^. .V :^' .^^#^^:'^ "^ ^ ,^^' % •S r, N <^0 ^^^^ V o.x-^ ^G^ ,^v o " >^ ^ ^j OO \ o ,v- x^^^ - .-i -r^^ V ^^ * 0^ <> i."^ cT'^ V r^' r .-AH/A= >^^ ^■.\^ » ^' A n V I « . -/' C^^ A"^^'-.% .^ <0 '^^ V^ .•h> o 0^ v^ ^y .0e^^< -e ^^ J^^' " A.'^ ,s^^^. ,^^■ -/> %,^x^' cP\^!i:c"^'^^\:^ .^ '^/. 'o. .-*. ^X^' .^ <^' ...■^>"--^.-.,s ~A-y^^^^''<^ ,A^' ^ •\' "^^ .<^ -<0 -^' A^^^ THE HAZEN COUET-MAPJIAL : THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE DISASTER TO THE LADY FRANKLIN BAY POLAR EXPEDITION DEFINITELY ESTABLISHED, WITH PROPOSED REFORMS IN THE LAW AND PRACTICE OF COURTS-MARTIAL. ^j' rf MAOKEY, Counsel for Brigadie?'- General W. B. Eazen, Chief Signal Officer, XT. S. A, " Here we are, dying like men ! Only seven left. We came to beat the Dest record, and we've done it."— The words of Lieutenant A. W. Greely when rescued at Cape Sabine, June 22, 1884. NEW YORK: VAN NOSTRAND, PUBLISHER, 83 MuKEAT AKD 87 Wabren Street. 1885. n % Copyright, 1885, by T. J. MACKEY. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction, ... - 5 Letter of General W. B. Hazen to the Secretary of War which led to this Trial, 68 Letter from General Hazen to the Secretary of War, requesting that his (Hazen's) Trial should proceed as ordered, . • . 74 Proceedings of a General Court-Martial convened at the Ebbitt House, in the City of Washington, D. C, on the eleventh day op March, eighteen hundred and eighty-five, .... 75 First Day, 76 Second Day, 86 Third Day 100 Fourth Day, 126 Fifth Day, . . . . .139 Sixth Day, 177 Seventh Day, 208 Eighth Day, . . 227 Ninth Day, 251 Tenth Day, 279 Appendix, 283 Letter of Chief-Engineer George W. Melville, U. S. N., . . 285 Letter of Lieutenant A. W. Greely, U. S. A., . . . . 290 Letter of Sergeant D. L. Brainard, 291 Letter of Consul Molloy, 298 Letter of Hon. J. Syme, 294 Certificate of Hon. J. Syme as to the Characters of the Ice- Navigators whose Statements are appended, . . . 295 Statement of Captain Pike, 296 Statement of Ice-Pilot White, 297 Statement of Ice-Pilot Walsh, 299 Statement of William Carlson, 300 Statement of Engineer McPherson, 301 Temperature (Fahrenheit) at Upernavik, Latitude N. 72^ 47', Longitude W. 56°, Winter 1883-4. Furnished by the Meteorological Bureau of Denmark, . . . . . 303 CONTENTS. Appendix continued — Temperature of the Air, as recorded on board the steam-launch carrying Lieutenant Greely's Party from Cape Conger to near Cape Sabine, September 10, and on the Ice Floe until after landing at Eskimo Point, 303 Temperatures observed near Cape Sabine, October, 1883, . . 304 Temperature of the Air at St. John's, N. F., during the months of September and October, 1883, 305 From General Hazen, protesting against Secretary Lincoln's Kefusal to forward his Letters to Congress, . . . 306 Lieutenant Greely on Garlington's Disobedience of Orders, . 308 Letter of General Hazen urging that Lieutenant Garlington be brought to Trial, . . . . . . . .311 Statement of W. H. Lamar, Jr., Sergeant Signal Corps, . . 314 Statement of Frank W. Ellis, Sergeant Signal Corps, . . 336 Lieutenant Greely's Instructions, 336 Lieutenant Greely's Plan of Relief Expedition adopted by General Hazen, and furnished Lieutenant Garlington for his Guidance, . , . 339 From General Hazen in answer to Commander Wildes, , . 342 From General Hazen, again urging the Trial of Garlington, . 348 Letter of the Hon. Robert T. Lincoln, Secretary of War, pre- senting his Views of the Action of General Hazen in rela- tion to the Garlington Relief Expedition, to which Views the Proteus Court of Inquiry conformed its Conclusions, . . 350 General Hazen's Military Record, 357 Letter from J. W. Randolph in answer to the Aspersions cast upon Sergeant Brainard by Colonel Chauncey McKeever, . 360 The Delinquency of Commander Frank Wildes proved by the Log-Book of the Yantic, ....... .362 INTRODUCTION. •'These Lincoln washes have devoured them." — Shakspearb. THE recent trial of Brigadier- General William B. Hazen, Chief Signal Officer, United States Army, has attracted very general attention, due not only to the high rank of the officers composing the Conrt-Martial, but to the official station of the accuser and the distinguished character of the accused. The popular interest in the trial was deepened by the well- known fact that it grew out of a controversy as to who was really responsible for the final disaster to the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition commanded by Lieutenant A. W. Greely, U. S. A. The magnitude of that disaster had not only challenged the attention of many foreign nations, as well as that of the jAmerican public, but it had awakened everywhere, among (thoughtful men who knew of its achievements, a profound desire to have the responsibility for the appalling tragedy in which it terminated authoritatively traced. Those achievements not only included the collection of facts of great scientific value and of practical utility as bearing upon the interests of commerce, by adding to our knowledge of winds, and of ocean currents and terrestrial magnetism, but they were crowned by an act that reflected renewed lustre upon the annals of our country. The expedition achieved a nearer approach to the North 6 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. Pole — the crown jewel of the Arctic dome — than had eyer heen attained by man. On the 15th day of May, 1882, it planted the standard of the republic in latitude 83° 24' 5" K and longitude 40° 46' W.— a point farther to the north than the ensign of any nation had ever been unfurled. It thus, by the hands of Lieutenant James B. Lockwood, U. S. A., wrested from England the honor of achieying the farthest northing, which she had deservedly worn for nearly three hundred years. When disaster came to the expedition it had already done its appointed work. The twenty-five officers and men who com- posed it had resided for two years at the permanent station (Camp Conger) in latitude 81° 45' N., and, under the excellent sanitary administration of their commander, had prosecuted their work in perfect health, in a region where the forces of nature have so often proved themselves superior to the re- sources of man. Their station was literally ** in thrilling regions of thick- ribbed ice," two hundred miles north of the most northerly ig- loo, or snow-hut, of the far- wandering Eskimo. They arrived there August 11, 1881, and Lieutenant Greely, in obedience to his instructions, departed from it August 9, 1883, sailing southward with his command in a small steam-launch and three whale-boats, carrying supplies for about sixty days. After threading his way through the grinding ice of Eobe- son and Kennedy Channels for two hundred and fifty miles with unexampled toil, the launch was crushed by the ice in Smith Sound a few miles north of Cape Sabine. He arrived in that vicinity with his party September 29, within the very time indicated by his instructions. Cape Sabine was the most southerly depot of supplies on the east side of Grinnell Land, Lieutenant Greely 's designated line of retreat. He brought his command there intact, although travel-worn and exhausted, without the loss of a single life or limb, and with its organization and discipline unimpaired. THE HAZEN COURT- MAETIAL. 7 And there it lay until famine had eaten it up. Out of a total of twenty-five a broken and shattered remnant of only seven survived (and one of these limbless and beyond recovery) when rescued by the relief expedition of 1884 under Comman- der W. S. Schley, U. S. N., who for more than two thousand miles ran a race with death, and, braving every peril, reached Cape Sabine on June 22, and there beheld a ghastly spectacle of dead and dying which plainly told, that had this splendidly-led forlorn hope of rescue arrived a single day later, the Interna- tional Polar Expedition might have left not one survivor. Its commander. Lieutenant Greely, had done his whole duty with faultless sagacity and unselfish heroism, and its undeserved fate, as these pages will clearly establish, was due in the first instance to a violation of orders on the part of one officer, and in the last to the untimely inaction of another whose personal animosity to the Chief Signal Officer blinded him to the re- quirements of a great public trust, and led him to disregard the supreme exigency, the one critical moment, upon which hung the fate of brave men who were acting in the line of their duty. That Mr. Kobert T. Lincoln, late Secretary of War, on the 15th of September, 1883, held in his hands the awful balances of life and death for Greely and his men, and decided every chance against them, is now a proposition morally certain, and as convincingly demonstrable as any fact which depends for proof on an unbroken chain of circumstantial evidence. I proceed to state briefly the undeniable facts and the irre- sistible deductions which prove the derelictions of duty that first made the Arctic disaster probable, and then made it cer- tain. Lieutenant Greely, after his arrival at the designated inter- national polar station on the western shore of Lady Franklin Bay, transmitted to General Hazen, Chief Signal Officer of the Army, by the return ship, a plan to govern the proposed relief expeditions of 1882 and 1883. Lieutenant Greely was familiar with the approaches to his 8 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. advanced position, had studied the exigencies of his situation, and he submitted that plan in the assurance that it would be approved and strictly observed. General Hazen was morally bound to regard it as imposing upon him an obligation as sacred as any that could spring from a solemn compact, upon the faithful execution of which de- pended the safety of human life. The plan for 1882 contem- plated the sending of a steam-sealer, under the command of a captain of experience as an ice-master, the relief party to take with it five enlisted men of the Army to replace men invalided or found unfit otherwise for Arctic work. In case the vessel could not reach the station at Lady Franklin Bay, a depot of two hundred and fifty rations, with a wall-tent, whale-boat, etc., was to be made at or near Cape Hawks ; a whale-boat was to be deposited at Cajoe Prescott, and a duplicate of the rations left at Cape Hawks placed in depot at Littleton Island, the vessel then to leave a record of its proceedings at Cape Sabine and depart southward. The relief party, under the command of Colonel William M. Beebe, General Service, TJ. S. A., sailed from St. John's on July 8, 1882, and reached its highest point, latitude 79° 20', about twelve miles south of Cape Hawks, on August 10, when the vessel {Neptune) was forced back by the ice-floes that were driven by a severe gale from the north. It subsequently made a depot of two hundred and fifty rations and whale-boat with wall-tent, at Cape Sabine, the most northerly landing attain- able, and a depot of the same number of rations at Littleton Island, and deposited a whale-boat at Cape Isabella. After making repeated efforts to penetrate the ice-barriers of Smith Sound the vessel started homeward from that vicinity on Sep- tember 5, 1882, after all chances for the ice to open that season had passed. That expedition did everything required of it by Lieutenant Oreely's instructions, except that it established its most north- ern depot at Cape Sabine instead of at Cape Hawks, which was THE HAZEN COURT-MAKTIAL. 9 not attainable — a most providential circumstance, as the event proved. Had that depot been placed at Cape Hawks it would not have been available to Lieutenant Greely, while it was of priceless value to him and his companions in their famine- stricken camp at Cape Sabine. General Hazen has been criti- cised by some for not having had a larger amount of stores deposited by the expedition of 1882. Such critics are probably not aware of the fact that Lieutenant Greely (See appendix) had definitely specified in his instructions the quantity and kind of stores that he wished deposited by that expedition in case the vessel failed to reach him at Lady Franklin Bay, and his in- structions were complied with. General Hazen placed the relief ship of 1883 at Cape Sabine before Lieutenant Greely could be affected by any depot in that vicinity, whether great or small. The most thorough preparation was entered upon by the Chief Signal Officer to organize and equip the relief expedition of 1883. As early as November 1, 1882, he forwarded the plan of the expedition to the Secretary of War, who returned it without the shadow of dissent, suggesting that the men of the relief party might be obtained from the Navy. That change General Hazen had no authority to make, for, by virtue of the power vested in him by Act of Congress approved May 1, 1880, the President had already decided that the personnel of the ex- peditions for Arctic work should be drawn from the Army, and all subsequent acts of Congress conformed to that decision. The following is an extract from his letter transmitting the plan of relief to Secretary Lincoln : "1 have the honor to enclose herewith copy of plan for relief expedi- tion of next year for the Arctic party at Lady Franklin Bay, which plan Lieutenant Greely wished followed in the event of a failure to reach him this year. This seems to leave us only to follow his plans. ... In sending the expedition next year every possible contingency must be provided for, and I request, therefore, your approval of this (Greely 's) enclosed plan." With the view to the selection of a suitable officer to com- mand the relief expedition and of men to compose it from some 10 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. of our extreme Northwestern posts, General Hazen made appli- cation to the Adjutant-General, under date of November 10, 1882, and thus outlined the qualifications required in such offi- cer and men: ** This will be an expedition requiring the very best manly charac- ter on the part of the persons composing it, and it is for this reason I now ask aid in fixing upon the proper persons. There should be no pos- sible doubt of the character of the officer, who should possess manly quali- ties of the first order. Sobriety, high intelligence, unflagging energy and zeal, and faculty to command are but a small part of these indispensable qualities." Lieutenant Ernest A. Garlington, Seventh Cavalry, volun- teered for this duty, and, being recommended by General Terry, commanding the Department of Dakota, he was accordingly detached for Arctic service, February 6, 1883. The steam-sealer Proteus, of St. John's, Captain Richard Pike commanding, was chartered for the expedition. She was the same vessel that had borne Lieutenant Greely so speedily to Lady Franklin Bay, and he had highly commended her com- mander, who was recognized universally as the foremost captain and ice-master in Newfoundland. General Hazen decided to sui^plement the plan of Lieuten- ant Greely on the line of additional safety, and therefore made application to the Navy Department, through the Secretary of War, to have a suitable vessel of the United States Navy de- tailed as a tender or reserve ship to the Proteus. The Yantic, third-rate, commander Frank Wildes, was accordingly assigned to that duty. She was placed in dock at New York for proper repairs. Her battery was taken off, all her ordnance stores landed, and she was sheathed with oak planking from three to six inches in thickness, spiked on the outside of her copj)er from a little abaft the foremast to her bow, and extending from her water-line to about seven feet below. In his instructions to Commander Wildes to prepare the Yantic for that special Arctic service Rear-Admiral Cooper used the following admonitory language : THE HAZEN COURT- MAETIAL. 11 " In making your preparations you will bear in mind that your vessel may be absent a long time from port and from depots of supplies, and that ehe may encounter severe and stormy weather and ice." On June 9 Commander Wildes — the Yantic being still in dock— received his instructions from Admiral Nichols, Acting Secretary of the Navy, directing him to proceed to St. John's, Newfoundland, etc., *'when in all respects in readiness for sea." Despite these mandatory admonitions. Commander Wildes has since stated, over his signature and in his sworn testimony, that his early separation from the Proteus after leaving St. John's was due mainly to the fact that he had sailed from New York before the repairs on the boilers of the Ymitic had been completed. And to excuse his precipitate departure from the coast of Greenland on September 2, when he had at least, ac- cording to his own view, twenty-nine days of the navigable season in Melville Bay before him, and was only three days' steaming from Cape Sabine, where lay Greely and his party, whom Wildes could have rescued with certainty, he states that "his men were only provided with a tropical outfit." Never before did a commander deliberately start on an Arctic cruise with his men equipped for the tropics. Lieutenant J. C. Colwell, U.S.N., an officer of the Yantic, was detached at St. John's on application of General Hazen, through the Secretary of War, to the Navy Department, at the instance of Lieutenant Garlington, and ordered to report to the latter for duty as a member of the relief expedition. Lieutenant Colwell, who had volunteered for this service, proved himself always and everywhere fully up to the highest standard of the American naval officer. The instructions to Commander Wildes required him to fill up the Yantic with coal at St. John's, and *' proceed to the northward through Davis' Straits in company with the steamer Proteus, if practi- cable." . . .'^In view of the possibility of the destruction of the Proteus, it is desirable that you should proceed as far north 12 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. as practicable, in order to afford succor to her officers and men in the event of such an accident." He was enjoined further not to proceed beyond Littleton Island, or enter the ice-pack, or place his ship in a position to prevent her return that season. The following clause appears in the instructions issued by the Chief Signal Officer to Lieutenant Garlington : "A ship of the United States Navy, the Yantic, will accompany you as far as Littleton Island, rendering you such aid as may become necessary, and as may be determined by the captain of that ship and yourself when on the spot." The two ships thus tied together, as was supposed, by the mandate of their instructions, and required to proceed as con- sorts in company to Littleton Island, the Yantic to be there *' on the spot " when the Proteus sailed northward in Smith Sound, left St. John's June 29, and, by agreement between Lieutenant Garlington and Commander Wildes, voluntarily separated on the same day. They reunited at Godhaven July 12, and the Proteus on July 16 again sailed northward alone, leaving the Yantic in that harbor engaged in repairing her boilers and taking on coal. On the afternoon of July 22 the Proteus was at Payer Har- bor, Cape Sabine. At 3.30 P.M. of that day the solid ice of Smith Sound, ac- cording to Lieutenant Garlington's own report, " presented an unbroken front — no leads to the north." He landed with his party, as he states, "to examine cache there, leave records, and await further developments." At 6.30 p.m. same day he returned hurriedly to the ship and stated to Captain Pike that while observing from the cliff he had discovered an open lead, or water-channel, trending far to the northward through the ice, and directed him to get under way and enter it. Captain Pike objected that the water seen was " no good " ; that they were "there too early," and that he wished to remain in harbor until he filled his coal-bunkers, which would have taken him THE IIAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. 13 about two days. Lieutenant Garlington insisted, and declared that the captain would be false to his duty to the United States if he did not proceed at once. Thus urged, and tlireat- ened with the charge of violating his charter-party, the veteran ice-navigator yielded to the lieutenant of cavalry on the ques- tion of ice-navigation. The Proteus entered the lead at about 8 P.M., July 22, and soon found herself, as her captain had vainly predicted, enveloped by the solid ice. After every ef- fort to extricate her she was crushed, and sunk at 7.15 p.m. on the following day at a point about five miles off Cape Sa- bine. Before the ship went down some three thousand or more rations were landed on the floe, together with twenty- two Eskimo dogs. Of the rations landed at least two thousand were saved and conveyed to Cape Sabine, where Garlington and party, with the crew of the Proteus, repaired and en- camped after the wreck. About two boat-loads, estimated at seven or eight hundred rations, were suffered to drift away on a floe, Garlington refusing to lend Captain Pike one of his whale-boats to save them. The dogs were also abandoned on the floe, although seven of them were harnessed to a sledge and the means of saving them were ample, Garlington having two whale-boats and a twelve-foot cedar dingy, together with three stout boats of the Proteus. Of his two thousand rations or more, Garlington deposited but five hundred for Greely and his party at Cape Sabine, the point at which he knew they would arrive in September. Garlington sailed southward from Cape Sabine on July 25, and encamped that night near Life-Boat Cove with his party, the Proteus crew proceeding to Pandora Harbor, about ten miles farther south. Garlington's instructions contained the following mandatory clause ; "If it should become clearly apparent that the vessel cannot be pushed through, you will retreat from your advanced position and land your party and stores at or near Life-Boat Cove, discharge the relief vessel with orders 14 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. to return to St. John's, N. F. , and prepare for remaining with your party until relieved next year. As soon as possible after landing, or in case your vessel becomes unavoidably frozen up in the ice-pack, you will endeavor to communicate with Lieutenant Greely by taking personal charge of a party of the most experienced and hardy men equipped for sledging, carrying such stores as practicable to Cape Sabine. ..." Lieutenant G-arlington had with him also a copy of the plan of relief drawn by Lieutenant G-reely, in which, after stating the contingency of the relief ship of 1883 being unable to pass through Smith Sound, it provided for establishing a relief sta- tion, with men and supplies, at Life-Boat Cove, in the follow- ing words : *' The party should then proceed to establish a winter station at Polaris winter quarters, Life-Boat Cove, where their main duty would be to keep their telescopes on Cape Sabine and the land to the northward. ... No deviation from these instructions should be permitted." With the wreck of the vessel the expedition to Lady Frailk- lin Bay ended, and the duty of establishing the winter station at Life-Boat Cove began. That was the post of rescue for the explorers, and the means to establish and maintain it amply were at hand. Game was abundant at Life-Boat Cove, Little- ton Island, and Pandora Harbor, but none on Cape Sabine side. Garlington saw hundreds of seal and walrus — the staple food 'Of the Arctic— around him basking in the sunlight on the rocks .and ice-foot, within easy range of his guns, and their nutritious flesh was as certainly attainable by him as if thousands of pounds of it had been already canned and deposited in his camp. Birds also abounded and filled the air with their deafen- ing chatter. He was bountifully supplied with arms and am- munition. The friendly Eskimo lived in tliat neighborhood. His own party had three rifles, a shot-gun, a navy and army re- volver, with over one thousand rounds of ammunition, while the crew of the Proteus had five shot-guns and six rifles and were well supplied with ammunition. THE HAZETT COURT-MARTIAL. 15 It was midsummer, and sixty days before the Arctic night would set in. Grarlington professed to be, and doubtless was, well read on Arctic Avork and the resources and expedients of explorers in that region. He had at least on hand forty days' rations for himself and party, numbering fifteen in all, and Captain Pike had rations for the same number of days for his crew. In addition to this Garlington knew that there were two hundred and fifty rations, and a tarpaulin, and six and a half tons of coal in depot at Littleton Island ; and on the day before the wreck he examined the British depot at S. E. Carey Island, and reported that seventy-five per cent, of the provisions there stored, or twenty- seven hundred rations, were in good edible condition. The last- named depot was about one hundred miles south of Life-Boat Cove, within three days' travel by whale-boat. In addition to the supply of game with which he could readily have stocked the station, he thus had within easy access, canned and boxed pro- visions sufficient for his party for eight months, and enough to supply the Greely party, combined with his own, full rations for three months without resort to native food. He knew the situation impending over Greely and his men on their expected arrival at Cape Sabine in September. He knew that they would find themselves there, after an exhausting and perilous journey of several hundred miles, with only about forty days' rations to face an Arctic winter. Garlington knew that they would come into a barren and gameless desert, and that in the month of September Smith Sound, twenty-six miles in width, stretcliing between them and Life-Boat Cove, would be a torrent of whirl- ing ice, and probably impassable for several months by enfee- bled men. Yet, turning a deaf ear to the dictates of duty, dis- regarding his imperative orders, he announced his purpose to retreat southward, stating that he intended to seek the Yantic and return with her and establish a winter station. Garling- ton knew that the commander of that vessel was bound by his orders to reach Littleton Island, if practicable. He had been W THE HAZEN COUKT-MAETIAL, assured by Commander Wildes, when they separated at Uper- navik ten days before, that he '' would get to Littleton Island if possible." Garlington knew that his presence with the Yan- tic could not add to her means of effecting the passage of Mel- ville Bay, or to the stringency of the orders directing her com- mander, to proceed to Littleton Island with her as the reserve ship of the expedition ; and G-arlington knew that she was then en route, or lying near Upernavik, only four or five days' steam- ing from Life-Boat Cove. The Yantic, indeed, actually made the trip between those points in three days. Lieutenant Colwell offered to take a whale-boat and sail south in search of the Yantic, while Garlington should remain at his post of duty and establish the winter station at Life-Boat Cove ; but the offer was rejected. Captain Pike on July 28, at Pandora Harbor, assured Gar- lington that he knew by experience that the Yantic would cer- tainly cross Melville Bay, and urged him to await her arrival for a few days at least. This advice was also rejected, and Garling- ton sailed southward the same day. Five days later, August 3, the Yantic arrived at Littleton Island and Life-Boat Cove, touching first at Pandora Harbor. Garlington and his party were then distant about one hundred miles, heading for Cape York. At that point, on August 16, Lieutenant Colwell was detached at his own request, and started to cross Melville Bay for Godhaven to communicate with the Yantic, his boat being manned in part by a portion of the crew of the Proteus. Garlington's boat, in charge of Boatswain Taylor, of the Proteus — Captain Pike leading in his boat — was steered for Upernavik. Garlington was commended by the Proteus Court of Inquiry for his skill and energy displayed in conducting the retreat of his command across Melville Bay, when the facts prove that on such retreat he was a mere passenger, and was helplessly de- pendent upon Captain Pike and his officers for guidance. This is the first time in military history that an officer was ever com- THE HAZEiq- COURT-MARTIAL. 17 mended for the celerity with which he effected his flight from his post of duty to '*a place of safety." He arrived at Uper- navik August 24, and there learned that the Yantic had re- turned from Littleton Island and gone to Godhaven. Lieu- tenant Colwell reached her at that point on August 31, and she started the same day for Upernavik, where she arrived on the 2d of Septemher. Garlington in his report thus notes his departure from Upernavik on that day : ** My own party and the crew of the Proteus were soon aboard, and, 1 P.M., steamed out of the harbor for St. John's, where we arrived on the 13th of September." In the record that Grarlington deposited at Cape Sahine, July 24, the day of the wreck, he stated : *' The United States steamer Yantic is on her way to Littleton Island with orders not to enter the ice. A Swedish steamer will try to reach Cape York during this month. I will endeavor to communicate with these ves- sels at once, and everything within the power of man will be done to res- cue the brave men at Fort Conger from their perilous position." On July 26 he left a second record at Littleton Island, in which he stated : " I am making for the south to communicate with the United States steamer Yantic, which is endeavoring to get up. Every effort will be made to come north at once for the Greely party. The Yantic cannot come into the ice, and she has a crew of one hundred a,nd forty-six men. So will have to get another ship. Everything will be done to get as far north as possible before the season closes." On July 27 he deposited a third record at Pandora Harbor, in which he stated : "Will go south— keeping close into shore as possible and calling at Carey Islands— to Cape York, or until I meet some vessel. Hope to meet United States steamer Yantic or the Swedish steamer Sofia, which should be about Cape York." It is proper at this point to emphasize the fact that Garhng- ton did not stop at Carey Islands, a^ he wa;S n,ot only bound to 18 THE HAZEN COURT -MAETIAL. do in accordance with his purpose declared in this record, but it was one of the points of rendezvous designated in his agree- ment with Commander Wildes on the eye of their separation at St. John's. Garlington, when afc Cape Parry, only twenty-five miles from the Carey Islands, at nine o'clock on the morning of Au- gust 2, decided not to proceed to the Carey Islands, and at nine o'clock on the night of that very day the Yantic arrived at those islands, where Garlington would certainly have met her had he not abandoned his previously-expressed intention of calling there on his way south. Garlington's Pandora Harbor record was found by Commander Wildes on August 3, and on the fol- lowing day he returned to the Carey Islands, and, finding that Garlington had not called there, he headed the Yantic for Cape York after making a further search to the northward. The Yantic was within forty miles of Cape York on August 10, the very day that Garlington and his party arrived at that point, and where they remained for six days ; but, unhappily. Com- mander Wildes, deterred by the appearance of the ice, made no effort to reach Cape York, but steamed southward for Upernavik. Had either Garlington called at the Carey Islands on the 2d of August, or Wildes at Cape York on any day be- tween the 10th and the 16th of August, the expeditionary force would have returned to Life-Boat Cove, and the Cape Sab hie tragedy would have been averted. Both of these offi- cers thus fatally disregarded the agreement that they had entered into before their departure from St. John's. In his fourth and final record, deposited at Immeelick Bay, near Cape York, on the 12th day of August, he states no pur- pose to return ; and although the Swedish steamer Sofia was expected by him to arrive in that vicinity, he failed to state, for the information of her officers, that Greely and his men would, under his instructions, probably arrive at Cape Sabine early in September, and would be in great need of supplies. He did not leave one line to invoke the aid of any passing vessel in THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 19 behalf of the men whom he was commissioned to rescue, and who he had every reason to know were even then working their way down to Cape Sabine, distant only about two hundred and sixty miles from Cape York. That record of August 12 virtually announced the termina- tion of the relief expedition in the middle of the navigable sea- son, at least sixty days before it usually came to a close, and gave not the faintest intimation of any further effort to rescue Greely. I cite the following paragraph from it as fully sus- taining this view : " From this point Lieutenant Colwell with second whale-boat goes direct to Disco, as it is probable that United States steamer Yantic will be in that vicinity, the ice having prevented her progress north, and the har- bor at Upernavik not permitting a long stay at that place. I, with Pike's party, will go hence to Upernavik (his party not being well equipped with boats), keeping as close into shore as possible, but on the outside of the ice. In the event of no ship coming to my relief 1 will winter at Upernavik, and divide my party among the neighboring settlements. Everybody well and in good spirits. With God's help we all hope to reach port in safety in good time." He refers now only to tlie safety of his own party. His de- sire to succor Greely had faded out. It is important to observe that the obligation resting upon Lieutenant Garlington to return at all hazards, if possible, to carry succor to Lieutenant Greely and his command, was in- creased, if anything could add to it, by his solemn pledge deposited at Cape Sabine declaring that " everything within the power of man will be done to rescue the brave men at Fort Conger from their perilous position." That record also stated that the Yantic was on her way to Littleton Island, and a Swedish steamer would try to reach Cape York that month. Lieutenant Greely, as his official report shows, was fatally misled by this assurance. Relying upon Garlington's pledge to return with a relief ship, he felt bound to await the promised rescue at Cape Sabine, instead of pushing his retreat southward 20 THE HA ZEN COURT-MAETIAL. before October 20, when the Arctic night set in. That violated pledge lured him to bitter disaster. On September 2 Garlington stood on the deck of the Tan- tic. Tlie time had come to translate into action his declared purpose of returning on her to Life-Boat Cove, and there es- tablish the winter station for the rescue of Greely and his part}^ There was no longer any doubt of the capacity of that ship to navigate the ice-fields of Melville Bay, for she had already twice made the passage. According even to the timorous estimate of Commander Wildes, navigation would not close in those waters until Octo- ber 1, or for twenty-nine days, and the Yantic had a sufficiency of provisions on board, with the means of adding to them at Upernavik, to spare safely nine months' supply for the combined parties of Garlington and Greely. She in fact returned to New York with sufficient rations to have supplied both parties for an entire year. But Garlington made no demand upon Comman- der Wildes to return with him and his party to their designated post of duty. Had he made such demand, representing Greely's "perilous position," as he had termed it in the Cape Sabine re- cord, Wildes could have refused it only at the manifest hazard of being cashiered. Garlington had brought away three-fourths of the rations saved from the wreck, taking fifteen hundred, when five hun- dred would have been amply sufficient for all emxCrgencies, while the rest should have been deposited for the explorers and would have saved them. He carried away and wasted a half-barrel of alcohol — a vital necessity in the Arctic. He could have shot and cached the twenty-two dogs he abandoned on the floe, averaging not less than fifty pounds, and they alone would liave saved Greely and his men from danger of starvation. He ai)propriated the stores sent for Greely, when he was going into a land of sunlight and plenty, with the Gary Island cache but one hundred miles distant in his path, and knowing that Greely was coming into a region of darkness and famine. Garlington and Wildes having failed in their plainest duty, the Secretary of War failed likewise in his. The same apathy THE IIAZEN COURT-MAIITIAL. 21 "which prevented liis mastering the subject when, in 1882, lie re[)orlcd to tlie President that he knew of no understanding that the International Polar Ex])edition was to be yisited each year, also prevented his mastering it in 1883. The same unreasoning hostility to the Chief Signal Officer and his work which marked his entire official course caused him to disregard that officer's wisely-matured plans and sound advice, which had the single purpose to rescue the explorers. These were the indirect but certain causes that led to the as- tounding disaster. Garlington, in his official report, thus describes the abun- dance of food-su2:>ply on his line of retreat, and unconsciously emphasizes his cold-blooded wantonness in appropriating to his own use Greely's scanty supplies : " On the small islands about Cape Sabine there were ducks and gulls, and fi-oni Life-Boat Cove to Cape York the shore and ishmds were alive with ducks, lummes, and auks. About Littleton Island we saw at least one tiiousand walrus and some seal, in Pandora Harbor a wliite whale, and, in the hills back of the harbor, reindeer. ... I am of the opinion that if Lieutenant Greely should reach Littleton Island this season he will divide his people among the different Eskimo settlements, and the stores he will find on his line of retreat, supplemented by the game of that region, will be sufficient food for his party during the coming winter." Here is a positive admission, by Garlington himself, that he had around him at Life-Boat Cove abundant means to stock and maintain the winter station that he was sent to establish. I invite the attention of the reader to the statements of Sig- nal Corps observers Lamar and Ellis, two of Lieutenant Gar- lington's most efficient sul)ordinates in the relief expedition, as unfolding such a wanton disregard of duty on the part of that officer, and such an improvident waste of food on his retreat, and general unfitness to command, as must fatigue the indigna- tion of every civilized man who peruses them. Sergeants Lamar and Ellis are witnesses in every way worthy of the highest degree of credit, and Garlington's own report attests their efficient and honorable service as members of the expedition. Sergeant Lamar testified before the Proteus Court of In- 22 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. quiry, but was directed by the counsel for Lieutenant Garling- ton, and by the Court, along a line of examination not calcu- lated to elicit the facts contained in those statements. The scheme of the inquiry was manifestly to refer the Pro- teus disaster and the failure to establish the relief station to General Hazeu's instructions, and not to develop the real facts, which would have placed the responsibility where it properly belonged. Upon receiving this information General Hazen promptly preferred charges against Lieutenant Garlington. The Secre- tary of War, however, refused to permit him to be brought to trial before a court-martial, alleging that he was already ex- onerated by the Court of Inquiry from all criminal responsi- bility, it having found that he had only "erred in judgment." General Hazen protested against this view of the case, which was unwarranted either by law or practice, as the specifications plainly showed, and he had solemnly alleged, that the charges were founded, in great part, upon newly- discovered evidence, material to the issue, and not elicited by the Court of Inquiry. There was no precedent for refusing a court-martial for the trial of charges preferred by an officer of high rank who alleged that he had proof sufficient to convict, especially where the derelictions of duty specified had resulted in great loss of life. There can be no doubt that, had Secretary Lincoln been satisfied that the charges could not be sustained, he would have ordered the Court-Martial, that they might recoil disastrously upon the head of the Chief Signal Officer, who liad preferred them, and persisted that the accused should be brought to trial, despite the finding of a Court of Inquiry. These statements, for the first time given to the public, add to the already abundant proof that Lieutenant Garlington was amply supplied with the means of establishing the winter sta- tion, and that, unmindful of the succor due to the Lady Frank- lin Bay Expedition, and which it was his sole mission to furnish, he carried away from Cape Sabine an amount of provisions so far beyond what the exigencies of his proposed retreat demand- ed that after the most wasteful excess for thirty-nine days, and THE IIAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 23 feeding his huge dog to repletion daily on tliose precious stores, he still had rations for many days on hand. Tliat Garlington left Cape Sabine with a great deal more than forty days' rations is indicated by his having refrained to state the amount of food on hand when he arrived at Upernavik. But it has been stated that even had the winter station been established at Life-Boat Cove it would have been, as the result proved, of no practical value to Greely and his party, as they were unable to cross Smith Sound to reach it. It is true that Greely, with his enfeebled and dispirited men, broken down with hunger and toil, could not battle successfully with the swift current, twenty-six miles in width, that separated Cape Sabine fi-om Life-Boat Cove ; but Garlington, it is certain, with his excellent whale-boats and stout crews, could have crossed to Greely during the winter and brought the whole party over in safety, and no life would have been lost by starva- tion. Upon this point the testimony of Lieutenant Greely, as given in the Appendix to this work, is conclusive. Yet, great as was the fault of Garlington, it only rendered the tragedy at Cape Sabine probable. It was reserved for a higher official to make it certain and shut the gates of hope upon Lieutenant Greely and his companions. Garlington's flight from the Arctic had some merit in its pre- cipitancy. It brought him to St. John's in time for a ship of rescue to steam from that port to Cape Sabine and return with Greely and his party before the navigable season closed. On September 13 the Secretary of War was informed by tele- graph of the arrival of the Yantic with the relief expedition. General Hazen Avas then in Washington Territory, and on re- ceiving a dispatch from Captain Samuel M. Mills, Acting Chief Signal Officer, announcing the failure of the expedition, he sent the following telegram : "New Tacoma, W. T., September 15, 1883. "To Captain Mills, Washington: " It may be necessary to send men with money and authority to Uper- navik to organize and send sledging parties with food north to meet Greely, who is now probably at Littleton Island on his way south. See the Secre- tary about it, and, if the President can authorize the money. Congress will 24 THE HAZElSr COURT-MARTIAL. approve. It will have to be done by telegraph to St. John's, Molloy sending man and money by small steamer. It will cost but a few thousand dollars. Give the subject careful study." That telegram was laid before the Secretary of War on the day of its date. On the day before Captain Mills, by authority of the Secretary of War, had telegraphed Lieutenant Garling- ton as follows : "Is the following project feasible? That a steam-sealer be chartered to take your party northward, provisioned for crew, passengers, and twenty additional men, for one year, to be purchased at St. John's and elsewhere en route. Outfit completed, all despatch and steam to Upernavik, thence to northernmost attainable harbor west, coast of Greenland, or to Littleton for winter quarters. To pick up dogs, sleds, and native drivers in Greenland, and lead small party and as much supplies as possible to Littleton Island, or to meet Greely if Littleton Island is attained." This sagacious and only feasible plan of rescue was what General Hazen intended. To this despatch Garlington replied on Sep- tember 15 as follows : "... The ultimate result of any undertaking to go north at this time extremely problematical; chances against its success, owing to dark nights now begun in those regions, making ice-navigation extremely critical work. There is no safe winter anchorage on west shore of Greenland between Disco and Pandora Harbor, except perhaps North Star Bay, winter quarters of Saunders. However, there is a bare chance of success, and if my recommen- dations are approved I am ready and anxious to make the effort. My plan is to buy a suitable sealer, take the crev/ from volunteers from crews from Yantic and Powhatan, now in this harbor, paying them extra compensa- tion. Lieutenant J. C. Col well to command the ship ; two ensigns and one engineer to be taken from those who may volunteer from same ship ; also employ competent ice-pilot here. The ship must be under United States laws and subject to military discipline. I believe nothing can be done with foreign civilian officers and crew." This plan was also feasible, although far more costly and in- volving much longer delay than the first. Those who know the splendid work that has been done in the Arctic by the sealing captains and crews of Newfoundland will, however, put the foot of their utmost scorn upon Garling- ton's imputation that our government could not trust them to act faithfully and efficiently under a charter-party. On the same day that Garlington's telegram was received THE HAZEX COURT-MAKTIAL. 25 George W. Melville, Chief-Engineer, U. S. N., the foremo>t authoiity on Arctic naTiga:ion in this country, telegraphed tlie Secretary of the Xayy. urging that "a vessel should he sent at once from St. John's, ^.F., to Cape Athol or Cape York, which, after landing a rescue party with supplies, tents, boats, and sledges, could return immediately before the ice began to make too rapidly." He followed that, on the same day, with a letter fully elaborating his plan of rescue, from which I make the following extract, as it appears in Melville's admirable work, recently published, entitled **' The Lena Delta," etc., j^- -il^^ : "If landed at Cape York I will undertake to lead a party to Littleton Island to conununicate with Greely, and, if his men are able to travel, con- duct them to the new base of supplies at Cape York, and encourage tliem to hold on." Melville's telegram and letter were both laid before Secre- tary Lincoln, and he treated them both as he did the urgent appeal of the Chief Signal Officer — with indifference. On September 15 Captain Mills announced the fatal deci- sion of the Secretary of TTar in the following telegram address- ed to Garlington : "Dispatches received. Expedition this year not considered advisable. Will ask for return of your party by naval vessel." These two lines compose the death-Avarrant of the nineteen members of the International Polar Expedition who died by starvation at Cape Sabine. General Hazen was at once notified of tliat decision, but, having a clear forecast of the disaster impending over Lieu- tenant Greely and his party, he still urged that means for their rescue should be sent at once. On September 17 he telegraphed to Captain Mills as follows : " It is very important to get a capable man with money, as high up in Greenland as possible, to send sledge parties with native food and clothing, under pay and bounties, to meet Greely. See the Secretary and do it, if possible, by telegraph to Molloy." And on September 19 : "Get orders from Danish legation, for men going to Greenland, for all Danish authorities to give all possible assistance it can. Telegraph it to St. John's." 26 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. On September 20 he sent the following telegram : " If it is too early for sledges, parties must start up in boats." On September 23 he sent the following : *' Has question been asked St. John's, Can vessel reach at or near Upernavik? Greely will retreat south," He sent the following telegram, as his final appeal for the rescue of the apparently doomed explorers, on the same day as the above : "Do all in your power to prevent delay of preparation. What I want done requires no preparation. Time is more valuable than all else." These appeals were all ignored by Secretary Lincoln. It is in proof that, at most, he gave but one day to the con- sideration of this momentous question, on the true solution of which the lives of many brave men depended. He did not attempt even to inform himself through an authoritative source as to whether it was practicable for a steam-sealer to reach Cape Sabine, starting from St. John's between the 15tli and the 20th of September. That source was pointed out to liim by the telegrams of General Hazen, as the United States Consul at St. John's, T. N. Molloy, Esq. That officer had been honorably connected for more than twenty years with the outfitting of American Arctic expedi- tions. Through him the Neptune was selected and chartered for the relief expedition of 1882 ; and he was the agent by whom her supplies were inspected and passed upon. The thanks of the War Department had been extended to him in 1881 for the efficient aid given by him in the outfitting of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition. On October 31, 1882, Secretary Lincoln, over his own signature, at the instance of General Hazen, addressed a letter to the Secretary of State, requesting *'that the thanks of the Department be appropriately tendered to Mr. Molloy, Consul at St. John's, Newfoundland, for the valuable assistance ren- THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. 27 dered by him in the outfit of the supply expedition to Lieu- tenant Greely of this year." The Secretary of War also knew that it was through that officer that the Proteus was selected and supplies purchased for the relief expedition of 1883. Consul Molloy was en rapport with the sealing captains and the owners of steam-sealers at St. John's. A single telegram to him would have resulted in furnishing the Secretary informa- tion of the fact that at the date of his decision there were four steam-sealers lying at St; John's, already coaled, and that could have steamed out of the harbor for Cape Sabine, fully pro- visioned, within forty-eight hours. The evidence now given to the public also shows that he would have been informed that every ice-pijot at St. John's regarded it as certain that a steam-sealer starting as late as September 20 could reach Cape Sabine before the navigable season closed in Melville Bay. He would also have learned that the cost of such steam-sealer, even if she wintered in the Arctic, would not have exceeded fifty-four thousand dollars, the char- ter-rate being six thousand dollars per month. Thus every life would have been saved, and at a cost of seven hundred thousand dollars (1700,000) less than was incurred for the relief expedition of 1884, which arrived at Cape Sabine after nineteen members of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition had starved to death. The opinions of Lieutenant Garlington and Commander Wildes were manifestly of no value as to the practicability of a steam-sealer reaching Cape Sabine at that period of the navigable season, for they were known to be without auy ex- perience on that special subject, and had actually retreated without giving succor when the opportunity was in their hands. The Secretary states that he consulted Captain Greer, who commanded the Tigress in the Polaris search of 1873 ; Cap- tain George E. Tyson and Dr. Emile Bessels, both connected with Captain Hall's last expedition, which sailed on the Polaris 28 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. in 1871. He fails, however, to state that he did not consult them on the only practical question, which was, whether a steam-sealer despatched from St. John's by the 18th or 20th of September could reach Cape Sabine or Littleton Island that autumn ? Captain Greer's knowledge of that region was limited to a single cruise ; but even he could have informed the Secretary of War that he had sailed from Igvituk, on the west coast of Greenland, in latitude 60° 40' N., as late as Oc- tober 4, cruising northward and across Davis Straits, and that he remained in the vicinity of Melville Bay, without danger of being frozen in, as late as the 9th day of October. He could also have informed the Secretary that his consort, the Juniata, commanded by Captain Braine, U. S. N. , a vessel only sheathed, as was the Yantic, and, like her, a third-rate, started from St. John's, N. F., to resume her search for the lost crew of the Polaris, sailing from that port for Melville Bay as late as September 18, but was overtaken by a British steamer chartered by Consul Molloy, which conveyed to him the infor- mation that the Polaris crew liad been rescued by a Scotch whaler, the Ravenscraig. Captain Tyson had a more extended Arctic experience, but which had in no degree qualified him as an authority upon that special question. Dr. Bessels is high Arctic authority, as he was not only the scientist with Hall on the Polaris expedition, but had explored the polar regions under the auspices of Peterman, the renowned Arctic geographer. He certainly did not advise the Secretary that it was too late on September 15 to reach Lit- tleton Island witli a steam-sealer sailing from St. John's, for Dr. Bessels, but three months after that date, testified before the board convened to organize the relief expedition of 1884, in reply to a question by General Hazen, that " a vessel can secure safe transit south starting from Littleton Island as late as October the 15th." Chief -Engineer Melville, referring to the rejection of his pro- position to rescue Greely, submitted September 15, 1883, says : THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. 29 **But, alas I a board to whom the matter was referred adjudged my scheme an impracticable one for several reasons, mainly the lateness of the season, albeit whalemen have been known to cruise as far north as Cape York so late as October 20. Thus my project for relief was not accepted, though the effort could certainly have been made without difRculty or dan- ger, it being simply a question of seamanship." Chief -Engineer Melville will learn, by reading the proceed- ings of the Hazen Oourt-Martial, that not '*a board," but Secre- tary of War Eobert T. Lincoln, as he himself asserts, decided to send no ship of rescue for Greely in September, 1883, and re- jected all propositions submitted to that end. The statements of Lieutenant Greely and of ice-navigators of Newfoundland, supporting the view of Chief-Engineer Mel- ville, will be found in the testimony before the Court-Mar tial. I add with confidence that there is not one Arctic authority to the contrary. It can now be asserted as a proved fact that Melville Bay was navigable throughout the entire month of October, 1883, or for a period of forty-five (45) days after the date of Secretary Lincoln's decision that it was too late to despatch a steam-sealer across its waters to Cape Sabine. The importance of this fact will be appreciated when it is known that the voyage from St. John's to Littleton Island, twenty-six miles from Cape Sabine, is readily made by a steam-sealer in fifteen (15) days. The Proteus made the trip with Lieutenant Greely and his party, in 1881, in fourteen (14) days, although she encountered two strong northerly gales, and heavy fogs delayed her thirty-two hours. She made the return trip from Cape Sabine to St. John's in twelve (12) days. On her second voyage, in 1883, she made the trip to Cape Sabine in thirteen (13) days from St. John's. The Neptune in 1882, carrying the relief expedition of that year, made the trip from St. John's to Littleton Island in fifteen (15) days, and the return trip from same j^oint in twelve (12) days. The time given is exclusive of stoppages in harbors en route, but includes all delays by fogs and ice. 30 THE HAZEN COUET-MARTIAL* Tlius it appears that if a steam-sealer had been despatched from St. John's for the relief of Lieutenant Greely and his party even as late as September 20, she would have had not less than twenty-five days of the navigable season before her in which to make a voyage to Cape Sabine that was usually made in fifteen days. Although, as Dr. Bessels testifies, such vessel could secure "safe transit south starting from Littleton Island as late as October 15," it was not material that she should have returned that season. She could have wintered in that vicinity, as was well known, in perfect safety, either at Life-Boat Cove or Pan- dora Harbor, and her arrival with supplies would have enabled the International Polar Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay to close its splendid record unmarred by tbe loss of a single human life, even had the relief vessel been subsequently lost. The Secretary of War asserts, as the prime reason controlling his decision, that to have despatched a relief ship in the autumn would have been "hazarding more lives in 1883 in a nearly hopeless adventure." This was lowering a great public duty to the base standard of a mere commercial venture. Twenty-five men, three of them commissioned officers of the United States Army and nineteen enlisted soldiers, were known to be in extreme danger of death by starvation. Those officers and soldiers were assigned to a perilous field of duty by order of the President of the United States, issued through the War Department. They had volunteered for that duty upon the ;Solemn assurance, and in the sincere belief, that all the resources 'Of their government would be exhausted, if need be, to rescue them. Their location was known, and brave men were eagerly volunteering for their rescue from impending death, and yet the iSecretary of War refused even to attempt to save them, on the ground that such attempt would involve hazard to the rescuers. Doubtless this was true, and it might have been, as the Sec- retary alleges, "perilous in the extreme/' but the honor and THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. 31 good faith of the government were alike pledged to make the effort to save the explorers who without such effort were proba- bly doomed. It required no heroic spirit to arrive at the conclusion that lives must be *^ hazarded " often to save life. A mere humanita- rian motive would have impelled to such an effort, even though success were "nearly hopeless"; but when it was demanded by the highest considerations of public duty the refusal to make the effort became an act of criminal neglect. The late Secretary of "War, being confronted by this inevita- ble deduction, and seeing that the logic of events points directly to him as the responsible author of the Arctic tragedy, alleges that, even had the effort been made, it would have b6en unavail- ing ; and in support of this line of defence he cites the following from Commander Schley's official report of the relief expedition of 1884 : "The winter began earlier than nsual and continued with great severity late into the spring of 1884. About the equinox (September 21) cold wea- ther set in, and the temperature steadily fell at Disco, Upemavik, and Tes- suisak, until 60° below zero (Fah.) was reached. This continued for a period of sixty (60) consecutive days. Melville Bay was frozen over as far as could be seen from these three points early in October. As the season of con- tinual darkness had come on by October, the navigation of this region would have been well-nigh impossible even if the bay had been open. Un- der the circumstances any vessel attempting this navigation would have come to grief, if she had not been totally lost. It can be seen now, in the light of this new information, that the action of last year was wise and proper." It does not appear that Commander Schley derived this in- formation from any official source. He states in his work, recently published, on the "Eescue of Greely," that it was "gained at the Greenland ports by the relief expedition of 1881" That gallant officer of the Navy is incapable of an unworthy act, but he has by the above statement unconsciously thrown a false weight into the scale of controversy. That he has done so will be indubitably proved. 82 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. I cite upon this point from the tables of temperatures fur- nished by the Bureau of Meteorology at Copenhagen, Denmark, and which are given in full in the Appendix. They are duly certified as a correct transcript from the official record. By reference to these tables it will be seen that on October 1, 1883^ the temperature at Upernavik was 33°. 6 above zero ; on October 9, 21° above zero ; on October 15, 23°. 7 above zero ; and on October 31, 23°.9 above zero. These temperatures are Fah- renheit, reduced from Centigrade. The observations were all taken at 8 a.m., London time. It is shown by this table that the mean temperature for the month was -{- 24°. 3, or more than 24° above zero, and that the mean temperature for November, 1883, at Upernavik was 15°. 8 above zero. The mean temperature at that point for December was 5°. 3 below zero. Upernavik is situated in latitude 72° 47' N. To **pile Pelion upon Ossa" in crushing disproof of Com- mander Schley's extraordinary statement, I append the tables of temperatures as observed and recorded by Lieutenant G-reely at Cape Sabine for September, October, and November, 1883. It should be here stated that Camp Clay, Cape Sabine, where these observations were taken, is in latitude 78° 54' N. It ap- pears from these tables that the mean temperature at Cape Sa- bine for September was 53° above zero. On the first day of October, 1883, the temperature at Cape Sabine was 25° above zero ; on the 9th of October, 12° above zero ; on the 15th of October, 1° below zero ; and on the 31st of October, 2° above zero. The mean temperature for October was —2°. 5. Bearing in mind that Upernavik is over 6°, or in round numbers 420 miles, south of Cape Sabine, and that they are about the same altitude, it is simply incredible that the temperature of the more southerly point should have been on the 31st day of October 62° lower than at the more northerly, even if we did not have the exact Upernavik temperatures. Lieutenant Greely's tables of temperatures at Cape Sabine THE HAZEN COUKT-MARTIAL. 33 for November, 1883, furnish still further disproof of the state- ment made in Commander Schley's report. On the 1st day of November the temperature at Cape Sa- bine was 3° below zero ; on the 9th, 23°.5 ; on the 15th, 35° be- low zero ; on the 21st, 14° below zero ; and on November 30, 3° above zero. The lowest temperature for the month was on November 15, and the mean for November was 18°.4 below zero. These tables of temperatures from Copenhagen and those by Lieutenant Greely, the result of the most careful observations with the very best thermometers, will be regarded as authori- tative everywhere, while the temperature as given for Uperna- vik by Commander Schley, in the statement cited so confi- dently by Secretary Lincoln, will be apt to suggest the remark of the astute De Quincey : '' Well, there is nothing that lies so much as figures, unless it is facts." Commander Schley was equally unfortunate in accepting as true the information that " Melville Bay was frozen over as far as could be seen from these three points [Disco, Upernavik, and Tessuisak] early in October." The tables of temperatures above cited show that this was not true ; but I cite from a statement of the heroic Sergeant Brainard, given in the testi- mony, which proves by actual observation that Melville Bay was open even along its northern limit as late as the 4th day of No- vember. I quote from the statement as follows : " The practicability of a well-equipped steam-sealer reaching Cape Isa- bella, and thus rendering efficient aid to our forlorn party, was never for a moment doubted by those most capable of judging the dangers and diffi- culties which attend ice-navigation at that season of the year. Our opinion in this matter was confirmed by the observations of Sergeants Rice and Fredericks during the early days of November. Standing near the summit of Cape Isabella, they had an uninterrupted view for many miles to the southward, and within range of their vision not a piece of ice capable of offering the slightest obstruction to a vessel appeared. The waves rolling in from Melville Bay and dashing against the cliffs at their feet gave ample evidence of the scarcity of ice in the North Water and the feasibility of its successful navigation." 34 THE HAZEN COUET-MARTIAL. This extract is taken from a letter addressed by Sergeant D. L. Brainard to General Hazen December 9, 1884. Cape Isabella is on the west side of Smith Sound, directly opposite Life-Boat Cove, and about twenty-eight miles below Cape Sabine. It should be added that Tessuisak and Disco, the two other points named above, are respectively fifty miles north and two hundred and twenty-five miles south of Upernavik. Commander Schley's fictitious temperature being exposed, and shown to vary from the true temperature about eighty (80) degrees, his October sea of ice melts into thin air. He is equally at fault as to the time the Arctic night be- gins. He says it begins in the region under discussion in October, while in the northernmost part it does not begin till the middle of November, and in the southern portion scarcely at all. It will be readily conceded that Secretary Lincoln did not intend the disaster of which his decision was "the direful spring"; but yet, as the adoption of General Hazen's plan would have averted it, it is pertinent, in fixing the degree of the Secretary's responsibility, to show that he cherished such a deep- seated feeling of antagonism to General Hazen as to lead him to turn his face away from every proposition, however merito- rious, that bore the sanction of that officer, who, on the con- trary, was amazed at a spirit of hostility that he deeply regret- ted and never intended to provoke. As instances of conduct on the part of Secretary Lincoln which must be referred to that antagonism, I cite the fol- lowing : While General Hazen was urging an appropriation by Con- gress for the first annual relief expedition of 1882, in accord- ance with the view stated by President Hayes in his order of April 28, 1880, directing the establishment of the station at Lady Franklin Bay, Secretary Lincoln addressed a letter to the President, from which I make the following extract, which THE HAZEN COUBT-MARTIAL. 35 plainly shows that his purpose was to defeat such appropriation and to deny to Lieutenant Greely all succor in that year : "Observing that mention is made by the Actmg Chief Signal Officer of an understanding had that the party composing the expedition of last year would remain at the point of their destination, to be visited year by year whenever the state of navigation rendered it possible, until finally recalled, I have to remark that 1 know of no such understanding," General Hazen replied to this under date of May 25, 1882, showing conclusively that the plan of an annual relief expedi- tion '^ was thoroughly understood by the President and by Con- gress," as appeared by the Congressional proceedings and by the act of March 3, 1881, relating to the Lady Franklin Bay Ex- pedition, and Lieutenant Greely had sailed with that under- standing. Secretary Lincoln had evidently decided, as in 1883, with- out due investigation ; but, happily, in the former case his view was promptly overruled, for without the supplies deposited by the relief expedition of 1882 at Cape Sabine every man of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition must have perished. Altliough meagre, they constituted one-third or more of the rations that were placed there. On April 1, 1883, General Hazen addressed a letter to the Secretary of "War for the purpose of showing that the expedi- tion to Lady Franklin Bay was not, in fact, a part of the Signal Service, and, as it was composed in great part of enlisted men detailed from the line of the Army, the payment of its person- nel should be made from the appropriations for their support, and not out of the appropriations for the Signal Service. He also respectfully requested that such branches of the public service as the President might designate would furnish such supplies in their possession as might be suitable for this special Arctic duty. Secretary Lincoln wrote the following endorse- ment on that letter : ** The Arctic expeditions originated in the Signal Office, and no other Bureau seems to have taken the slightest interest in them." This was sent while General 36 THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. Hazen was diligently engaged in preparing the relief expedi- tion of 1883. Not to multiply too greatly instances of the real animus of the Secretary of War, I cite the following facts : Captain Olmsted, an officer of the Army, had been dismissed the service under the sentence of a court-martial for fraudu- lently duplicating his pay accounts. Through adroit manage- ment he secured his restoration by Act of Congress. Captain Olmsted's reputation was well known, and for five years he had not been assigned to a regiment. The Chief Signal Officer, learning that the Secretary of War intended to assign Captain Olmsted to the Signal Corps, respectfully protested against it, upon the ground that the officers of the Signal Bureau were all disbursing officers, and that Captain Olmsted would not be a safe custodian of public funds. This protest was disregarded, and Captain Olmsted was assigned to the Signal Service by Secretary Lincoln. As predicted, he em- bezzled a considerable amount of public money, and in less than a year was cashiered upon charges preferred by Ceneral Hazen. Subsequently a negro made application to be enlisted in the Signal Corps, and was rejected u^Don the ground that by the act of July 28, 1866, Congress had provided for two regiments of cavalry and two of infantry, to be composed of colored troops, and, in the judgment of General Hazen, colored persons could only be enlisted in those regiments. This had been the practi- cal construction of the act by the War Department for seven- teen years. Notwithstanding this declared policy of the gov- ernment and the solemn protest of the Chief Signal Officer, Secretary Lincoln foisted this negro recruit upon the Signal Corps, a select organization, which had always been composed exclusively of white soldiers. Both by his forced construction of existing laws and by urging hostile legislation he had, during his entire four years of official life, endeavored to cause the transfer of the Signal Service out of the Army. These issues, some of which involved the very existence of THE HAZEN COURT-MAKTIAL, 37 the Signal Service, were commenced by Secretary Lincoln soon after he entered office, and were kept up offensively to the end. General Hazen was thus placed on the defensive from the be- ginning, and many have been led to mistake this forced defence against continuous attacks, for unwarranted and captious criti- cism of liis official superior by the Chief Signal Officer. This action on the part of the Secretary of War, both un- natural and opposite to what his predecessors had done, and entirely at variance with the views of the President who called him into the Cabinet, began before, in the ordinary course of duty, he could have known anything about these matters. The Secretary of War refers in his last annual report with ill-concealed exultation to the Proteus Court of Inquiry as having condemned General Hazen's plan for the relief expe- dition of 1883. That court could with more propriety cite Secretary Lincoln as authority for its findings than he can cite it to support his conclusions. On the very day, October 31, 1883, that he issued the order for its detail, he addressed a letter to General Hazen containing an elaborate critical review of the very matters that the Court of Liquiry was appointed to consider. That letter was given to the press from the Secre- tary's office, and widely published, and all of its conclusions were substantially conformed to by the court, which in several of its findings actually used much of the language in which the Secretary of War, who was the real accuser, had already em- bodied his promulgated judgment. It presents the most ex- traordinary case of judicial complacency on record, suggesting strongly the mental sympathy between the courtier Polonius and his master, the moody Prince of Denmark : " Hamlet. Do yoii see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel ? " Polonius. By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. *' Hamlet. Methinks it is like a weasel. ** Polonius. It is backed like a weasel. ' * Hamlet. Or like a whale ? ** Polonius. Very like a whale." The court was nominally appointed by the President, but 38 THE HAZEN COURT-MABTIAL. the Secretary of War who thus formulated its findings in ad- vance was really the officer who created it and detailed its three members. It is well known that the then President felt no interest in Arctic matters, and that he would not have crumpled a single rose-leaf upon his couch, if by turning his body he could have discovered the north pole. As Secretary Lincoln's letter is comparatively brief, and substantially presents the conclusions of the Court of Inquiry, which it anticipated, and which are exceedingly diffuse, the letter is given in the Appendix. The real facts affecting the late Secretary of War are that he was unconsciously moved in matters relating to General Hazen by a party of men who were bitterly hostile to General Hazen but friendly to himself. This was a great and serious impediment to that officer in all his official duties during the entire four years. It is proper, however, that I should briefly notice the find- ings of the court, that it may be shown that they neither spring from the evidence, as I have correctly stated it, nor do they present any rational grounds for imputing the slightest error to the Chief Signal Officer of the Army. The Court of Inquiry pronounced the opinion that Lieutenant Garlington, after tlie sinking of the Proteus, erred in not waiting longer for the ar- rival of the Yantic, and thus obtaining from her supplies to establish the winter station at Life-Boat Cove, which, it states, " should have been established at all hazards." But the Court held that this was only an "error of judgment," and they com- mended him for his zeal and energy displayed "in successfully conducting his command through a long, perilous, and labori- ous retreat to a place of safety." They note as "grave errors and omissions " in the action of General Hazen : First— "That he did not submit to the Secretary of War for the ac- tion of Congress, in the fall of 1883, a sufficient plan with corresponding estimates for the organization of a relief expedition to be conveyed in two vessels fitted for ice-navigation.'* THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 39 The all-sufficient answer to this is that the documentary evidence was before the Court showing that on November 1, 1882, General Hazen laid before the Secretary of War for his approval the plan for the relief expedition of 1883, and the Secretary returned it without dissent, with the suggestion that the personnel might be drawn from the Navy. The President, however, had previously decided that the expedition should be composed of volunteers from the Army. The Chief Signal Officer of the Army, under the steady opposition that he encountered from the Secretary of War, had great difficulty in securing an appropriation to charter and fit out even one vessel, which was all the prearranged plans ap- proved by the government ever contemplated. Two vessels fitted for ice-navigation were, in fact, sent. The Yantic proved herself equal to every exigency of her Arctic voyage. She traversed the ice-fields of Melville Bay, and made the quickest run on record from Upernavik to Little- ton Island, accomplishing the distance of seven hundred and fifty miles in three days. The fault lay in her dilatory com- mander, who lost six precious days by a useless visit to Uper- navik to inquire of the authorities how the ice was probably moving in waters many hundred miles away from that point. If he had sailed directly northward on July 21, instead of mak- ing an unnecessary trip to the Kudlisit coal-mine, he would have intercepted Garlington before he left Life-Boat Cove, and that officer would have then been unable to evade the duty of establishing the winter station, thus insuring the safety of Lieutenant Greely and his command. Second — "In objecting strongly in the fall of 1882 to a proposed en- deavor by the War Department to obtain from the Navy the men for the relief party of 1883." This is answered in part above. The Secretary of War never proposed to make any "endeavor." It was a mere sug- gestion, as to which the views of the Chief Signal Officer were requested. The use of sailors for this service was never con- 40 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. templated by any one at any stage of the work, and Lieutenant Greely, for the best of reasons, objected in the strongest pos- sible manner to their use. Having in view the conduct of Commander Braine, who, when sent to discover the lost Polaris party in 1873, retreated from Littleton Island on the day that he arrived there. Lieutenant Greely said to General Hazen: "If the Navy engages in this work it will certainly fail you:" The after-conduct of Commander Wildes stamps that utter- ance as prophetic. The expeditionary force was required to serve on land — sledging, hunting, etc. — and for such service the soldier was better suited than the sailor. There is no evidence that the men of the relief expedition were not fully equal to every requirement. Lieutenant Gar- lington, in his report, thus refers to their excellent conduct at the time of the wreck : *'The men of my detachment worked as I never saw men work before, and were as cool and collected as if it were an every-day exercise." Third — ' ' In sending an independent command upon a most perilous and responsible as well as distant expedition with only one commissioned officer." This is neither pertinent nor true. As the officer sent con- tinued in command throughout, it does not appear that a sub- ordinate officer associated with him, and having no control, could have averted the result. As a matter of fact, there were two commissioned officers, Lieutenant Colwell, of the Navy, having been detached for that service on the application of General Hazen. Fourth— "In informing Lieutenant Garlington in his instructions that Lieutenant Greely's supplies would be exhausted in the fall of 1883, when, according to the records in the Signal Office, his command was fully provisioned for more than three years from the summer of 1881 ; the natural effect being to urge Lieutenant Garlington to undue impatience and haste to reach Lady Franklin Bay with all the stores entrusted to his charge, and to obscure from his mental vision after the wreck the desira- bility of advancing as far as possible northward notice of the disaster, in THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. 41 order that Lieutenant Greely, before coming down too far to go back, might, being so warned, retire again to his well-provided station at Lady- Franklin Bay." The reply to this is that Lieutenant Greely was actually proYisioned for only two years and a half from July, 1881 ; and allowing for accidents and probable deteriorations, his supplies would have been exhausted, in due course, by the winter of 1883. Even if provisioned for full three years, if he were obliged to remain at Lady Franklin Bay by the failure of the relief expedition to reach him, his suppliea would certainly have been exhausted before he could be relieved by an expedi- tion sent in 1884. But, according to this finding of the Court of Inquiry, even if Lieutenant Greely's supplies had been already exhausted, it would have been a grave error in General Hazen to have stated the fact in Lieutenant Garlington's instructions, for it was the "informing Lieutenant Garlington" that "obscured his mental vision " and urged him to undue haste, etc. It is indeed singular that ten words in Garlington's instruc- tions should so incite his sympathies for Lieutenant Greely and his party as to impel him to separate from the Yantic, overrule the practised judgment of the ice-master, and urge the ship to wreck in the ice-pack, through his impatient desire to advance to their relief, and yet have had no influence to arrest his flight from his appointed post of duty, where alone he could have served them, or to induce him to deposit for them in the day of their need a few hundred additional rations, with which he could have dispensed, as he well knew, with perfect safety. Fifth— ''His persistent rejection of the wisest measure possible for him to adopt in the spring of 1883, and which was repeatedly urged upon his consideration — to wit, the making, on the northward voyage of the relief ship, of a large depot for a winter station at or near Littleton Island (the objective point of the projected retreat of Lieutenant Greely), whereby the ship would have been lightened of stores which it was in nowise necessary to carry to Lady FranklinBay or to expose to the dangers of Smith Sound, and whereby the subsequent loss of the vessel would have been of com- paratively trivial consequence." 43 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. This refers to General Hazen's rejection of a scheme framed, in his absence, by one of his subordinates, and placed with other papers in the envelope containing Lieutenant Garlington's instructions, and since known as '^ Enclosure No. 4," and which was unsigned. It was first brought to General Hazen's attention by Lieu- tenant Garlington, who himself very properly objected to it, and was at once informed that it would constitute no part of his instructions. Lieutenant Garlington so testified upon this point before the Proteus Court of Inquiry, and added : ^' We then had some conversation about the expedition, in the course of which he (General Hazen) told me that he had the utmost confidence in me, and that while I should make the attempt to follow, as nearly as possible, the plan laid down in the letter of Lieutenant Greely which had been written at Fort Conger, that I must be governed to a great extent by my own judgment on the spot." The '* Enclosure Ko. 4," which the Court of Inquiry pro- nounces "the wisest measure possible," required that the Proteus "should land her stores, except supplies for more northerly depots (five hundred rations), at Littleton Island on her way north." It would have been an act of midsummer madness in General Hazen if he had given such instructions. It is weU known to all who are familiar with the history of Arctic explorations that after passing the seventy-eighth degree of latitude the danger of being unable to return is immeasurably increased by every degree that the explorer ad- vances northward. The Act of Congress required that the relief expedition of 1883 should proceed to Lady Franklin Bay, and, if practicable, return, with Lieutenant Greely and his party, on board the Proteus to the United States. The contingency had to be provided for of the Proteus reaching Greely's station near the eighty-second parallel, and TH:te HAZEN COTJET-MAETIAL. 43 there being detained with her crew and the combined parties, an aggregate of sixty-two (62) persons, for a year or more, before they could escape southward or be reached by another rehef expedition. The report of Lieutenant Greely from Fort Conger under date of August 15, 1881, had abeady given admonition of the extreme danger of such detention. The Proteus was stopped by the ice when within eight miles of that point, and it took her seven days to advance that distance. It appears, further, that on her southward trip it took her six days to traverse about the same distance through the ice-floes of Lady Franklin Bay, and she was extricated with great difficulty. That contingency was recognized by General Hazen in his *' Instructions for closing the scientific work at Camp Conger," under date of June 4, 1883, and which were placed in Lieu- tenant Garlington's hands for delivery to Lieutenant Greely. The eleventh paragraph of those instructions contains these words : '' Should your combined party be held in the ice at Camp Conger, or remain during the winter of 1883 and 1884 at Life-Boat Cove," etc. This contingency could only be provided against by the relief ship carrying with her the supplies adequate to meet it. Even with all the relief stores carried to Lady Franklin Bay they would have supplied the combined parties for less than ten months. This contingency was entirely ignored by the plan which the Court of Inquiry so complacently designates as "the wisest measure," while it makes the remarkable statement that to have landed the stores on the way north would not have been a departure from Lieutenant Greely's instructions, when, in fact, no departure could have been more radical. No Arctic expedition had ever pursued the course which that plan proposed. The last British expedition to Lady Franklin Bay and beyond, under Sir George Nares, had taken all of its supplies 44 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. northward, except those which had been placed in a few small depots as it advanced. Those depots, established in 18.75, were still in existence, and Lieutenant Garlington was instructed to examine them on his way north, and replace all articles of damaged food found therein. That duty he failed to perform at S. E. Carey Island, where thirty-six hundred rations were deposited, thirty (30) per cent, of which he found damaged, but replaced none. He also neglected it at Cape Sabine, although he landed in the vicinity before the wreck, the two hundred and forty rations originally deposited in the British depot there being afterwards found by Lieutenant Greely in a state of decay and utterly useless. This was a fatal violation on the part of Garlington of the plan of relief. With reference to this neglect of duty Lieutenant Greely wrote, under date of April 30, 1884, at Cape Sabine, when he believed himself dying, in a letter addressed to General Hazen, as follows : '^ I cannot refrain from saying that had Lieutenant Garlington carried out your orders and replaced the two hun- dred and forty rations rum and one hundred and twenty alcohol in English cache here, and the two hundred and ten pounds mouldy English bread, spoiled English chocolate and potatoes, melted sugar, and the two hundred and ten pounds rotten dog- biscuit, we would, without doubt, be saved." The contingency of the Proteus being Wrecked in Smith Sound General Hazen had the right to assume was fully pro- vided for when, upon his application, the Yantic was detailed as a reserve ship to meet any emergency that might arise in those waters, and, in the language of Commander "Wildes' in- structions, '^ in view of the possibility of the destruction of the Proteus, to afford succor to her ojB&cers and men in the event of such an accident." That Lieutenant Garlington voluntarily separated himself from the Yantic, and that she was a thousand miles away when the Proteus was wrecked, and that Garlington started south- THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. 45 ward without awaiting the arrival of his reserve ship, that was then steaming to Littleton Island as fast as her engines could drive her, were events certainly not due to the plan of the relief expedition, and clearly beyond rational anticipation. The scheme of leaving the stores of the relief expedition two hundred and fifty miles south of its objective point, where the greatest hazard was to be met, could only be commended on the absurdly untenable ground that those events, so evidently beyond all forecast, should have been foreseen by General Hazen. Had he conformed to that scheme, and had the combined parties come to grief at Lady Franklin Bay, General Hazen's conduct, being without precedent and in violation of the plan of Lieutenant Greely, would have placed him in an attitude ut- terly indefensible and left him " open to his enemies." Sixth — "In failing to perceive a necessity for a second vessel until nearly the middle of May, 1883, or to advise the Navy Department of what such tender was wanted to do or how far it was wanted to go until a fort- night later, whereas a definite and explicit request ought to have been made immediately after the enactment of the appropriation which author- ized the expedition two months sooner, and that much longer notice given to enable a more complete fitting of a ship for the purpose." The reader would naturally conclude, from the language of this finding, that General Hazen had, in disregard of the dic- tates of common prudence, failed to make requisition for the reserve ship until the day fixed for the sailing of the expedition was so near that it was impossible to properly prepare such ship for the special Arctic work required of her. The incontestable facts to the contrary stamp this finding as a marked illustration both of the suppressio veri and the sugges- f 10 falsi. The requisition for the naval tender was made on May 14, and the Yantic, being detailed for that service, was placed in dock at the New York Navy Yard to be specially fitted therefor. There was no suggestion from any quarter that it was too late to fit and equip her for a voyage to Littleton Island. 46 THE HAZEN COUET-MARTIAL. Indeed, except from General Hazen, there was no suggestion that there should be any reserve ship at all. Lieutenant Greely had sailed in the Proteus in 1881 for Lady Franklin Bay without a reserve ship, and there was no reserve ship detailed to accompany the Neptune, that bore the relief expedition of 1882, nor did the original plan approved by the President contemplate any. The plan of the expedition for each of those years was sub- mitted to Secretary of War Lincoln and approved by him, as was the original plan for the relief expedition of 1883 ; and, although each plan contemplated the use of only one ship, he made no suggestion that she should have any consort. It was a measure of prudence that sprang from General Hazen's judg- ment alone. While the Yantic was in dock, on the 9th day of June, 1883, her commander (Wildes) received his instructions. In those instructions, as already cited, it is seen that he was directed to sail "when in all respects in readiness for sea." No day had been fixed for the sailing of the expedition from New York, and Commander Wildes was not hurried in his preparations by General Hazen, who could exercise no authority over that offi- cer. Certain it is that Commander Wildes, on or about the 10th day of June, had the Yantic taken out of dock, and he sailed from New York on June 13 for St. John's, N. F., without giving the slightest intimation that she was not "in all respects in readiness for sea." That it afterwards appeared that Commander Wildes had sailed before he was in readiness for sea, and that the repairs on the boilers of the Yantic, not being completed when she left New York, conduced to her separation from the Proteus, and to her absence when that vessel was wrecked, cannot be truth- fully charged as " a grave error and omission " on the part of General Hazen, It was simply a violation of orders by Com- mander Wildes. Certainly, if the commander of the Yantic had reported that he required a week or two weeks longer to THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 47 complete the repairs upon her boilers, there was no exigency that would have denied him that additional time before he sailed from New York. The following letter of General Hazen's shows where the delay in preparing these expeditions was. In this connection it should be noted that the act making an appropriation for this relief expedition was not approved until March 3 : "Office of the Chief Signal Officer, Washington, D. C, April 6, 1881. ** To ihe Honorable (he Secretary of War : ** Sir : I am unable to take the action at once necessary in the matter of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition until I am furnished with the formal approval of the Secretary of War. "It is now twenty-seven days since this action was asked, and, al- though I have since twice written for it after it was formally given by Sec- retary Ramsey, it has not been furnished me, although copies of the papers on which it was given have been furnished. "Authority to use the appropriation of $25,000, when available, which has also been asked, is imperatively necessary before any steps can be taken in the way of preparation. This is needed at once, since the St. John's steamer, which leaves New York but semi-monthly, sails the 8th inst., and it is necessary to send letters by her, by which we will save two weeks of time. "My great desire to expedite this work, so dependent for success on early action, must be my excuse for what might otlierwise appear unneces- sary haste. " I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, "W. B. Hazen, ''Brig, and But. Maj.-Gen., Chief Signal Officer, U.S.A.'' The following shows that the Court of Inquiry was also at fault in stating that General Hazen failed to state in his requi- sition for the naval tender on May 14, 1883, the special service for which she was required : "Office Chief Signal Officer, Washington City, May 14, 1883. " To the Honorable the Secretary of War : " Sir : In relation to the relief ship to be sent to reach and bring back the party now at Lady Franklin Bay, since it is impracticable under the present provision by Congress to have but one vessel, and as it will limit 48 THE HAZEIN" COURT-MAETIAL. the saiety of Arctic parties to the contingency of the successful voyage of this one ship, it is respectfully requested that the Secretary of the Navy be communicated with, with a view to his sending a ship of that branch of the service as escort, to bring back information, render assistance, and take such other steps as may be necessary in case of unforeseen emergencies. " She need not enter the ice-pack nor encounter any unusual danger. I believe this step to be in the interest of careful and humane policy. " I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, ''W. B. Hazen, ''Brig, and Bvt. Maj.-Gen., Chief Signal Officer, U.S.A." Seventh — " The omission of proper directions and measures for stow- ing the cargo of the Proteus, in order that the most important material for the purposes of the expedition should be readily accessible in an emergency, owing to which omission it was unknown to either Lieutenant G-arlington or the master of the ship where the arms and ammunition provided for the party were stowed, and upon the loss of the ship the command was left with only the few arms and comparatively small amount of powder and shot that had been kept in their personal possession. The instructions to Lieutenant Garlington were insufficient, while he was denied permission to proceed in advance to St. John's to attend to the matter, which was committed to the sole care of a non-commissioned officer, who wholly failed to attend to it, not even going to St. John's for the purpose. If a sufficient quantity of arms and ammunition had been saved a cache of them might have been made for the use of Lieutenant Greely, the amount of whose supply of this indispensable material has not been made known to the Court, and, how- ever ample it might have been originally, by this time may be entirely ex- hausted." Odg would conclude from this finding that General Hazen had purposely neglected to have the relief stores so marked and stowed as to be readily accessible and that each parcel might be identified in the emergency of an impending wreck, and that he unwarrantably denied to Lieutenant Garlington all knowledge of the stowage of the relief ship, and thus prevented a larger amount of supplies being saved from the wrecked Proteus. Yet no conclusions could be farther from the truth. The uncontradicted testimony before the Court of Inquiry shows that Sergeant Wall, who had served efiiciently as supercargo on the relief expedition of 1882, was ordered by General Hazen to proceed to St. John's and attend to the stowing of the relief THE HAZEIS- COUET-MAKTIAL. 49 stores, marking each parcel properly, as was done in the case of the Neptune, and make an exact list of tlie same, designat- ing its locality in the ship. Sergeant Wall proceeded as far as Halifax and returned, reporting that he had been injured by a fall. This afterwards proved false, and he was tried and con- victed by a court-martial upon charges preferred by General Hazen, and is now undergoing sentence. When Lieutenant Garlington applied for leave to precede his command to St. John's, in order that he might attend to the stowage of the relief stores. Sergeant Wall's dereliction was not known ; and as there was danger of the command being greatly reduced by desertions, two men detailed from Lieutenant G-ar- lington's own company having already deserted from the ex- pedition, it was not deemed prudent to detach that ofi&cer to perform a duty which Sergeant Wall could have efiSciently exe- cuted. The proof was before the Court of Inquiry that the expedi- tion suffered no detriment on this account, and that the facts stated in this finding had no influence on the result. Lieutenant Garlington during bis eight days of detention at St. John's unloaded and restowed a large part of the relief stores ; and during his nine days' stay at Godhaven he again broke out and examined the stores, and made up and marked the packages for depots that he was to establish en route. He had ample opportunity to unload and load all his stores several times over while at those two points. He does not allege that he could have saved a single ration more than he did save had he personally superintended the stowage of the relief stores. He does not claim that the alleged paucity of arms and ammu- nition after the wreck influenced his conduct in any respect, or that if he had saved those that were stowed in the ship he would have cached them for Lieutenant Greely's use. The fact is that Lieutenant Garlington had at his command, after the loss of the Proteus, a much larger supply of arms and ammunition than he had originally made requisition for, as he OO tHE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. had only called for four (4) carbines and three thousand (3,000) rounds of ammunition. Lieutenant Oolwell testified that after the wreck Garling- ton's own immediate party had in their possession a shot-gun with eighty-six cartridges, a Hotchkiss rifle with five hundred rounds, two Winchester rifles with probably a thousand rounds, and an army and a navy revolver, while *^ the crew of the Pro- teus had. eleven guns — five shot-guns and six rifles — with a good supply of ammunition." It is well known that Lieutenant Greely when at Cape Sa- bine was amply supplied with arms and ammunition. He needed food and not firearms. Had arms been deposited there for his use he might well have exclaimed : "I asked for bread and ye gave me a stone." Eighth — This relates to Enclosure No. 4, and has already been replied to, in part, in considering the fifth finding. • It cen- sures General Hazen for not withdraAving that unsigned paper when Lieutenant Garlington brought it to his attention, al- though the proof is that he promptly repudiated it and stated to that officer that it formed no part of his instructions. Gene- ral Hazen is further censured in this finding for alleged negli- gence in keeping the records of his ofiice, because the subordi- nate who intruded that scheme into Gariington's papers had, without General Hazen's knowledge, recorded it as an enclosure to the instructions. Ninth — This imputes it to General Hazen as a grave omis- sion that he did not have Lieutenant Garlington furnished with a copy of the instructions of the Navy Department to the com- mander of the Yantic. The proof is that Garlington before leaving St. John's had full knowledge of Commander Wildes' instructions, and en- tered into a written agreement with him on the basis of those instructions. They were also sufficiently indicated in the in- structions issued by General Hazen to Lieutenant Garlington. It has never been claimed by Lieutenant Garlington that his THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 51 action in the premises was at all affected by tlie fact that he was not furnished with a copy of the instructions that were issued to Commander Wildes. These are the much-vaunted findings of the Proteus Court of Inquiry. General Hazen was not represented by counsel before it, and hence no exposure of its untenable positions appears in its pro- ceedings. It is well said in the one hundred and fifteenth Article of War that " courts of inquiry may be perverted to dishonorable purposes, and may be employed, in the hands of weak and envious commandants, as engines for the destruction of military merit.*' I have correctly stated the facts that were in proof before that Court, and the reader who peruses the findings, in the light of the evidence, will be apt to conclude that they will take about the same rank in military jurisprudence that Commander Schley's reported Upernavik temperatures occupy in meteorology. It is not intended to impute to the Court of Inquiry any- thing more than an "error of judgment" — that new method of granting official absolution. The letter of Secretary Lincoln was well calculated "to ob- scure from" its "mental vision" the true deductions to be drawn from the facts in evidence before it. Lieutenant Garlington was certainly fortunate in having a tribunal so benign to pass upon his conduct. Its judgment has shielded him thus far from the hazard of a court-martial for his trial on charges which General Hazen has preferred against him. The student of naval history will recall the fact that Ad- miral John Byng, of the British Navy, after his failure to en- gage the French fleet with his entire squadron off Minorca in 1756, demanded a court of inquiry, which found that he "may have erred greatly in his judgment," but that he was "not blameworthy." He was, notwithstanding, brought to trial before a court- martial, which, while it held that he had not been guilty either 52 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. of cowardice or treachery, found him guilty of ** haying failed to do Ms utmost to relieve the garrison of Minorca, as. it was his duty to haye done," and sentenced him to be shot to death with musketry. The court-martial, composed of officers eminently humane, pronounced this sentence as in accordance with the mandates of military law, while at the same time earnestly recommending the accused to mercy. Their appeal for clemency, howeyer, was unayailing, and Admiral Byng was executed pursuant to sentence. The Proteus Court of Inquiry by its findings, and Secretary Lincoln by his subsequent refusal to order a court-martial for the trial of Lieutenant Garlington, haye erected a much lower standard of duty for the American officer. The letter of General Hazen to Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln, and its enclosures, together with the alleged newspaper criticism which led to the Court-Martial, are giyen in the text. I prepared challenges to seyen of the thirteen members of the Court, on the ground of prejudice against the accused, but, under instructions from General Hazen, I finally challeDged but one, and that challenge was sustained, although the officer challenged (Brigadier-General Robert Macfeely) declared, and doubtless with perfect sincerity, that he could do impartial jus- tice to the accused. The Court-Martial, we are bound to assume, did its duty as it saw it, impartially, and with an eye single to what it deemed the best interests of the military seryice. That General Hazen did his duty also, fearlessly, faithfully, and sagaciously, in all things committed to his administration as the Chief Signal Officer of the Army, the unimpeached eyi- dence clearly establishes. That Court adjudged that he should be censured, and the penalty has been inflicted. Its infliction has not in anywise diminished the just self- respect of the accused, nor has it yindicated the accuser. It THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. 53 were far better that an honorable officer of the Army should incur a thousand official censures, or even forfeit his well-won commission, than rest under the imputation that through his neglect or mistakes the agonies of starvation, and death in its most excruciating form, were visited upon a large number of brave men who were worthily engaged in the service of their country. It would have been gracious and truthful, and befitting his high office, if Secretary Lincoln had said : ''In all things man is fallible, and his best-laid plans may prove faulty. I erred in not dispatching a vessel for the relief of Lieutenant Greely and his party after the return of the Ya7itic, and it is but just to state that General Hazen did his utmost to have it sent, but it then appeared to the War Department that there were suffi- cient reasons why it should not be sent." Instead of this the Secretary engaged in a malign endeavor to fix culpable neglect upon that officer, imputing to him re- sponsibility for a disaster that he (General Hazen) clearly fore- saw and had distinctly pointed out the true means of averting. Although not in evidence before the Court-Martial, it is now an open secret, derived from official sources, that on the return of the Yantic the President requested the Secretaries of the War and Navy Departments to take concurrent action in the matter of sending an expedition for the relief of Lieutenant Greely and his party. The Secretary of the Navy was absent when that request was made, and the Secretary of War assented to General Hazen's plan of dispatching a steam-sealer as a ship of rescue from St. John's. On the return of the Secretary of the Navy it was de- termined that a naval expedition should be sent in the following spring, and the plan that looked to immediate relief was aban- doned, and the Arctic explorers starved that the Navy might be glorified. This was indicated in the remonstrance sent by the two Secretaries to Congress against offering a general bounty to any one who would effect the rescue. 54 THE HAZEN COUET-MAKTIAL. To silence criticism after famine had done its deadly work at Cape Sabine, the Secretary of War sought to discredit and crusii General Hazen, and as a last resort Commander Schley's Munchausen report on temperatures was invoked. There is no principle of good morals that calls for silent acceptance of injustice, but, on the contrary, eyery dictate of true manhood urges to prompt and efficient remonstrance. To the end of self -vindication the Chief Signal Officer in- curred the hazard of a Court-Martial. While this Oourt-Martial could not pass judgment upon the question whether Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln was responsible for the final disaster to the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, yet it could not, under the rules of evidence, exclude the documentary proof enclosed in General Hazen's letter, which has made the fact of that re- sponsibility apparent. In this regard General Hazen may gratefully say of his trial by court-martial : " Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous. Wears yet a precious jewel in his head." While this trial, however, has served to vindicate the truth of history by disclosing the really responsible authors of the Arctic tragedy, it is believed that it will have a still wider scope by conducing to greatly-needed reforms in the law and practice of courts-martial. It came at a time when public attention had been attracted to the methods of this class of tribunals, as illus- trated in the case of Brigadier- General David G. Swaim, Judge Advocate-General of the Army, and was had before a court- martial composed, in great part, of the officers who sat upon that trial. That those officers were in character and attainments emi- nently worthy of their high rank tends only to make more apparent the evils of the system which they reflected in their organic action. THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 55 The term court-martial, although it relates to a military code, suggests judicial functions, and when such a tribunal dis- regards the forms of law, and by its procedure dej^arts from the judicial character, it offends against that exalted idea of im- partial justice which the American citizen is wont to associate with the very name of ^' court." This springs from that inherent respect for judicial autho- rity which is the great conservative force of organized society. Hence it is that, among every free and enlightened people, the altitude of the judge measures the moral elevation of the community. While it is true that a court-martial is not in any statutory sense a part of the judiciar}", its members perform judicial functions, and, to this extent, are properly held amen- able to the judicial standard. Although of special and limited jurisdiction, it is called into existence by force of express statute law, and is vested with all the attributes of a court, administer- ing oaths, hearing and deciding issues of law and of fact, re- cording its proceedings, and pronouucing sentence. For this reason a court-martial is held bound by the common law of the land in regard to the rules of evidence, as well as other rules of . law, so far as they are applicable to the manner of proceeding. (Adye on Courts- Martial, 45 ; 2 Mc Arthur on Courts-Martial, 33 ; and 3 Greenleaf on Evidence, 468.) A court-martial, however, in its recognized relation to exe- cutive authorit}', differs from all other judicial bodies, as its judgments do not take effect until confirmed by the officer who convened it. As such officer is also vested with the power to refer its findings back for its own revision, and may, by the cus- tom of war, censure the court for what he deems grave errors in its proceedings, it follows that the safeguards which protect every other class of judicial tribunal from being swerved from the strict line of duty by executive dictation are, in this respect, denied the members of a court-martial. The danger of dicta- tion or undue influence is immeasurably increased when the accuser is a high officer of the government, such as the Secre- 56 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. tary of War, who, as to tlie military establishment, is the special adviser and organ of the President, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. Mr. Tytler, in his essay, on Military Law, in which he treats of the practice of courts-martial in England, says upon this point : *' The members of a court-martial cannot boast the same independence of the Crown, and consequent immunity from influence, as the judges in the ordinary courts of law. The officers who compose a military tribunal are all necessarily de- pendent for their preferment on the Crown and its ministers ; they are even in some degree under the influence of their gen- eral-in-chief — powerful motives of opinion, and which might sometimes lead astray a weaker mind from the direct path of justice." To this may be added that the habit of mind in the mili- tary service, and especially with mature officers of high rank, is eminently one of respect for authority, reaching naturally from the office even to the person of the officer. This idea of loyalty impels to faithful service, and is generally inseparable from it. But it tends to make the members of a court-martial par- tial judges, and this unconsciously and without even the color of impure motive, when the highest official is the accuser and practically selects the court. Under such circumstances there cannot be an impartial court. A junior officer expressing his opinion in good faith as to a matter vital to his reputation, and in respectful terms, is thus made liable to a court-martial, if his superior had previ- ously expressed a contrary opinion, and conviction would follow almost to a certainty, as in our practice ^ bare majority can con- vict. As illustrative of the practical operation of the present sys- tem, it will be instructive to refer to a feature that marked the recent trial of General D. G. Swaim above referred to. This reference is made without regard to the merits of that case and the justice of the findings therein, as to which there THE HAZEN" COUET-MAETIAL. 57 are widely divergent opinions among those who have carefully considered the evidence. The Court-Martial, after due deliberation, which involved the consideration by them of a record covering several thousand pages, rendered its findings and pronounced its sentence. The proceedings were forwarded in due course through the War Department to the President, who was, in law, the review- ing authority, although it was an open secret that Secretary of War Eobert T. Lincoln, who was actively interested in the pro- secution, did in fact review them. The sentence of the Court was the final judicial act which determined the penal grade of the offence. The power to graduate the penalty to the nature of the offence, and its proved degree, was vested by law in the Court- Martial, and once exercised it was legally exhausted. The President's functions were limited solely to approving or disa]3proving the findings, with the power to pardon abso- lutely or to remit the sentence in part. These limitations, however, which the law would appear to have prescribed, had been extended by custom, by the practice of the Horse-Guards, derived originally from the British mili- tary system, which, without any express sanction of law, per- mitted the reviewing authority to except to a sentence and refer it back to the court-martial with his objections and a recommendation that it should be changed, so as to con- form it to the grade of the offence as it appeared to such autliority. The practice had received legislative recognition in England for the purpose only of restricting it. The Mutiny Act, enacted by Parliament in the year 1750, limits the power of the reviewing authority, and imposes its restriction even upon the king himself. I cite from the fifteenth section of that act, as follows : "No sentence given by any court-martial, and signed by the president thereof, shall be liable to be revised more than once.'^^ 58 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. In the case of General Swaim the President, through the Secretary of War, returned the sentence with the requirement that it should be made more severe, and the Court increased the penalty and again forwarded its proceedings for executive ap- proval. The sentence was again returned with the view to have the penalty further increased, and again the Court conformed to the demand of the reviewing officer. The varying record is thus made to show three distinct sen- tences pronounced upon the same officer in one case, for the same offence, and by the same Court, on the same state of facts. That there was not a fourth sentence we must attribute to the fact that a fourth was not demanded. The president of that Court, Major- General J. M. Schofield, and his co-members, would have added new lustre to their honorable records as soldiers if they had proved themselves equal to their doty as judges, and refused to yield to a dictation which they could not obey, contrary to their own convictions, with- out confessing themselves the mere servitors of the executive in a cause that they were solemnly sworn to judge '' according to the evidence." But if the scales of justice are thus made to lose their balance under the direct pressure of the executive hand, the aberrations of a court-martial may be scarcely less apparent when its action is controlled by an undue deference to the official station of the accuser. This would seem to appear by reference to the proceedings in the case of General Hazen. The second specification alleged that the Chief Signal Officer of the Army ^* addressed and sent the letter in question to the Secretary of War, without having been requested or authorized by the Secretary of War so to do." The Court refused to strike out this specification on motion of counsel for the accused, although it was made evident that, admitting it to be true, it was not an offence, either under the THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. 59 Articles of War or by the custom of the service. The question was an embarrassing one to the Court, for the Secretary of War had himself formulated the charge and specifications, and to strike that out was to declare, in effect, that the head of the War Department was profoundly ignorant of military law and usage. Yet tlie Court, when it came to make up its finding on this specification, was constrained to declare that the facts stated therein could attach no criminality to the accused. The third specification was the gravest of all. It alleged a publication in the newspapers of a criticism upon the Secretary of War, and Mr. Lincoln referred to such publication as the real cause that moved him to prefer the charge, for he had already condoned the matter of the letter by returning it with the assurance that he would take no action thereon. To find the Chief Signal Officer not guilty upon this specifi- cation was to declare that the Secretary was without justifica- tion for having preferred the charge. Yet every essential averment of the specification had been disproved by the uncontradicted testimony. The Court accordingly found that General Hazen did not *' intentionally make a statement with a view to its publica- tion," or "cause the same to be published" ; and that he did not state that he " had written and sent to the Secretary of War such a letter as was described in the interrogation of the said reporter," and did not '^ state that his, the said Hazen's, recommendation had been entirely ignored." The specification, being thus disintegrated and all its crimi- nating averments expunged, as an actionable count, was dead. The Court, seeing this, immediately proceeded to blow the breath of life into its nostrils. It thereupon decided, of its own motion, in secret session, to substitute a word of its own in the place of two material words in the specification, and thus re- cords its self-moved action : *' Substituting, however, for the words 'entirely ignored' the word ' negatived,' and of the sub- stituted word * guilty.' " 60 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. It does not require a profound study of military law to learn that the Court-Martial had no authority for such a procedure. This is a yery different power from the right to amend a specification. The judge-adTocate no doubt possesses this right, but it can only be exercised before the accused has pleaded to the specification (De Hart's " Military Law," page 102). The court can in no case amend a specification, and least of all can it substitute a term of its own for words alleged in the specifica- tion, and then find the accused guilty as to the substituted term, which, it is nowhere suggested in the evidence, he ever used, either in that or any other connection. The power to substitute one word carries with it the power to substitute any number, and thus to convict the accused upon a specification that he was never required to plead to. Practices less repugnant to the plain dictates of justice and common sense than those I have detailed led Sir William Blackstone to write of the system of military adrainisfcration, as illustrated by courts-martial in his day, in terms of severest re- proach. Says that learned author (Blackstone's "Commentaries," book i. chapter 13) : " Martial law which is built upon no settled principles, but is entirely arbitrary in its decisions, is, as Sir Matthew Hale observes, in truth and reality no law, but something indulged rather than allowed as law." The Mutiny Act, first enacted in the reign of William TIL, and since annually re-enacted with many successive amend- ments, has relieved the martial law of England of the above severe reproach. : That act relates to the discipline of the Army and prescribes the constitution and powers of courts-martial. It is the supreme military code, and, while the king claims and exercises the right to make Articles of War, any such article is to be held void if in conflict with the Mutiny Act, and the legality of Articles of War can be made the subject of examination in a court-martial. THE HAZEN" COUET-MAl^TIAL. 61 (Grose, '^Military Antiquities" ; Adye, " Military Law " ; and Major-Gcneral C. J. Napier, "Remarks on Military Law.") It is to be lamented that many of the abuses derived from the ancient practice at the Horse Guards (War Office), and which have been corrected by the Mutiny Act in the British system, are still retained in our own. The Army of the United States is practically without a military code prescribing the powers and duties of courts-martial and the authority of the reviewing officer. Our courts-martial and reviewing authori- ties, constantly required to deal with grave questions affecting the honor and rights of officers of the Army, are remitted for their guidance to a few imperfect statutes, of which they know little, and to undefined usage, of which they know less. This is all the more intolerable in this country, where courts- martial are practically courts of last resort, than it would be in England, where appeals lie from their sentences to the supreme civil courts of law, as the Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas. The evils of the existing system can only be remedied by the special enactments of a Military Code, that shall define and limit by positive law rights and powers that are now the sub- jects of arbitrary and fluctuating decisions by courts-martial and reviewing officers, who have become in effect a law unto themselves. Some of the most flagrant of those evils, leading to gross injustice to the accused, may be indicated by the following pro- posed reforms in the system from which they spring : First — The officer who prefers the charge, or who has in anywise conduced to the preferring of the same, shall in no case detail the members of the court-martial for the trial of the accused. Second — The President shall not have power to order a general court-martial to be convened, except when the General of the Army, or a general officer commanding a department or in command of an armv in the field, is the accuser. 62 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. Third — Whenever an officer inferior in rank to the accused is detailed as a member of a court-martial, it must appear, by a certificate annexed to the order making the detail, that it could not be avoided without manifest injury to the service, such certificate to be signed by the officer who appointed the court. Fourth — The judge-advocate shall not be present at the secret deliberations of the court, during any stage of the trial, or when it retires to make up its findings and sentence. Eifth — The court-martial shall exhaust each specification by its findings, and shall find the accused either guilty or not guilty of the fact alleged therein, each specification to be passed upon as an entirety ; and the court shall have no power to find as to any separate part thereof, or in any manner to amend a specification, by substitution or otherwise, after the accused has pleaded to the same ; and if he is not proved guilty as charged he shall be acquitted. Sixth — No officer or enlisted man shall be adjudged guilty in any capital case, except all the members of the court-martial concur in the finding of guilty, and in every other case it shall require the concurrence of two-thirds of the members in order to convict. Seventh — When the findings and sentence of a court-mar- tial are duly recorded and signed by the president thereof, he shall announce the same in open court, in the presence of the accused, who may then, by himself or by counsel in his be- half, give notice of his exceptions to such findings and sen- tence, and shall be entitled to three days after the promulgation of sentence to file with the judge-advocate the grounds of such exceptions, and the same shall be transmitted with the record of the proceedings to the reviewing authority. Eighth — A court-martial shall not have power in any case to revise either its findings or sentence after the same shall have been promulgated or transmitted to the reviewing authority. Ninth — Should the accused voluntarily fail to appear for ^sentence the proceedings shall be forwarded to the reviewing THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 63 authority, and the findings and sentence shall be promulgated after the same have been approved or disapproved. Tenth — The reviewing authority shall certify in every case that he has carefully read the evidence before the court, and fully considered all exceptions filed in behalf of the accused. It may be suggested that the second proposal above is al- ready provided for in the seventy-second Article of War. But that article has been variously construed. Secretary of War Stanton, in the case of General Fitz-John Porter, gave it the construction which it is now proposed to fix by positive law ; while in the case of General Swaim it was held that the President may appoint a general court-martial who- ever may be the accuser or prosecutor, as it was formerly held by Attorney- General Devens in the case of Major Eunkle in 1877 (15 Opinions Attorney-General, 291). It may be suggested further that the third proposal above is met by the seventy-ninth Article of War, which provides that "no officer shall, when it can be avoided, be tried by officers inferior to him in rank." It has been invariably held under this article that the mere fact that an officer inferior in rank to the accused is detailed as a member of the court fur- nishes a conclusive presumption that such detail could not be avoided (Martin vs, Mott, 12 Wheaton, 10). The object of the proposed change is to require that the facts which prove that it could not be avoided shall be made to appear. The fourth proposal is intended to prohibit the existing practice of the judge-advocate, who attends the court whenever it retires for deliberation, and may there address an argument to it as to questions already discussed at bar, and inform him- self, at every stage, of the views of respective members of the court, thus giving him an immense advantage over the accused and his counsel. It is manifest that the proper functions of a prosecuting officer are to be exercised at the bar of the court, and not in the council-chamber of its judges. Mr. Tytler, like writers generally on the law of courts-mar- 64 THE HAZEN" COUET-MAETIAL. tial, commends this unfair practice. He, with equal impropriety, suggests that in all cases the judge-advocate should confer with the accused before trial, and thus make himself master of all points that will be urged for the defence, in order that he may prepare to meet them. That learned author, when he wrote his essay on military law, had not achieyed the eminence which made him one of the lords of the Sessions of Scotland, He had been, howeyer, a judge-advocate for eight years — an office that appears to sharpen the mind, as a grindstone sharpens a knife, by making it narrower. As to the tenth proposal, it may be objected to as super- fluous, inasmuch as it is manifestly the duty of the reviewing authority, as the law now stands, to read and consider all the proceedings of the court-martial before acting thereon. This duty at present, however, is only implied, and it goes without saying that it is rarely done. It certainly was not done in the case of General Hazen. The purpose is to make it mandatory, so that it shall no longer be '' more honored in the breach than in the observance." The average bureaucrat, whose mind, ''^ like the dyer's hand, is subdued to what it works in," will of course antagonize the proposed reformatory legislation ; but it is confidently believed that the military profession generally will perceive the need of reform in the law and practice of courts-martial, and will cor- dially welcome its judicious application. Note. — As illustrating the idiosyncrasy of the late Secre- tary of War, Mr. Eobert T. Lincoln, and his hostile temper to all who were associated with G-eneral Hazen in Arctic work, I state the following facts, which cannot be disputed : On the return of the relief expedition of 1884, bringing with it the six heroic survivors of the Lady Franklin Bay Ex- pedition, extensive preparations were made to receive them at Portsmouth, N. H., and also to do deserved honor to Comman- der Schley and the officers of the Navy who had with such skill, energy, and daring effected the timely rescue of Lieuten- ant Greely and his companions. THE HAZE]^ COURT-MARTIAL. 65 Invitations were issued to many eminent persons, and the Governor of the State (Samuel W. Hale) took an active per- sonal interest in making the pageant worthy of the occasion. The Secretary of the Navy, Hon. William E. Chandler, who was always equal to, and observant of, every requirement of his high station, also actively promoted it, and bore a most conspicuous and honorable part in the ceremonies. Among the distinguished persons and high officials in the assemblage Secretary Lincoln was ^* conspicuous by his ab- sence, " As Lieutenant Grreely and his command were of the Army, it was expected, as a matter of course, that the Secretary- of War would be present to receive them. They had become honorably renowned for their brilliant achievements and unex- ampled endurance of suffering through their unfaltering execu- tion of orders issued from the War Department ; and whatever might have been the shortcomings of others, they were blame- less, for they had done their duty unto death. Mr. Lincoln responded to the invitation sent him with the following telegram, in which it will be seen that, with invidi- ous discrimination, he does not refer to Lieutenant Greely, the hero whom he was especially invited to honor. This omis- sion can only be explained on the theory of '' Odwius quern laesimtcs " — We hate the man whom we have injured : " War Department, Washington City, August 1, 1885. " I regret that I am not able to accept your invitation to join at Ports- mouth in the greeting to Commander Schley and his command upon their return. I beg you to express to him my appreciation of the energetic and thorough manner in which everything possible was accomplished by his ex- pedition, and to tender him the thanks of this Department for his inesti- mable services to the survivors of Lieutenant Greely's party. "Robert T. Lincoln." In striking contrast with this I cite the following from the brief but admirable address of Hon. Samuel J. Randall, whicli shows how the great American statesman caught the spirit of the occasion : 66 THE HAZElSr COURT-MAETIAL. " Those who have perished in the Arctic wilds have died martyrs to duty; and if, as we all believe, knowledge is power, they have enriched their country by adding largely to the sum of human knowledge." So long as civilization shall last the names of these heroes and martyrs of the Greely expedition will be in men's mouths as household words. I am here by my presence to give proof how deeply I sympathize with every move- ment to honor these brave and long-suffering men." Secretary Lincoln, it should be stated, however, attended a few days later, on the earnest telegraphic request of General Hazen, at Governor's Island when the remains of those who had perished in the expedition were received at that point. A member of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition when dead and coffined in a boiler-plate casket, securely riveted down, ceased to be obnoxious to Secretary Lincoln. But not so with the living. While scientific bodies throughout the world were doing honor to Lieutenant Greely a series of paragraphs depreciating his character and conduct as commander of the International Polar Expedition appeared in the Washington City newspapers. They contained statements and deductions that were grossly unwarranted by the facts and most unjust to that officer, which were generally copied in contemporary journals. General Hazen traced those statements to Colonel Chauncey McKeever, an Assistant Adjutant-General in the War Depart- ment, and then the immediate. Adjutant of the Secretary of War. He at once preferred charges against Colonel McKeever, and, although the proof of guilt was undeniable, the request of General Hazen that the offender should be placed on trial be- fore a court-martial for such flagrant breach of military disci- pline was refused. The object of those aspersions, generated in the atmosphere that enveloped the Secretary of War, was soon made apparent. A bill was pending in Congress to create the office of Assist- ant Chief Signal Officer of the Army with the rank of colonel, the purpose being, although not expressed in the bill, to confer that deserved position on Lieutenant Greely. Secretary Lincoln actively and openly opposed the measure, THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. 67 although unable to assign any valid reason for his hostility, and succeeded in preventing its passage at the last session of Con- gress. He, in like temper, prevented the promotion of Sergeant D. L. Brainard to a lieutenancy in the Army, although the fact is recognized by all who know that officer that by his high mental and moral qualities and his gentlemanly bearing he would reflect credit upon the service in a much higher grade than a second lieutenancy. It is earnestly hojped that these acts of public justice, which would almost universally meet with the approving sanction of the people, will not be much longer delayed. As Sergeant Brainard was subjected to the smirching pro- cess by Secretary Lincoln and Colonel Chauncey McKeever by unwarrantable published aspersions, in which that excellent non-commissioned officer was represented as *^ making a lay figure of himself" and *' exhibiting his person for hire in a low dime museum at Cleveland," I deem it proper to present the following facts : Soon after his return from the Arctic, Sergeant Brainard, while on leave, accepted a lucrative offer to lecture at the Cleveland, Ohio, Museum. While so engaged in an honorable effort to add to his limited income for the support of his family, he was ordered by the Secretary of War to cancel his engage- ment and return instantly to his station. Upon learning of the above imputation upon Sergeant Brainard the Hon. Amos Townsend and other eminent citizens of Cleveland wrote Gene- ral Hazen, protesting against it as utterly false, and stating that the museum in which Sergeant Brainard lectured was a highly respectable lyceum, and that his lectures were most instructive, and were attended by the best people, ladies and gentlemen, of that beautiful city. '^ T. J. MACKEY, Late Counsel for General Hazen. WASHisrGTOK, D. C, May 12, 1885. LETTER OF GEN. W. B. HAZEN TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR WHICH LED TO THIS TRIAL, SiGis-AL Oefice, Wae Depaetmei^-t, Washiingto]^ City, February 17, 1885. HoK. Egbert T. LiKCOLi^, Secretary of War : Sir : The Secretary of War, in his annual report for the year 1884, was pleased to make me the subject of severe stric- tures because, in my official report of the final disaster to the International Polar Expedition, I expressed the conviction that such disaster would have been averted had a ship of rescu-e been despatched from St. John's, N. F., after the return of Lieuten- ant Garlington to that port, or as late as September 15, 1883, as urged by me but not adopted by the Secretary of War. As my silence in view of those strictures might be construed as implying my assent to their justice, I beg leave to place on record the evidence that supports the correctness of my judg- ment in the premises. I respectfully submit that this evidence embraces the only expert testimony that has been adduced upon the vital question whether a steam-sealer of the first class, such as the Bear or Nephine, starting from St. John's, N. F., as late as September 15, could have made the passage of Melville Bay and reached Cape Sabine or Life-Boat Cove, or its vicinity, in the autumn of 1883, and rescued Lieutenant Greely and his party. This testimony consists of statements of Captain Eichard Pike, late commander of the steam-sealer Proteus, the vessel THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. b\) that conveyed Lieutenant Greely and his party to Lady Frank- lin Bay, and other ice-navigators of St. John's, N. F., whose experience in the waters on the coast of Greenland extends over periods ranging from five to thirty-five years. These statements were transmitted to me on December 22, 1884, by Thomas N. Molloy, Esq., United States Consul at St. John's, whose name has been honorably associated with more than one Arctic expedition sailing from that port, and espe- cially with the Polaris relief expedition of 1873, for which he received the thanks of the State Department. 2d. Letter from Chief -Engineer Melville, U. S. N., an officer who stands among the foremost authorities in all matters relat- ing to Arctic navigation, dated December 5, 1884. 3d. Letter from Lieutenant A. W. Greely, late commander of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, dated December 10, 1884. 4th. Letter from Sergeant D. L. Brainard, who v^as in com- mand of the survivors of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, by assignment of Lieutenant Greely, when rescued on June 22, 1884, dated December 9, 1884. I respectfully invite the attention of the Secretary of War to the following extracts from this testimony. Captain Eichard Pike states, December 18, 1884 : *' I have been engaged seal-hunting in the northern ice-fields for the past thirty-five years. . . . From my knowledge of the Arctic regions, and navigation amongst heavy northern ice-fields, I did expect a vessel would have been dispatched from St. John's immediately on arrival of Yantic steamship there, for the purpose of continuing the effort to succor Lieuten- ant Greely and his companions, and I volunteered to Lieutenant Garlington to take charge. I most unhesitatingly affirm, if a steamer snch as the steam- ship Bear or Neptune had been fitted out and dispatched up to even Septem- ber 20, Cape Sabine would have been reached without any trouble, and this I expressed to Consul Molloy. . . . Had a steamer got to Littleton Island even, of which, humanly speaking, there would have been a certainty, such men as our seal-hunters would, in any season, either with drift or frozen ice to overcome, have been able to cross over to Cape Sabine." Captain Samuel Walsh, of St. John's, N. F., states under same date : " I haye been engaged in the seal and whale fishery, the former for many years, and have commanded some of the best steamers engaged in 70 THE HAZElSr COUET-MAETIAL. these perilous ventures amongst the heavy northern ice-fields. In the sum- mer of 1883 I occupied the position of pilot to steamship Yaniic, which ac- companied the steamship Proteus as relief ship to the Greely expedition. *' On my return to St. John's I am positively certain, had a suitable vessel, such as the steamship Bear, been fitted out (without loss of time), she would have reached Cape Sabine, or in that neighborhood, before navi- gation had closed up to that point, and I should have unhesitatingly and gladly volunteered my service as pilot. . . . There were three or four vessels available for the work, which could have been dispatched within forty-eight hours after arrival of steamship Yantic, and, the idea of it being abroad amongst seamen acquainted with ice-navigation, several men applied to be engaged." William Carlson states under same date : " I have been engaged at the Newfoundland seal-fishery for thirteen years, and have seen all the roughs and smooths in the navigation of heavy northern ice during that time. . . . Even after the Yantic' s return to St. John's, had a vessel such as the Bear or Neptune been fitted out, there is not the shadow of a doubt in my mind but the vessel would have succeeded in reaching Cape Sabine or the neighborhood. *' A crew could have been got in St. John's of first-class men to have manned the ship, either to return or stay over the winter, and there are many good harbors on the west coast of Greenland where a vessel could have wintered, and in May month no doubt the vessel would have been re- leased. *' There is no doubt it was a fatal mistake not to send a vessel down after arrival of Yantic.^'* Peter McPherson states, December 20, 1884 : ** I have been for ten years acting in the capacity of engineer on seal- ing steamers, and have a large experience in the management of steamers amongst the ice-fields of the frozen north. " I had charge of the engine department of steamship Proteus when that vessel landed the Greely party at Discovery Harbor in 1881. . . . "From the knowledge so acquired I feel confident there would have been no difiiculty in such vessels as steamships Bear, Eagle, Falcon, or Ranger reaching Cape Sabine or neighborhood last fall, had any one of them been dispatched within two or three days after arrival of steamship Yantic in St. John's ; and the vessels just named were coaled and ready for immediate employment. . . . Even supposing the relief ship only reached Pandora Harbor, which to my mind was a certainty, a crew of Newfound- land sealers would, during the fall or winter, have communicated with Cape Sabine ; for these men are in their element either in boats amongst drift-ice or on frozen ice or snow." THE HAZEN COUKT-MARTIAL. 71 Thomas White, of St. John's, N. F., states December 20, 1884: " I have been engaged from boyhood in the general seafaring business of the colony — viz., seal-hunting, fishing, and foreign-going — and have occu- pied positions of responsibility in the seal-hunting line. I have been a mas- ter of watch with Captain Pike, of Newfoundland, and Captain Fairwea- ther, of Dundee, both of whom are famous for their knowledge of navigation amongst the northern ice-fields, as well as for the work done by them in the Arctic seas. " In the year 1881 I was selected by Captain Richard Pike to fill the position of second officer in the steamship Proteus^ and the success of that expedition in landing Lieutenant Greely at Lady Franklin Bay, and the speedy return of the ship to St. John's, has passed into history. . . . When the steamship Yantic arrived back with the Proteus' shipwrecked crew I was so fully impressed with the belief that a steamer, fitted out immediately and dispatched to Cape Sabine, would have reached that point before the northern waters got frozen iip that I expressed the opinion that the authori- ties had missed the chance of rescuing the explorers. ... " It was a fatal mistake not to dispatch a steamer on arrival of Yantic, as all who have a knowledge here of Arctic navigation expressed the same opinion." Chief-Engineer Melville says : "I am of the opinion that a good sealer or steam-vessel, not too large, of average strength and a speed of seven or eight knots an hour, leav- ing St. John's September 15, could have gone, and can go every year, as far north as Cape Sabine or Littleton Island, near the mouth of Smith Sound. . . ." Lieutenant Greely states : " I concur fully and entirely in the views and opinions of Engineer Melville, save on certain immaterial points. ..." Sergeant Brainard states : *'The practicability of a well-equipped steam-sealer reaching Cape Isabella, and thus rendering efficient aid to our forlorn party, was never for a moment doubted by those most capable of judging the danger and diffi- culties which attend ice-navigation at that season of the year. " Our opinion in this matter was confirmed by the observations of Sergeants Rice and Frederick during the early days of November. " Standing near the summit of Cape Isabella, they had an uninter- rupted view for many miles to the southward, and within the range of their vision not a piece of ice capable of offering the slightest obstruction to a 72 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. vessel appeared. The waves rolling in from Melville Bay, and dashing against the cliffs at their feet, gave ample evidence of the scarcity of ice in the North Water, and the feasibility of its successful navigation. The plan proposed, to land a relief party on the Greenland coast at or near Cape York, with the intention of affording succor to our expedition, in the early spring of 1884, would, without doubt, have been successful under the energetic and experienced officer — Chief-Engineer Melville — who suggested it. There were many days during the month of May when the channel between Cape Sabine and the (xreenland coast was so nearly cleared of ice that small boats from the opposite coast could have reached us in safety. It was a matter that was under almost daily discussion in our miserable hut at Camp Clay, even when death's shadows were hovering darkly above us, and I now reiterate what I had said then : ' The plan of relief from that source is practicable, and, if undertaken, it will be the means of averting a disaster which now appears imminent.' In the views of Chief -Engineer Melville relative to this plan I heartily concur in every particular." Dr. Emil Bessels, the scientist of tlie Polaris expedition, who had also an extended experience in the polar zone under the auspices of Petermann, the celebrated Arctic explorer, testified before the board of officers who planned the Schley relief ex- pedition, of which board I was president, that a vessel can secure a safe transit south leaving Littleton Island as late as October 15. The Juniata, a vessel far inferior to the average steam- sealer in her capacity for Arctic navigation, started from St. John's, N. F., to renew her search for the missing crew of the Polaris, on the 18th of September, 1873, by order of the Secretary of the Navy, and she was steaming northward to make the passage of Melville Bay when she was overtaken by a steamer chartered by Consul Molloy with the announcement that the Polaris party had been rescued. I have yet to learn of a single Arctic authority that nega- tives the testimony above cited. In view of that testimony I respectfully submit that I am justified in the conclusion that the tragic termination of the Internationa] Polar Expedition was finally due to the decision not to dispatch a steam-sealer to effect its rescue on the 15th of September, 1883, which I did all in my power to have done ; such sealer, starting from St. John's, N. P., only thirteen days' steaming from Cape Sabine, in all human probability could THE HAZETS" COURT-MAETIAL. 73 have readied and rescued the party before there was any inter- ruiDtion to navigation by ice, and would have resulted in a sav- ing to the United States, as it terminated, of a half-million of money. In view of the conduct of Commander Wildes and Lieuten- ant G-arlington, I would not consider their opinions upon the subject of further service that year in the Arctic of any possi- ble value, but, on the contrary, to be misleading ; while Captain Tyson's long experience on an Arctic ice-floe in winter in the Arctic regions, under the most distressing circumstances, in- validated his opinions upon the subject also. The Secretary of War, it appears, reached his conclusion after liaving personally consulted Captain Greer, U. S. N., who went to Littleton Island in 1873, in command of the Ti- gress, in search of the wrecked Polaris party, and Dr. Emil Bessels, the scientist of the Polaris expedition, and some others. It is presumed that Dr. Bessel's view was the same as that which he expressed four months later, under oath, as above cited, and which fully sustained my own judgment as to the feasibility of navigating Melville Bay in the month of October. Captain Greer was not in any sense an authority on Arctic navi- gation, as his experience has been limited to a single summer cruise made ten years before in these waters, while Chief-En- gineer Melville, wlio was among the highest Arctic authorities, earnestly urged the sending of a ship of rescue from St. John's in September, 1883. Captain Greer and Commander Schley, whose opinions the Secretary cites as confirmatory of the op- posite theory, are simply in error, neither being experts in Arctic navigation. Nor is it easily understood how Commander Schley could have been so misled about the character of the winter and temperature at Upernavik in 1883-4. I enclose copy of his statement as published in the report of the Honorable Secretary of War for 1884, together with a copy of the oflScial record of temperature at Upernavik from October, 1883, to March, 1884, both inclusive, which show how much in error he was on this point. The weather there during that winter did not differ materially from what it is now and has been for the past thirty days in Manitoba and northern Dakota. 74 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. A single telegram to United States Consul Molloy at St. John's wonld have elicited information from professional ice- nayigators, showing conclusively that it was then feasible to reach Littleton Island with a steam-sealer, and thus have avert- ed the impending disaster. While the action of the Secretary of War in the premises was dictated by his sincere convictions of public duty, I believe it can be established beyond question that such action made certain that final disaster to Lieutenant Greely's Arctic party which the violation of their orders by Lieutenant Garlington and Commander Wildes had rendered highly probable. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, (Signed) W. B. Hazek, Brig, and Bvt, Maj.-Ge?2., Chief Signal Officer, U. S. A. (12 enclosures.) X LETTER FROM GENERAL HAZEN TO THE SECRE- TARY OF WAR, REQUESTING THAT HIS (HA- ZEN'S) TRIAL SHOULD PROCEED AS ORDERED. Washikgtoi^, D. C, 1601 *'K" Street, March 7, 1885. To the Honoralle the Secretary of War : Sir : Referring to the charges recently preferred against me by ex-Secretary Lincoln, I respectfully request that nothing be permitted to interfere to prevent trial as ordered. The action of friends in their zeal to serve, in doing what they believe a kindness, may sometimes, and especially in this case, have a contrary effect. I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, W. B. IlAZEJT, Brig, and Bvt. Maj.-Gen., Chief Signal Officer, [A true copy.] B. M. PURSELL, Second Lieut. Signal Corps, U. S. A. Proceedings of a General Court-Martial Conmned at the Ehhitt House^ in the City of Washing- ton^ D. (7., on the eleventh day of March^ eighteen hundred and eighty-five^ hy virtue of the following order : [Special Oeders, No. 50.] Headquarters of the Army, Adjutant-General's Office, Washington, March 3, 1885. Extract. 22. The following order has been received from the War De- partment ; War Department, Washington, March 3, 1885. By direction of the President a General Court-Martial is ap- pointed to meet in this city at 11 o'clock a.m., on Wednesday, the 11th day of March, 1885, or as soon thereafter as practica- ble, for the trial of such persons as may be brought before it. Detail for the Court. Major-General Winfield S. Hancock. Major-General John M. Schofield. Brigadier-General Oliyer 0. Howard. Brigadier-General Alfked H. Terry. Brigadier-General Christopher C. Augur. Brigadier-General Egbert Macfeely, Commissary-General of Subsistence. Brigadier-General William B. Rochester, Paymaster-Gene- ral. 75 76 THE HAZEN- COUET-MAETIAL. Brigadier-General Samuel B. Holabird, Quartermaster- General. Brigadier-General Egbert Murray, Surgeon-General. Brigadier- General John Newton, Chief of Engineers.^ Colonel George L. Andrews, Twenty-fifth Infantry. Colonel Wesley Merritt, Fifth Cavalry. Colonel Henry M. Black, Twenty-third Infantry. Captain John W. Clous, Twenty-fourth Infantry, Judge- Advocate. The Court is empowered to proceed with the business before it with any number of members present not less than the mini- mum prescribed by law. Upon the final adjournment of the Court the members will return to their proper stations. Egbert T. Lincoln, Secretary of War, The journeys required of the members of the Court in com- plying with this order are necessary for the public service. By command of Lieutenant- General Sheridan : E. C. Drum, A djutant- General, Official : Assistant Adjutant- General, EOOMS OF THE GENERAL COURT-MaRTIAL, Ebbitt House, Washington, D. C, Wednesday, March 11, 1885, 11 A.M. The Court met pursuant to the foregoing order. Present : 1. Major-General Winfield S. Hancock, U. S. A. 2. Major-General John M. Schofield, TJ. S. A. THE HAZEN COUET-MAKTIAL. 77 3. Brigadier- General Oliver 0. Howard, U. S. A. 4. Brigadier-General Alfred II. Terry, U. S. A. 5. Brigadier-General Christopher 0. Augur, U. S. A. 6. Brigadier- General Egbert Macfeely, Commissary-Gene- ral of Subsistence. 7. Brigadier-General William B. Rochester, Paymaster- General. 8. Brigadier-General Samuel B. Holabird, Quartermaster- General. 9. Brigadier-General Robert Murray, Surgeon-General. 10. Brigadier- General JoHI^^ Newtok, Chief of Engineers. 11. Colonel George L. Andrews, Twenty-fifth Infantry. 12. Colonel Wesley Merritt, Fifth Cavalry. 13. Colonel Henry M. Black, Twenty-third Infantry ; and Captain John W. Clous, Twenty-fourth Infantry, Judge- Advocate of the Court. Brigadier-General AYilliam B. Hazen, the accused, and his counsel, T. J. Mackey, Esq. The Court then proceeded to the trial of Brigadier- General William B. Hazen, Chief Signal Officer, United States Army, who thereupon came before the Court, and, having heard the foregoing orders convening the Court read, was asked if he had any objection to any member present named in the detail as above, to which he replied as follows : Gen. Hazen — I have ; I object to Brigadier- General Robert Macfeely, Commissary-General, on grounds which will be stated by my counsel. The Judge-Adyocate — As I presume the accused would like to be assisted, in the matter of challenge, by his counsel, I ask permission of the Court that they be now introduced. The accused then, with the permission of the Court, intro- duced as his counsel Judge T. J. Mackey. Mr. Mackey then addressed the Court as follows : Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court : I beg leave to submit to the consideration of the Court, on behalf of Brigadier- General William B. Hazen, Chief Signal Officer of the Army, the following : 78 THE HAZEJST COUET-MAETIAL. CHALLEJTGE. Washii^gtoi^, D. C, March 11, 1885. Brigadier- General William B. Hazen, Chief Signal Officer, United States Army, being charged with ^' conduct to the pre- judice of good order and military discipline, in violation of the sixty-second Article of War/' comes before the General Court- Martial conyened in the city of Washington, D. 0., on this 11th day of March, 1885, pending his trial on said charge, and chal- lenges Brigadier-General Kobert Macfeely, Commissary-General of Subsistence, a member of said Court, and for cause of chal- lenge shows as follows : 1. That in the year 1876, and for many years prior thereto, the said Brigadier-General William B. Hazen was engaged in an actiye effort to relieve the enlisted men of the Army from the pernicious system of post-traderships, under which they were charged extortionate prices for every article purchased by them from such traders ; and to that end he reported to the Secre- .tary of War that the Subsistence Department had failed and neglected to comply with the Act of Congress approved July 28, 1866, which requires that the officers of the Subsistence De- partment shall procure and keep for sale to officers and enlisted men, at cost prices, such articles as may be designated by the Inspectors-General of the Army. 2. That, the War Department failing to remedy the evil com- plained of, the said Brigadier-General Hazen, then Colonel of the Sixth Infantry, addressed a letter, of date June 4, 1876, to the Attorney- General, with the view to have the said act duly enforced. 3. That the said letter was subsequently forwarded to the General of the Army, who transmitted it to the said Brigadier- General Kobert Macfeely, Commissary-General of Subsistence, who made an endorsement thereon, assailing the said Brigadier- General Hazen in terms of gross insult ; accused him of having committed a breach of discipline by writing the same, and denied that the Subsistence Department had failed to comply with the said act. 4. That in consequence of the facts above recited the rela- THE HAZEN COURT-MAKTIAL. 79 tions between the said Brigadier-General Eobert Macfeely and Brigadier-General William B. Hazen have been ever since un- friendly, and such as usually pertain between those who are avowed enemies. Wherefore it is respectfully submitted that the said Briga- dier-General Robert Macfeely ought not, in fairness and good conscience, to sit as a member of this honorable Court, as, in view of his known hostility to the said Brigadier-General Hazen, he might unconsciously fail to weigh impartially the evidence for the defence. W. B. Hazen, Brig, and Bvt. Maj.-Gen., Chief, Signal Officer ^ U, 8. A, T. J. Mackey, Cotmsel for Gen. Hazen. The Peesidekt (addressing General Macfeely) — Do you de- sire to make any statement to the Court in connection with the matter which has been referred to by the counsel for the ac- cused ? General Macfeely — I merely wish to state to the Court, in reply to the challenge of the accused, that it became my duty some nine years ago to call the attention of the Secretary of War, my superior officer, to a certain communication which appeared in public print over the signature of Colonel Hazen, which statement I characterized at that time as untrue and not in accordance with the facts ; and I have seen no reason to change my opinion then formed in regard to those statements since. By reason of this opinion then formed I choose to have no personal or social relations with General Hazen since. I believe I have no hostile or unfriendly feelings towards the accused, and no prejudice, and that I could act impartially. and in accordance with the oath as a member of this Court on his trial ; but while the Court and the accused, probably not know- ing or understanding clearly the feelings which actuate me in this matter, may differ with me in opinion, I do not object to being excused as a member of this Court. The Court was then cleared for deliberation. When the doors were reopened, and the accused and his counsel had re- • 80 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. sumed their seats, the Judge- Advocate announced the decision of the Court on the matter of the challenge of General Macfeely as follows : The Judge- Advocate — I am directed by the Court to an- nounce that the challenge by the accused is sustained, and that Brigadier-General Macfeely is excused from sitting as a member of the Court in the trial of this action. (To General Hazen :) Have you any objection to any other member of the Court present named in the detail ? Mr. Mackey — Mr. President and gentlemen of the Court, I am instructed by the accused to state that he waives his right to any further challenge. The Peesideis^t — I believe it is in order now to swear the Court. The members of the Court were then severally duly sworn by the Judge-Advocate, and the Judge-Advocate was duly sworn by the President of the Court, all of which oaths were administered in the presence of Brigadier-General William B. Hazen, the accused. The Judge- Advocate — Under the authority given, I have appointed Mr. James L. Andem as reporter of the Court. The reporter was then duly sworn by the Judge- Advocate, in the presence of the Court, faithfully to perform his duty as such reporter. The accused was then duly arraigned upon the following charge and specifications : chaege. Conduct to the prejudice of good order and military disci- pline, in violation of the sixty- second Article of War. Specification 1st — " In that Brigadier-General William B. Ha- zen, Chief Signal Officer, United States Army, knowing that the Secretary of War had, in the performance of his official duty, decided, in the month of September, a.d. 1883, that ifc was not practicable to send in the year 1883 an expedition to the Arctic regions for the relief of Lieutenant A. W. Greely, an officer of the Army, and his party then THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. 81 in those regions, did, in his official annual report as Chief Signal Officer bearing date October 15, 1884, criticise the said official action of the Secretary of War and impugn the propriety thereof, by saying of and concerning the send- ing of a relief expedition to the Arctic regions for the relief of Lieutenant A. W. Greely and his party in the year 1883 as follows : *' *0n the return of the escort ship bringing the relief party to St. John's, September 13, there was still time, as known from previous experience and sliown by subsequent facts, to send effective relief.' This at Washington, D. C" Specificatioji 2d — " In that Brigadier-General William B. Ha- zen, Chief Signal Officer, United States Army, knowing that the Secretary of War had, in the performance of his official duty, decided in the month of September, a.d. 1883, that it was not practicable to send in the year 1883 an expedition to the Arctic regions for the relief of Lieutenant A. W. Greely, an officer of the Army, and his party then in those regions, did, without having been requested or authorized by the Secretary of W^ar so to do, address and send to the Secretary of War a communication written by him, the said Chief Signal Officer, bearing date the 17th day of February, 1885, concerning the said official action of the Secretary of War, containing, among other statements, the following : " 'I respectfully submit that I am justified in the conclusion that the tragic termination of the International Polar Expedition was finally due to the decision not to dispatch a steam-sealer to effect its rescue on the loth of September, 1883, which I did all in my power to have done; such sealer, starting from St. John's, N. F., only thirteen days' steaming from Cape Sabine, in all human probability could have reached and rescued the party before there was any interruption to navigation by ice. . . .' This at Washington, D. C." Specification 3d — '' In that Brigadier- General William B. Ha- zen, Chief Signal Officer, United States Army, knowing that the Secretary of War had, in the performance of his official 82 THE HAZEN COTJET-MAETIAL* duty, decided, in the month of September, a.d. 1883, that it was not practicable to send in the year 1883 an expedi- tion to the Arctic regions for the relief of Lieutenant Greely, an officer of the Army, and his party then in those regions, and having written and sent to the Secretary of War an official communication, bearing date the 17th day of February, a.d. 1885, containing, among other things, the following language : " ' The Secretary of War, in his animal report for the year 1884, was pleased to make me the subject of severe strictures because, in my official report of the final disaster to the International Polar Expedi- tion, I expressed the conviction that such disaster would have been averted had a ship of rescue been dispatched from St. John's, N. F., after the return of Lieutenant Garlington to that port, or as late as September 15, 1883, as urged by me, but not adopted by the Secretary of War. " ' As my silence, in view of those strictures, might be construed as implying my assent to their justice, I beg leave to place on record the evidence that supports the correctness of my judgment in the premises. . . . *' 'I respectfully submit that I am justified in the conclusion that the tragic termination of the International Polar Expedition was finally due to the decision not to dispatch a steam-sealer to effect its rescue on the 15th of September, 1883, which I did all in my power to have done ; such sealer, starting from St. John's, N. F., only thirteen days' steaming from Cape Sabine, in all human probability could have reached and rescued the party before there was any interruption to navigation by ice. ..." and said communication having been returned by the Secre- tary of War to said Chief Signal Officer with an endorse- ment thereon, in words and figures as follows : "War Department, February 27, 1885. " * The within paper, bearing date of February 17th inst. , was received at the War Department February 26, and is respectfully returned to the Chief Signal Officer. *' ' The correctness of the judgment of the Chief Signal Officer in the expression made by him in his last annual report of his views as to the propriety of the action of the Secretary of War in not sending a ship in September, 1883, to the Arctic regions, is not a proper subject of discussion between the Chief Signal Officer and the Secretary of War. THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 83 The strictures made by the Secretary of War in his annual report, and now referred to by the Chief Signal Officer, were addressed to the ex- traordinary conduct of the Chief Signal Officer as a military officer in publicly controverting the propriety of previous official action of his official superior, the Secretary of War, and that, too, in a matter in which the Chief Signal Officer had no official responsibility. *' * It was at that time thought unnecessary to take any official action upon the violation of military propriety beyond observing that it had been committed. The present official expression of opinion to the effect that the failure of the Secretary of War to organize in two days and dispatch to the Arctic regions a new expedition, at a season which made it certain that it must, under the best circumstances, encounter all the rigors of an Arctic winter, was a neglect of duty, is therefore returned with the remark that a breach of military discipline which could not be overlooked may be avoided by the retention by the Chief Signal Officer of the within paper in his own hands. ** Robert T. Lincoln, *' ' Secretary of Wcur.^ he, tlie said Brigadier-General William B. Hazen, Chief Signal OflScer, United States Army, did, in response to an iDquiry made by a newspaper reporter, as to whether he, the said Hazen, had written a letter to the Secretary of War throwing the blame of the loss of the Greely party upon his shoulders, intentionally make a statement, in an- swer to said newspaper reporter, with a view to its publica- tion, and did cause the same to be published, on the 2d day of March, 1885, in a newspaper printed and published in the city of Washington, D. C, called the Evening Star, which statement was in substance as follows : That he, the said Hazen, had written and sent to the Secretary of War such a letter as was described in the interrogation of the said reporter, containing a criticism and imputation of blame upon the Secretary of War for his official action in not complying with the recommendation of the Chief Sig- nal Officer to send, in the month of September, 1883, an expedition for the relief of Lieutenant A. W. Greely and his party, immediately after the return of the party which brought the news of the loss of the steamer Proteus in the said month of September, and did further state that his, the said Hazen^s, said recommendation had been entirely 84 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. ignored. This at Washington, D. C, on or about March 2, 1885." RoBEKT T. Lincoln", Secretary of War, Maech 3, 1885. [Endorsed.] War Department, Washington, March 3, 1885. By direction of the President the within charge and specifi- cations are hereby referred for trial (through the Adjutant- General) to the General Oourt-Martial appointed by special orders of the War Department of this date, to assemble in this city on the 11th instant, of which Major- General W. 8. Hancock is president. The Adjutant- General will cause a copy of the charge and specifications to be furnished to the accused. Egbert T. Lincoln, Secretary of War, The Judge- Advocate — Before pleading to the specifications and the charge the accused desires to make a motion to strike out certain of the specifications. Mr. Mackey — Mr. President and gentlemen of the Court, I beg leave to submit, in behalf of the accused, Brigadier- General William B. Hazen, a motion to strike out the first and second specifications, and will present the argument to the Court as to each specification in its proper order. The charge against the accused is *^ conduct to the preju- dice of good order and military discipline, in violation of the sixty-second Article of War." I submit the following : motion. Before a General Court- Martial, appointed by direction of the President, to meet in the city of Washington, D. C, on the 11th day of March, 1885, or as soon thereafter as practicable, comes THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 85 the said Brigadier- General William B. Hazen, Chief Signal Offi- cer of the United States Army, and moves this honorable Court that the first and second specifications set forth in support of said charge be stricken out, the same being irreleyant to the charge and insufficient in point of law. T. J. Mackey, Counsel for General Hazen, After argument heard this motion was denied . ARRAIGKMEN'T. The accused was then arraigned on tiie charge and specifica- tions preferred, to which he pleaded as follows : To the first specification, not guilty. To the second specification, not guilty. To the third specification, not guilty. To the charge, not guilty. SECOND DAY. Rooms of the Gekeeal Court-Maetial, Ebbitt House, WASHiKGTOi^, D. C, Thursday, March 12, 1885, 11 a.m. Judge- Advocate — The paper I referred to is as follows : ADMISSIOl^S OF FACT. The accused, Brigadier-General William B. Hazen, Chief Signal Officer of the Army, having pleaded not guilty to the specifications and to the charge herein, now comes before this honorable Court, and, fully affirming said plea, makes the fol- lowing admissions of fact : First — He admits that in his annual report, bearing date October 15, 1884, he used the language set out in the conclud- ing portion of the first specification to said charge ; but as such language only forms about one-half of the sentence which tlie specification purports to give entire, he craves reference to the said report in full. Second — He admits that, without having been requested or specially authorized by the Secretary of War so to do, he did address to the Secretary of War a communication bearing date February 17, 1885, containing the language set forth in the second specification, but not in the form therein set forth ; for the specification purports to give the sentence in full, while it omits five words at the beginning and twenty words at the close of the sentence from which it is taken. He, therefore, craves reference to the full text of said letter. He admits the venue, as laid at Washington, D. C, in said specifications. The Judge- Advocate — Mr. President, I now desire to in- troduce in evidence the annual report of the Chief Signal Offi- THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. 87 cer of the Army to the Secretary of War for the year 1884. The document submitted to the Court is admitted, for the pur- poses of this cause, to be the report spoken of by the accused, as I understand it. The Pkesident — Admit it. The Judge- Advocate — With the permission of the Court I will read from tliat report (the entire report will be in evidence) the portion of the specification, or rather the extract referred to in the first specification, which is found on page 19, and is as follows : **0n the return of the escort ship bringing the relief party to St. John's, September 13, there was still time, as known from previous experi- ence and shown by subsequent facts, to send effective relief, and my six telegrams from Washington Territory, where I then happened to be, at- test the earnestness of my efforts to have this done." It only includes so much of the report as I have read. Of course the entire report is in evidence. The President — Where does it end — at what word ? The Judge- Advocate — At the word '' done "; at the period. This report which I have submitted will be appended to the re- cord and marked Exhibit A. I now ask the accused to produce the letter of February 17, 1885, referred to in the second and third specifications in this case. The accused produced the letter called for. The Judge-Advocate — The specifications Nos. 2 and 3 plainly show that only extracts from this letter are quoted in those specifications. I presume it will be proper for me to read the entire letter ; and if there is no objection I will proceed to read the letter. The Presideis'T — There seems to be no objection. Mr. Mackey (to the Judge- Advocate) —You introduce the entire letter, I understand ? The Judge-Advocate — Yes, I will read it. The Judge- Advocate then read the letter referred to, dated February 17, 1885, together with the endorsement thereon, which is appended to the record and marked Exhibit B. 88 THE HAZEI^ COURT-MARTIAL. The Judge- Advocate (to the accused) — I suppose you ad- mit the endorsement ? General Hazei^^ — Yes. The Judge-Advocate — Now, Mr. President, for the pur- poses of this trial I submit in evidence so much of this letter as is quoted in the second and third specifications. The entire letter is before the Court, but I only submit so much as I refer to in evidence. The Judge- Advocate — I have a witness to present to the Court. Rudolph Kauefma2^2^, a witness called by the prosecution, then came before the Court and was duly sworn by the Judge- Advocate. By the Judge-Advocate : Q. Please state your name, your occupation, and your resi- dence. A. Kudolph Kauffmann; newspaper reporter connected with the Evening Star ; residence, 205 New Jersey Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D. 0. Q. Do you recognize the accused before this Court — General Hazen ? A. I do. Q. About how long have you known him ? A. I have no means of fixing the date when I became acquainted with him. Q. Approximately ? A. About two years ; in that neigh- borhood. Q. In what capacity have you known him ? A. As Chief Signal Officer of the Army. Q. As far as you are personally concerned — I mean as a re- porter ? A. Yes, sir ; as a reporter. Q. During that period have you seen General Hazen fre- quently in your capacity as a reporter ? A. No, sir ; not parti- cularly so ; occasionally. Q. For what purpose — items of news or what ? A. Items of news and general information. Q. Did you see General Hazen on or about the 1st or 2d of this month — the month of March, 1885 ? A. Yes, sir. THE HAZEl^ COURT-MAETIAL. 89 Q. Did you have an interview with him then or talk with him on that occasion ? A. I had a conversation with him. Q. Where did it take place ? A. It was in the ojBfice of this hotel. Q. Will you be kind enough to tell the Court what paper this is ? (handing a newspaper to the witness). A. It is a copy of the Evening Star, of Washington, D. 0. Q. Of what date ? A. March 2, 1885. Q. Will you please indicate to the Court whetner or not there is any article in that paper written by you in reference to your interview with General Hazen on the 1st or 2d of March ? A. Yes, sir. Q. Where is it ? (The witness indicated the place in the paper.) Q. Did you write the original of that ? A. I did. Q. Is it correctly reiDroduced in the paper here ? A. Yes, sir. The Judge-Advocate — With the permission of the Court I will now read the article referred to : "The Greely Party Disaster — General Hazen throwing the Blame ON THE Secretary of War. " * Is it true,' asked a Star reporter of General Hazen, * that you wrote a letter to the Secretary of War throwing the blame of the loss of the Gree- ly party upon his shoulders ? ' " ' I did write such a tetter,' was the reply. ' It was a straightforward statement of facts in regard to the matter, I produced evidence to show that, had my recommendation of having another expedition start from St. John's immediately after the loss of the Proteus not been entirely ignored by the War Department, the Greely party could all have been saved. I felt it my duty to rayself to make this statement after the severe manner in which the Secretary of War spoke in his report of my alluding to the matter in my annual report. My intention to go South was in no way connected with the letter.' (It was reported that General Hazen had asked to be al- lowed to go South, so as to be away when the letter was received and until Secretary Lincoln's term ended.) ' I intended, and still intend, to start to- ward the last of the week on an inspection tour of the Southern signal sta- tions, to be gone ten days or so. I had not the slightest intention of going away before the inauguration.' " I submit this extract, as read, in evidence. 90 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. The Peesidekt — What dates would the last of the week involve in that new^spaper statement — what day of the week ? The Judge- Advocate — The newspaper was published on the 2d of March, on Monday, and the last of the week would have been the 7th. (To Mr. Mackey:) I suppose there is no objection to the admission of this extract in evidence ? Mr. Mackey — The rule is to authenticate the paper, and then to authenticate^the extract. The paper has been authenticated. The Judge- Advocate — So has the extract. Mr. Mackey — As to whether that was the language used by the reporter is one thing, and whether it is the language used by the accused is another. The President — That question should be asked, whether he truthfully reported General Hazen in that interview. The Judge-Advocate (addressing the witness) — Does that language just read to you from this paper, as you have written it out, truly represent the language, or the tenor and effect of the language, used by General Hazen to you on that occasion at the interview ? A. It represents the tenor of the language. I would not tes- tify that every word was reported. I wrote it from memory ; took no notes. If I may be allowed to say, the sentences were not given in exactly that order. Part of it was in answer to questions I asked him. Q. It represents, however, the tenor and effect of your ques- tions and his answers ? A. Yes, sir. Q. Was there any injunction or not on the part of General Hazen to you not to publish this interview or the statements made ? A. No, sir. Q. There was not ? A. No, sir ; there was nothing said about it. Q. How soon after you saw General Hazen did you write the article in question ? A. The next morning, if I remember cor- rectly. Q. About what time in the day before had you seen him? A. I should say it was about half-past seven or eight o'clock. Q. In the evening ? A. Yes, sir; I do not remember exactly the time. THE HAZEN COUET-MARTIAL. 91 Q. About what time next morning did you write tlie article? A. About nine o'clock. The Judge-Advo€Ate — I have no further questions to ask the witness. Cross-examination. By Mr. Mac key : Q. Will you please state, as nearly as you can now recollect, the first question that you propounded to General Hazen to in- troduce the conversation on that occasion on the 1st of March? A. It was not a question. Q. What was it? what did you say? A. I told him that I wished to ask him about a paragraph that I had seen in a West- ern paper. Q. Then what further took place ? A. He said he had , not seen it, and asked me what it was. Q Xow try and recollect your response to that inquiry of his in substance. A. In substance it was that I had seen in a copy of the Chicago Trilune a paragraph which stated or said it was understood, or something of that character, that General Hazen had written a letter to the Secretary of War in which he threw the blame for the loss of the Greely party upon his shoul- ders ; and the paragraph went on to say, and I went on to say or intimate, that General Hazen's intention was to send this let- ter just before Secretary Lincoln went out of office, and that he also intended to be away about the time when this should be sent to the Secretary, so as not to be here at that time when the Secretary received it. Q. Was your statement, then, to the effect that there was a paragraph in the Chicago Trihune assailing General Hazen in connection with an alleged letter to the Secretary of War — the paragraph in the Chicago Tribune assailing General Hazen? A. Well, not assailing him. The Judge-Advocate (to Mr. Mackey) — Please confine your- self to what he said to General Hazen, and not to what the para- graph in the paper was ; that is not the point. Mr. Mackey — I am directing my attention to the point. 92 THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. The Judge- Advocate — If the paragraph is to be introduced the original must be produced, and not his recollection of it. Mr. Mackey — I am aware of that. (To the witness:) I ask you whether you did not state to General Hazen that he was attacked in the Chicago Tribune in a paragraph in connection with the letter alleged to have been written by him to the Secre- tary of War ? A. I do not remember that. Q. You do not ? A. No, sir, I do not. Q. Now please recollect, as near as you can, at least the substance of General Hazen's reply to you when you introduced the conversation in that form. A. As near as I can remember he said that it was nonsense ; that there was no truth in it ; that he had intended going away at this time, but there was no connection whatever between the letter and his intended trip to the Southern signal stations for inspection, as near as I can remember. Q. State as near as you can remember, what further reply General Hazen made touching the alleged letter. A. In reply to a direct question of mine, he said that he had written a let- ter, but, as I said, there was no connection between that letter and his intention to go away. Q. Now the direct question to which you refer — if you can, please recall it and repeat it. A. The direct question was re- garding the letter throwing blame for the loss of the Greely party upon the shoulders of the Secretary of War — a letter to the Secretary of War. Q, Speak in the first person, and, if you can, recollect the language of your question. A. It was, '' Was there such a let- ter," if I recollect right, as I had referred to in the Chicago paper? I will not say those were the exact words, or '* Did you write such a letter ? " Q. Give, as near as you can, the reply of General Hazen to that question. A. " I did write the letter." Q. '^The letter," or ^^a" letter? A. " Such a letter"; or he gave me to understand that the statement that he had written a letter of that tenor to the Secretary of War was correct. Q. Did he say, "I have written such a letter," or '^ I wrote the letter," or ''I wrote a letter " ? Can you swear to either of THE HAZElSr COUET-MARTIAL. 93 those positively ? A. No, sir ; I would not swear to either one of them. Q. Can yon state positively whether General Hazen nsed the .words ^' Secretary of War " or not ? A. Either ^^ Secretary " or ^* Secretary of War." Q. You state that positively ? A. Yes, sir ; as near as I can remember. It was some time ago. Q. As near as you can remember, then ? A. Yes, sir. Q. Now please state what General Hazen said in substance, as near as you can recollect, and in the terms, if you can recol- lect. A. I do not remember whether I asked him what was the character of the letter then or not, but he said that the let- ter he felt in duty bound to write on account of the severe man- ner in which the Secretary had handled him in his annual re- port for having previously alluded to this matter in his. General Hazen's, annual report. Q. How long did this conversation last, or about how long, as far as you can recollect ? A. About a minute ; perhaps less — just enough to say these things. Q. Did you inform General Hazen at the time, or intimate to him, that he was being interviewed for publication? A. No, sir. Q. You did not ? A. No, sir ; I did not. Q. Please state the circumstances under which you met General Hazen on that occasion — whether in a chamber at a set interview, or whether it was a passing interview. A. I accidentally met him in the lobby of this hotel, the Eb- bitt House. Q. Were you seated with him ? A. No, sir. Q. Was he in motion or not ? A. Yes, sir ; he was. Q. Walking up and down ? A. Yes, sir ; and I stopped him. Q. Can you state whether General Hazen had any know- ledge from you, or intimation, that you intended to publish that conversation ? A. No, sir. Q. He did not ? A. No, sir. Q. Would you swear that the statements published under the title of an interview with General Hazen, or under the 94 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. heading, " General Hazen throws the blame of the failure to relieve the Greely expedition on the shoulders of the Secretary of War," embody the language of General Hazen, his exact language ? A. 'No, sir ; not his exact language. Q. Did General Hazen seek you, or did you seek him, or was it a mere chance meeting ? A. It was a mere chance meet- ing on my part. Q. In giving such a conversation, according to your own practice and the custom of reporters, would you profess to give it in the exact words of the person interviewed, when you took no notes at the time ? A. I would if I felt satisfied that I re- membered. . Q. And taking no notes ? A. Yes, sir ; taking no notes. Q. Did you state that you cannot swear that the report, un- der the heading stated, in the Evening Star of the 2d of March was in the language of General Hazen — in the exact language ? A. It may not have been in the exact language. I say I would not be willing to swear to that word for word. Part of it was in answer to questions which I put. I asked him a question and he acknowledged it. Thereupon I said that he said so. Q. May not a reporter for the press — may you not as a judi- cious reporter (and I assume that only a judicious person occu- pies that honorable position) — magnify an item of news beyond the language of the person interviewed? The Judge-Adyocate — Will you please repeat the ques- tion ? Q. May you or do you not, as a reporter for the press, some- times magnify an item of news relating to an interview with a prominent man beyond the language used by the person inter- Iriewed? The Judge-Advocate — I object to the question. It has nothing to do with the case. The question is whether he mag- nified the language in this case. It has nothing to do with other occasions. Mr. Macket — May it please the Court, the purpose of the cross-examination is to apply to the witness proper mental and, it may be, moral tests, and those tests are eminently appropriate where a charge affecting an officer of the Army of high rank is THE HAZEN COUKT-MAETIAL. 95 professedly based, in one of its specifications, on the assumed correctness of an alleged published interview. The practice of the witness, who declares himself the reporter who indited the alleged interview, is surely relevant. It relates to the repor- ter's practice as to whether he does not sometimes magnify interviews and the language of an interview, or whether it is his practice to limit the report severely to what transpired. I shall, then, pass to the further question as to whether he did not magnify this alleged interview in his ardor and zeal as a reporter for the press. And I submit to the court it is en- tirely unwarranted, it is not usual, to imjoose a restriction upon cross-examination where it tends to develop a material fact in the case. The Judge- Advocate— The witness has already stated, Mr. President, that he, to the best of his ability, gave the purport, tenor, and effect of General Hazen's conversation in the news paper article in question. The other side has to limit itself to the scope of the matter brought out in the examination-in-chief. What the practice of this reporter may have been in other cases has nothing to do with this. He has already, under oath, stated that the report submitted to this Court contained the tenor and substance of G-eneral Hazen's language. The Peesident — As the decision of the Court on this mat- ter appears necessary, a vote will be taken by ballot. The question is. Shall the objection of the Judge-Advocate to the question propounded by the counsel for the defence be sus- tained ? A vote was then taken by ballot. The Judge-Advocate — I am directed to announce as the decision of the Court that the objection is not sustained. The question was then read by the reporter as follows : Q. May you or do you not, as a reporter for tlie press, some- times magnify an item of news relating to an interview with a prominent man beyond the language used by the person inter- viewed ? A. No, sir ; not intentionally. Q. Is it your practice to give^ the exact language, where notes are not taken of what was said by the person interviewed? A. Yes, sir, if I am satisfied that I remember it. 9b THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. Q. You haye stated that you gave the conyersation according to its tenor. What do you mean by the word " tenor " in that connection ? A. I mean that I abbreviated it somewhat, and, in asking General Hazen about the letter, referred to it as the letter spoken of in this Chicago Tribune paragraph. Q. You do not mean, then, that you gave it literally ? A. No, sir. I asked General Hazen if he had written such a letter. He said he had. Therefore I said he had written such a letter throwing blame on the Secretary of War ; that is, I put that in my question to him, in the question that I drew from the Chicago Tribune paragraph. Q. Did he incorporate your language in his reply, do you know, or in his own terms ? A. I would not care to state as to that. Q. You will not swear that he did not repeat your language and then answer you ? A. I do not think he repeated my lan- guage. If I remember correctly, he acknowledged haying writ- ten the letter. Q. How late did you sit up that night, Mr. Kauffmann ? A. Until about half-past nine or ten o'clock. Q. Did you retire at ten o'clock ? A. I did, sir. Q. Did you take anything that evening — take supper, or from sundown until ten o'clock take anything in the way of stimulants ? A. What do you mean, sir ? Q. A glass of champagne or sherry with your friends ? A. No, sir. I took a glass of ginger-ale, if you call that a stimu- lant. Q. Do you limit yourself to that beverage ? A. I do, and to lemonade. Q. No higher grade than ginger-ale or lemonade ? A. No, sir. Q. Can you state whether General Hazen published the alleged interview in the Evening Star 9 A. I do not under- stand your question exactl3^ Q. Did General Hazen publish the alleged interview in the Star, or procure you to publish it ? A. Did General Hazen publish the interview in the Star f Q. Yes ; I am reciting the language of the specification. THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. 97 A, No, sir ; lie had nothing whatever to do with publishing it in the Star. Q. Did he procure the publication to your knowledge ? A. No, sir. Q. He did not ? A. No, sir. Q. Did he seek the publication through you, if you can state ? A. No, sir ; I sought him. Q. You have stated that you did not intimate a purpose to publish ? A. As near as I can remember, I said nothing about publishing it. Q. Is it your practice to publish all conversations that may be had at a chance meeting with a gentleman in public posi- tion ? A. Oh ! no, sir. Q. Not at all ? A. No, sir ; not at all. Q. What meaning do you give to the word *^ interview " ? I ask you as an expert. The Judge- Advocate asked you with reference to an " interview " which you had. A. I regard an interview as the result of question and answer. Q. You reply that you had a conversation with him ? A. Yes, sir. Q. Is there not a definite meaning, in the profession of jour- nalism, attached to the word ** interview " ? A. No, sir ; I think not. Q. Meaning a set and understood questioning and answer- ing with a view to publication — has it not that meaning ? A. I do not look upon it as such, as having any such meaning. Q. Or with a view to publication ? A. No, sir. Q. Have you not had interviews with General Hazen for the purposes of publication, as to other matters known to him, where your declared purpose was to obtain information for pub- lication ? A. No, sir ; there was no declared purj^ose about it, that I remember, on any occasion. Mr. Mackey (to the witness) — You stated in your direct examination that in opening the alleged interview with General Hazen you stated that you had seen in the Chicago Tribune a paragraph in reference to a letter alleged to have been written by him to the Secretary of War, Can you state whether this is the paragraph to which you referred (handing a newspaper to 98 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. the witness) ? A. (after an examination of tlie paper). That is the paragraph. I have not seen it since then nntil now. Mr. Mackey — With the permission of the Court I will read it to the witness. The counsel read as follows : [From the Chicago Trihune of February 35, 1885.] *' The Geeely Party — Hazen charges the Secretary of War with Abandoning the Explorers. ** Washington, D. C, February 24. (Special.) "General Hazen recently applied for permission to inspect the signal stations on the Southern coast. Before doing this he prepared a letter to the Secretary of War in which he directly charged that officer with the failure to relieve the Greely party. He sent to St. John's and obtained affidavits to the effect that there was ample time after Lieutenant Garling- ton's return to have sent a second relief expedition, and that the boats and men for such an expedition could have been obtained at St. John's. By doing this, General Hazen says in his letter, every life would have been saved; and this step, he adds, he urged upon the Secretary of War, who, according to General Hazen, refused to act, and therefore General Hazen charges him with being responsible for the death of Greely's men. This letter was kept back by General Hazen for two reasons, it is said. It was to be sprung upon the Secretary after General Hazen left the city on his tour of inspection South. The other reason for delay was to allow no time before the 4th of March for the Secretary to take any action in his own defence, and to strike a last blow at the retiring Cabinet officer. A week only remains in which Mr. Lincoln will be Secretary of War, and during that period the Chief Signal Officer will be required to stay in Washington, and will not be permitted to go on a tour of inspection South." Q. Did you sliow that to General Hazen at jour alleged in- terview ? A. No, sir. Q. But this is what moved you ? A. Yes, sir. The witness was then further examined as follows : Redirect Examination, By the Judge-Advocate : Q. General Hazen knew you to be a reporter for the Star ; you had seen him frequently as a reporter for the Star f A. Yes, sir. THE HAZEN COUKT-MAETIAL. .99 Q. What had. been your practice with reference to previous statements made by General Hazen to you when you saw him on previous occasions— did you or not publish them in the Star 9 A. Yes, sir, if they were of interest. The Judge-Advocate — That is all I have to ask. Have the Court any questions ? The PKESiDEiq^T — ]N"one are heard. The witness is discharged, from further attendance. The WiTKESS — I would like to make a statement in the na- ture of a correction of my testimony, if I may be allowed. The PRESiDEi^T — You may proceed. The Witness — I simply want to state that I said that the article in the Star was mine. It was all mine except the head- lines ; I had nothing whatever to do with the heading. THIRD DAT. KOOMS OF THE GrEI^ERAL OoURT-MARTIAL, Ebbitt House, Washii^gton^, D. C, Friday, March 13, 1885, 11 a.m. The Court met pursuant to adjournment. The Judge- Advocate — Mr. President, I now desire to in- troduce a document pur|)orbing to be the annual report of the Secretary of War for the year 1883. As I understand it, the defence is willing to admit that this is the report of the Secre- tary of War for the year 1883, and that the same was received from the War Department at the office of the Chief Signal Officer in the usual course of business, with the stamp at the bottom of this pamphlet — that is, December 11, 1883. (To Mr. Mackey :) Is that correct ? Mr. Mackey — Yes, with the addition that the admission is made because of the stamp being upon it. The Judge- Advocate — I should like the admission to be made without that qualification. Mr. Mackey — But no admission will be made without that qualification. We admit it because of the stamp being upon it. The Judge-Advocate — That will necessitate my calling a witness. There is no use of accepting it with that qualifi- cation. The President — You may call the witness, if you desire. James D. McLoughlik, a witness called by the prosecu- tion, then came before the Court and was duly sworn by the Judge- Advocate. By the Judge- Advocate : Q. Please state your name. A. James D. McLoughlin. 100. THE IIAZEIS- COUET-MARTIAL. 101 Q. Where do you live ? A. At No. 804 Eighth Street, N. W., Washington, D. 0. Q. Where are you employed ? A. At the Signal Office. Q. Were you employed in that office in December, 1883 ? A. I was. Q. Do you recognize this document (handing a document to the witness) ? A. Yes, sir. Q. State to the Court when it was received at the Signal Office. A. It came to my desk at the Signal Office on Decem- ber 11, 1883. Q. You are a clerk in the Signal Office ? A. Yes, sir. The Judge-Advocate— This is the document that I intro- duced to the Court a little while ago, and which was admitted by the other side. Mr. Mackey — We have no questions to ask. There being no questions by the Court, the witness was ex- cused. The Judge-Advocate — In order that the purpose of the introduction of this document may be clear to the Court, and to the defence as well, I desire to call the attention of tlie Court to a portion of the report of the Secretary of War in which cer- tain matters in reference to the relief of Lieutenant Oreely were discussed by the Secretary of War — matters pertaining to the allegations before this Court in the first, second, and third spe- cifications. At the conclusion of the report of Mr. Lincoln, the Secre- tary of War, there is a memorandum which reads as follows : '' The Secretaries of "War and the Navy have decided that it is not practicable to send' another expedition to the relief of Lieutenant Greely this year." This memorandum is dated September 19, 1883. I offer the entire matter in evidence, but I only read so much as is perti- nent to the allegation. I do not care about giving the remain- der, if the Court does not wish it. If the Court desires the en- tire memorandum, to be read I will read it all. The PRESiDEi>rT — We do not particularly desire anything about it. You can read what you want to have received. 102 THE HAZEN COUET-MARTIAL. The Judge-Adyocate— I will, then, rest content with what I have read. This will be appended to the record and marked Exhibit 0. Mr. Mackey — Mr. President and gentlemen of the Court, I object to the admission of that memorandum. The rule is, I submit to the Court, that the eyidence must be confined to the issue, and the issue is as to whether the accused, knowing that the Secretary of War had decided that it was not practicable to send an expedition to the Arctic regions in the month of Sep- tember, 1883, did criticise and impugn the action of the Secre- tary of War. There is a memorandum proposed to be introduced in evi- dence which sets forth, not the decision of the Secretary of War, but the joint decision of the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy. It may be suggested that if it was the decision of the Secretary of War and of the Navy, as the Secretary of War entered into it as a component part, the requirement of law is satisfied as to the evidence being confined to the issue ; for it is the decision of the Secretary of War and also the decision of the Secretary of the Navy. But the reason of the rule that the evidence must be con- fined to the issue is that the accused may be fully apprised as to what he is to answer. Neither in terms nor in effect is the joint decision of the Secretaries of War and the Navy the de- cision of the Secretary of War. The joint decision of the Secretary of War and of the Navy may be of higher authority than the decision either of the Secretary of War or the Secre- tary of the Navy simply. But it cannot be said of the joint decision of the Secretary of War and the Navy that it is the de- cision of the Secretary of War, any more than it can be said that it is the decision of the Secretary of the Navy. Suppose that, instead of haying here recited a joint decision of the Secretary of War and of the Navy, that it were proposed to read a decision of the Secretary of War and of the Nayy, and of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of the Interior, and of the Attorney-Ceneral ^ With the same reason might that be put in evidence, the joint decision of five members of the Cabinet, and the prosecution could allege whereas the Secretary THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. 103 of War was one of the number, the Court must hold that it was the decision of the Secretary of War. But we are not called to plead to any such averment ; and the rule, I submit to the Court, is that the allegation limits the proof. This is, as to the rules of evidence, a court of common law, although a court-martial; and the distinctive difference be- tween a court of common law and a court sitting under the code civil is that under the civil law matters that do not belong to the issue may be introduced in evidence, but at common law the evidence must be confined to the issue. And we respectfully submit to the Court, under the rules of evidence, that the specification recites the decision of the Secretary of A\^ar, and it is not germane to the issue to submit ill evidence a decision which recites upon its face that it is the decision of the Secretaries of the War and Navy Departments. The Judge- Advocate — Mr. President, to me the language of this memorandum seems to be very plain. It says : " The Secretaries of War and the Navy have decided" — there being two, they both must have agreed to that decision. Therefore there were two individual acts jointly expressed in this memo- randum. If the Secretary of War had not so decided, and the Secretary of the Navy had not so decided, it would not have been so recited here. It required the individual act of each to come to a conclusion upon that paper, and it seems that both agreed upon the subject. Inasmuch as the Secretary of War is the official superior, according to the 1195th section of the Re- vised Statutes, of the Chief Signal Officer, I presume only so much was considered in the specification as refers to the Secre- tary of War ; because this memorandum plainly shows that the Secretary of War did so desire not to send an Arctic expedition. It was just as much his individual act as it was the joint act of the two. I do not know how the memorandum containing those conclusions came about, but I simply judge from the lan- guage. I would also call the attention of the Court to the fact that, if there is any variance between the proof and t]ie allegation, the Court, under the rules of military law, is perfectly at liberty to substitute or strike out and correct any variance, if it ch9oses. 104 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. I do not think, however, it is any material variance, and I think the accused, having already admitted this report in evi- dence before this Court, comes with little grace now to object to part of it. Mr. Macket — We admitted nothing as to that report. We offered to admit that it bore the stamp of the Signal Office. I invite the attention of the Court further to the fact that this is an unsigned memorandum. It does not profess to be a part of the report, and, for aught I know, is not referred to in the report of the Secretary of War. It is an unsigned memo- randum. It may have been placed there by the election of some clerk. It opens with the words, *' The Secretaries of War and the Navy have decided " — there may be some record of that de- cision beyond this. This may not be the true record. It only professes to be a memorandum of some decision that precedes it, unsigned, not incorporated in the report of the Secretary of War. The signature of the Secretary of War appears, and then follows the memorandum. I am not aware that the memoran- dum is referred to in the report. It may be. That would con- nect it with the report. This was submitted to me a few min- utes ago. We make no admissions as to the report whatsoever. It is proved that it was filed in the Signal Office on December 11, 1883. Our proposed admission was rejected, and we submit to the Court that this is a memorandum of the decision of the Secretaries of War and the Navy. The document referred to was then submitted to the mem- bers of the Court for their inspection. The Judge- Advocate — Mr. President, in addition to what I have already said, I desire to call attention to page 20 of the report of the Secretary of War introduced here in evidence, where it states: ^^A copy of a memorandum of the views of the Secretary of the Navy and myself, made at the time, is ap- pended." He speaks in reference to the relief party to be sent out in September, 1883, and refers to the Proteus disaster in the same report. The President— There is no doubt that the officiality of THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. 105 this paper could be determined by bringing here the Adjutant- General of the Army, if no other person ; and, therefore, it is a question only whether it is necessary, and that will depend some- what upon the admissions. The Judge-Advocate— I understood the other side ad- mitted that it was the report of the Secretary of War. The Peesidekt — I do not know. The question will come up in a moment, when you are ready for the main question. The Judge- Advocate — I am ready for the question. The Pkesidext — Gentlemen, the question is, Shall the ob- jection to the admission of the memorandum be sustained? Mr. Mackey — Will the Court permit me to submit in writing, in two lines, the question upon which I ask its de- cision, which is, whether proof of the decision of the Secretary of War and of the Navy shall be admitted to support the charge ? The PEESiDEiq"T — You may submit the question directly, but that is not the question we are now considering. A vote was then taken by ballot. The Judge- Advocate — I am directed by the Court to an- nounce that the objection of the accused to the admission of the paper in question is not sustained. The Preside]!^! — ISTow, if there is any different understand- ing on the part of the defence as to what the intention of the question was, they can resubmit the question and give their ideas of it. Mr. Mackey — We desire to submit the question alone wheth- er, assuming that the memorandum is sufficiently proved, it is admissible in evidence, as upon its face it shows a joint decision of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, and the accused is charged with reference to the decision of the Secretary of War alone, and not with reference to the joint decision of the Sec- retary of War and of the Navy. We object to its admission as evidence, assuming it to be proven. The Judge- Advocate — Mr. President, as I understand it, that is precisely what the Court has just now ruled upon. The original objection was to the introduction of this document because it recited a joint decision of the Secretary of War and 106 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. of the Navy, while the accused was simply charged in the spe- cification with having criticised the action of the Secretary of War. A member of the Court — That was not my understanding when I voted. The Peesidei^t — The question was whether the paper should be admitted. Now, if the question is put in writing and pre- sented to the Court, we will have a decision upon that. The counsel for the defence then prepared a written objec- tion, which was read by the Judge- Advocate as follows : "We object to the admission of the paper entitled 'Memorandum,' on the ground that it purports to be a joint decision of the Secretaries of War and the Navy that it was not practicable to send another expedition to the relief of Lieutenant Greely in September, 1883. " The accused is not charged with having impugned such joint decision. He is charged with having criticised the decision of the Secretary of War, and the proof must be confined to the issue." The Peesidekt — It must not be put on that ground. I only meant to say that if the accused thought the question had not been properly stated in the previous decision, that a new ques- tion might be made to cover the point. But I did not request it at all. Mr. Mackey — That is the question. The Peesidekt — That is what the counsel for the accused presents as what he thinks the question was. The Judge-Advocate — I would like to be heard a moment on this question. Mr. Mackey — I should like to read my own objection to the Court. That is the proper professional way of doing it. The Judge- Advocate — I have no objection to that at all. Mr. Mackey (reading) — " We object to the admission of the paper entitled ' Memorandum,' on the ground that it purports to be the joint decision of the Secretaries of War and the ISTavy that it was not practicable to send another expedition to the re- lief of Lieutenant Greely in September, 1883. The accused is not charged with having impugned such joint decision. He is charged with having criticised the decision of the Secretary of War, and the proof must be confined to the issue." THE HAZEN COUET-MARTIAL. 107 The Judge-Advocate — As I have said before, Mr. Presi- dent, I consider the objection here made as a most remarkable one. I stated before that, in order that the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy should be able to come to a joint conclusion on the matter at issue, it required the complete as- sent of each one of them, and that, therefore, this joint action is as much an individual act of the Secretary of War as it is an individual act of the Secretary of the Navy. Their thoughts, their ideas in the matter happened to agree. They expressed their decision in this memorandum jointly, I presume to pre- serve the record of it. The Secretary of War says in his report, ** A copy of the memorandum of the views of the Secretary of the Navy and myself, made at the time, is appended." It is as much the action of the one as it is the action of the other. Now, if we go to other matters to seek information in the criminal law on the joint action of people, we find that, though one may commit an offence or a crime of a certain character, and another person may stand by and see him do it and aid him in doing it, though he may not have done the exact act that the other party did, yet both are indicted as principals and can be tried for the principal act. But should they desire a severance, each one can be tried separately, though he may not have done the exact act that the other is charged with having committed. That is to say, the proof may be at variance ; they may have done it jointly. Applying that rule to this case, there was in this case an in- dividual act, an individual acquiescence of the Secretary of War in these views, an individual acquiescence of the Secretary of the Navy, but thoy expressed them jointly. There could not have been any such decision had either one or the other dis- agreed. For the purposes of this case it makes no difference whether it was the joint decision or whether it was so announced or not. The specification simply recites that the Secretary of War had so decided. The Secretary of War was the official superior, under the law, of the Chief Signal Officer. And I earnestly ask the Court to take this matter into serious consideration be- fore they make their final decision. 108 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. Mr. Macket — I shall occupy the time of the Court but a moment. If I correctly translate the language of the learned Judge-Advocate, his proposition is that if the offence be jointly charged as committed against one, even though the proof show- that it was committed against two jointly, the requirement of law is satisfied. The Judge- Advocate — I beg your pardon ; I said by one. Mr. Mackey — Suppose a party indicted charged with the larceny of goods, of a certain article, the property of John Doe and Richard Roe. We come into court and it is proposed to prove that it is the separate, sole, and distinct property of John Doe. Why, the rulings are innumerable upon the principle there involved that there is a fatal variance in such a case be- tween the indictment and the proof. But, it may be suggested, that may do in a criminal court, where you are dealing with counts in an indictment. But the authorities who have written upon the law of courts-martial say that precisely the same prin- ciples that govern the rulings of criminal courts of common law must govern a court-martial. There is no variance among the authorities on that point. In this case it is urged upon the Court that a joint decision made by the Secretary of War and of the Navy in relation to a naval expedition must be regarded as the sole decision of the Secretary of War. If the two Secretaries are to be separated at all with reference to this decision, it being a decision in regard to a naval expedition, we could more rationally assume that it was the decision of the Secretary of the Navy alone, and not the decision of the Secretary of War. Upon its face it related to a matter not ordinarily within the jurisdiction of the War Department, but of the Navy Department. It was an expedi- tion by sea, and it would not be assumed for a moment, from the language of the specification, that that is the decision as to which we are charged with criticising and impugning. I state in good faith, may it please the Court, that I expect- ed the production of some decision of the Secretary of War as the Secretary of War, deciding in the line of his duty. We are not furnished that, but are presented here, as the very founda- tion of the prosecution, with the joint decision of the two Sec- THE haze:n^ couet-martial. 109 retaries. The prosecution miglit as Avell present ns the joint decision of the Secretary of War and of the Navy and of the Attorney- General of the United States n^Don this question, and say. That is what we meant in the specification : we meant the joint decision of the two Secretaries that General Hazen im- pugned. Bat the rule is that the prosecution must identify the matter of the charge, and the proof must be directed to that. The learned Judge- Advocate states that the Court may ad- mit it and consider it hereafter. That is true. But if an ob- jection is made to the introduction of evidence on the ground that it is irrelevant, the Court passes upon it in the first in- stance, and does not burden the record with what is not perti- nent to the issue. In other words, the Court will do at the be- ginning what in law and in justice and good conscience is de- manded at the end. The Judge- Advocate — Mr. President, the nice and fine dis- tinctions permitted in civil courts in matters of this kind do not pertain in courts-martial, according to the books of refe- rence which we have ; and courts-martial, when the proof and the allegation are at variance, have full and ample power to cor- rect that variance in their findings. I submit that the fine and nice distinctions applicable in the civil courts, which the coun- sel brings in here, are not applicable in military courts, accord- ing to our military law-books. Mr. Mackey — I have here an authority, if the Court desires to consider it, upon which my remarks rest as to the laws of evi- dence governing this Court in the admission of testimony. I refer to 3d Greenleaf, sections 476 and 477. The whole subject is there treated as to these courts being bound by the same rules that govern in courts of common law. The Preside]S"T — Does any member of the Court desire that the Court be cleared for deliberation ? A member of the Court — I desire to have the Court cleared. The Presidei^t — The doors will be closed. The Court was then cleared for deliberation. When the doors were re-opened, and the accused and his counsel had re- sumed their seats, the Judge- Advocate announced the decision as follows (a short recess in the meantime having been taken) : 110 THE IIAZEN COIJRT-MAETIAL. The Judge-Advocate — I am directed by the Court to an- nounce as its decision that the objection made by the defence is not sustained. Mr. President, I would now ask that the accused produce before this Court the telegram alleged to have been sent to him by Captain Mills on September 19, 1883, from this city to Port Townsend, Washington Territory. Mr. Mackey — If it is in our possession we shall do so ; and I think we have it. After a few moments spent in consultation with the defence the Judge- Advocate said : The Judge- Advocate — I desire to state that in response to the notice served on the other side for the production of the telegram in question, the defence say, if I understand them cor- rectly, that it is not in their possession now. Mr. Mackey — Not now. But I will state that the defence would not demand that the original of that telegram should be produced if Captain Mills, the Acting Chief Signal Officer, can identify the alleged copy as a true copy. In that case we will dispense with the introduction of the original. But General Hazen has not borne it in memory, and cannot remember. The Judge- Advocate — And you will consent to give this copy the same force and effect as if the original had been pro- duced ? Mr. Mackey — Yes ; that is the force and effect of my state- ment. The Judge- Advocate — I want it understood, so that there will be no misunderstanding about it hereafter. Mr. Mackey — We have saved the necessity of that. Samuel M. Mills, a witness called by the prosecution, then -came before the Court, and was duly sworn by the Judge- Advo- cate. By the Judge-Advocate : Q. Please state your name, rank, station, and duties. A. Samuel M. Mills'; Captain Fifth Artillery; at present stationed in Washington ; Acting Chief Signal Officer of the Army. THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. Ill Q. Do you know who the Chief Signal Officer of the Army was during the month of December, 1883 ? A. Yes, sir ; Gen- eral Hazen. Q. You were on duty in the office during that month as Sig- nal Officer ? A. I think so ; I cannot say positively. I will have to refer to the reports — the morning report. Mr. Mackey— Please do not state it unless you know. The WiTj^ESS— In December, 1883 ? General Hazen may have been temporarily absent ; I cannot answer. Q. Were you the next in rank to him ? A. Yes, sir. Q. If he had been absent would you not have acted in his place ? A. Yes, sir. Q. Do you know v/hether you acted in his place during. De- cember or not ? A. I could not state from memory whether I was acting. It frequently occurred during the year that I was acting, but I could not say positively whether I was acting dur- ing the month of December, 1883, or not, without referring to the records. Q. Have you any means of refreshing your memory as to whether you acted at that time or not? A. Not without consult- ing the records of the office. It frequently happened that I was acting for a few days at a time during the temporary absence of the Chief Signal Officer, but I could not recall it from memory. Q. We will leave that subject for the present and go to an- other one. Do you remember anything about a telegram sent by you to General Hazen somewhere about the 10th of Decem- ber, 1883 ? A. Yes, sir. Q What is that paper you have in your hand ? A. That is what it purports to be — a copy of a telegram sent by me to Gen- eral Hazen on or about tlie 19th of September, 1883. The Judge-Advocate— With the permission of the Court I will read it. The Judge- Advocate read as follows : *« September 19, 1883. " To General W. B. Hazen, Port Townsend, W. T. : " Secretaries War and Xavy, after patient consultation with Arctic ex- 112 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. plorers, conclude nothing further possible this year. No chance to put ves- sel sufficiently north to reach Greely either by boat or sledge. •• (Signed) Mills. *' A true copy of the original on file in the Telegraph Division, Office of the Chief Signal Officer of the Army. "B. M. PURSELL, " Second Lieutenant Signal Corps, U. S. A., " In charge of the correspondence and records in the Office of the Chief Sig- nal Officer of the Army." (The foregoing paper is appended and marked Exhibit D.) The Judge-Advocate — I understand that the other side ad- mits this copy to have the same effect as though the original had been produced here. Mr. Mackey — That is the admission, and no more. The Judge- Advocate — The defence now admits that the accused received a telegram to the effect as stated in this paper. Is that correct ? Mr. Mackey — That is correct ; that which led to the ad- mission being the consideration that the prosecution could not prove that General Hazen received it unless we admit it. We admit it. The Judge-Advocate— Mr. President, I can speak for m.y- self on that subject. The counsel on the other side does not know whether I could prove it or not, and I ask him to con- fine himself to his own side of the house in that respect. I think I am perfectly capable of telling whether I can prove it or not, Mr. Mackey — We will endeavor not to follow the example of the Judge-Advocate hereafter, may it please the Court. The Judge-Advocate (to the witness) — You are not able to tell whether General Hazen was Chief Signal Officer or not dur- ing the month of December, without consulting the records ? A. I could not tell whether I was Acting Chief Signal Officer during the month of December or not, without consulting the records. The Judge-Advocate — I am afraid if the other side will not admit that General Hazen was the Chief Signal Officer on the 11th of December last, I will have to delay this Court in THE HAZEX COUBT-MAETIAL. 113 order to enable the witness to refresli his memory on that sub- ject by referring to the records. Ml'. Mackey — We admit that he is the Chief Signal Officer of the Army now and was then. The question as to whether lie was acting there on duty on that date is another question. The President — I presume it is very probable that Captain Mills was acting at the date lie wrote that dispatch, but it is quite certain tliat he can, by inquiring of his own office, ascer- tain what dates he was Acting Signal Officer. If he cannot do it this afternoon before the adjournment of the Court, he can produce the record to-morrow morning. Mr. Mackey — General Hazen is unable to recall the special fact. The Peesideis'T — The witness has the record at his office, and by morning can produce it. The Judge-Advocate— That, however, Mr. President, de- lays the close of my case until such time as this witness is able to come before this Court and positively testify on that subject. The President (to the witness) — How long would it take you to ascertain this afternoon ? The Witness — I could ascertain in half an hour. The Judge-Advocate — I cannot proceed without it. The President — We will take a recess, then, for a half an hour. A recess was then taken to enable the witness to procure the necessary information. The recess having expired, all being present as before, the examination of the witness was resumed. By the Judge-Advocate : Q. Will you please state to the Court whether you now know if G-eneral Hazen was on duty as Chief Signal Officer during the month of December, 1883 ? A. On consulting the records, the return which is made to the Adjatant-General of the Army at the end of eveiy month, which shows the days absent of any officer — a return which is made from all bureau officers and headquarters — General Hazen does not appear to have been absent any day during the month of December. 114 THE HAZEN COUKT-MARTIAL. Q. What is that paper you liave in your hand ? A. This is the monthly return that is made to the Adjutant-General" of the Ai-my of the oflQcers and tlieir stations^ and their absence, if any. Q. Who is it signed by ? A. It is signed by General Hazen, the Chief Signal Officer. Q. Is that his signature ? A. Yes, sir. The Judge- Advocate — I offer this report in evidence. The report referred to will be found in the appendix, marked Exhibit E. The Peesidekt — I presume if General Hazen was absent at any time during that month, on account of your rank you would have been announced in orders as Acting Signal Officer ? The Witness— Yes, sir. The Judge-Adyocate— This would for the present conclude the case of the prosecution ; but I would not now like to an- nounce formally that the prosecution here rested, for I desire to have an opportunity, before making that formal announcement, to examine tl^e record of the Court wliicli has not yet been written up. I hardly think it would be fair that I should be required now to announce the close of the prosecution, because after the examination of the record I might find some slight omissions which I have overlooked, and I would not like to be cut off from supplying them. Therefore I would like an oppor- tunity until to-morrow morning to examine the record, and then, if I am satisfied, to make the formal announcement of the close of the prosecution. Mr. Mackey — The counsel for the government makes that statement probably on the assumption that the counsel for the accused does not propose to cross-examine the witness. The Judge-Advocate — I beg pardon. You may crops-ex- amine, if you desire. Mr. Mackey — May it please the Court, I propose to pro- pound some questions to Captain Mills which would not of right be allowed in cross-examination, the cross-examination being restricted to matters as to which the witness has been examined in chief. But, to save the necessity of again requiring THE HAZEIS" COUET-MAETIAL. 115 the appearance of Captain Mills, I will propound the questions and ask leave of the Court to permit them to be answered at this stage. The President — You may proceed. Cross-examination. By Mr. Mackey : Q. A memorandum has been introduced here purporting to be a memorandum of the decision of the Secretaries of War and the Navy, contained in a pamphlet bearing the stamp of the Signal Office. Can you inform me whether any manuscript paper containing the matter of that memorandum was filed in the Signal Office ? The Judge-Adyocate — It is hardly necessary for me to quote to this Court the elementary rules that govern the ex- amination of witnesses. The cross-examination has of necessity to be restricted to matters embraced in the examination-in- ch ief. I have not called this witness for the purpose of estab- lishing any memorandum. I have not asked him a question upon it. The question now propounded is entirely foreign to the examination-in-chief. If the defence desires Captain Mills as a witness they can call him. But I do not now wish that the defence should inject into the prosecution its defence. If it has anything to say on that subject let them call Captain Mills. He can be brought here at any time. I ask the Court to pro- ceed regularly, in accordance with the rules of evidence ; for if it once goes beyond them there is no knowing where the mat- ter may end. Mr. Mackey — It is not necessary, at this stage of the case, to argue the question, but the authorities show that it is purely a matter within the discretion of the Court. The Judge-Advocate — I would like to remind the counsel of his own statement, made a little while aofo, that courts-martial are governed by the common-law rules of evidence, and I would like to hold him down to that. Mr. Mackey — That is a rule of evidence. The President— Is it understood that Captain Mills is now 116 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. a witness for the defence, in case the examination should com- mence by the defence ? Mr. MACKEY^If the prosecution announces that it has closed we will make Captain Mills a witness for the defence. The President — The question, then, will only be as to whether the Court, without objection from the defence, will permit this examination to proceed in the morning on the part of the prosecution, after the record is read, notwithstanding your action with the witness at present as proposed. Mr. Mac KEY — I will assent to that. The Judge- Advocate — I do not quite understand the pro- position. The PRESiDEiq"T — The j)roposition is this : If the defence commences the examination of Captain Mills now as their wit- ness, I ask whether there is any objection on the part of the defence to your reserving the riglit to continue your examina- tion in the morning after the reading of the record, if you so desire ? The Judge- Advocate — I have no objection to that, pro- vided that Captain Mills is not now cross-examined, but is con- sidered as giving original testimony for the defence. The Presideis^'t — The defence will please state whether they will consider him their witness or not. Mr. Mackey — We will consider him as our witness. The President — Then the decision of the Court is that, with the understanding that the Judge- Advocate may continue his examination in the morning, the defence may commence to examine the witness as their witness. Mr. Mackey — Yes, the defence not being bound to proceed in the morning, unless the Judge- Advocate states that he has closed. The direct examination of the witness was then proceeded with on the part of the defence. By Mr. Mackey : Q. Please state, after examining that memorandum, if any pa- per or manuscript containing the matter of that memorandum is on file in the Signal Office to your knowledge. A. From THE HAZEIS- COUKT-MARTIAL. 117 memory, I do not think that a signed copy of the memoran- dum was furnished to the office of the Chief Signal Officer by the Secretary of War or of the Navy at the time the decision was rendered, and, in looking througli the records recently, I could not find a copy of it there, although I do believe that there were a number of hektograph copies of it struck off at the time, but they were unsigned and were for general distri- bution. Q. By whom were they struck off ? A. It was done at the War Department or somewhere in the War or Navy Depart- ments. I do not know where. Q. It may have been in the Navy Department. Could it not have been that they were struck off there ? A. Yes, it may have been so. I simply saw them in hektograph form after reading the decision. Q. That memorandum bears date September 19, 1883 ? A. Yes, sir ; it was about that time. Q. Were you acting as Chief Signal Officer at that date ? A. I was. Q. Was General Hazen in the city or absent from the city ? A. He was absent. Q. Can you state, as a matter of fact, whether that memo- randum was a memorandum officially furnished to the Signal Office, or a memorandum furnished to the press for circulation through the newspapers ? A. The Secretary of War sent for me and showed me a copy of this memorandum. He may have given me a copy at the time, but my recollection is that it was intended more especially to be given to the Associated Press as an answer to all questions that had been raised by parents and friends and other persons suggesting this or that relief party. But I am under the impression that he gave me a hektograph copy of it ; at any rate I saw it. He announced it to me, and told me that that was the decision. Q. That memorandum purports, as you see, to be the de- cision of the Secretaries of the War and of the Navy. Do you know of any decision of the Secretary of War, separate and apart from that, on file in your office ? A. No, sir. Mr. Mackey — That will do. I have no further question. 118 THE HAZEN C OURT-M AETIAL. Cross-exammation. By the Judge- Advocate : Q. Who do you say communicated this decision of the Sec- retary of War and the Navy to you as to this relief expedition ? A. The Secretary of War, I think, in person. Q. He communicated it to you ? A. He sent for me, and either handed me a copy or asked me to read it, or something to that effect. I got it through the Secretary of War. Q. From the Secretary of War ? A. Yes, sir ; from the Secretary of War. Q. Do I understand you to say also that this decision of the Secretary of War was generally disseminated throughout the country through the Associated Press, and scattered broadcast everywhere ? A. Yes, sir ; that was purposely done, I think, because there were so many anxious inquiries as to what would be done, and so many suggestions had been made, that I think it was purposely done as an answer to all suggestions and all inquiries. Q. Therefore it was generally known, and more particularly in your office ? A. Oh ! yes, sir; it was well known. It was a well-established fact. By Mr. Mackey : Q. Did this decision of the Secretaries of War and the Navy relate to a military or naval expedition ? The Judge-Advocate — One moment. Mr. Mackt^y — It is unnecessary to answer that ; the paper shows for itself. By the Court : Q. I would like to ask the witness what relation exists in point of time and substance between the telegram sent to Gene- ral Hazen and the report submitted to the witness by the Sec- retary of War ? A. It was the same date — September 19. Q. And the one sent in consequence of the other ? A. Yes, sir. It was September 19, and my dispatch to General Hazen was of the same date, September 19. THE IIAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 119 Q. For what reason was tlie dispatch sent ? A. Because of this decision. Q. Did the Secretary of War say that the decision was his own ? A. Not specially. Mr. Mackey — I would like to ask another question. The Judge- Advocate — I presume it can be considered as a question by the Court. Mr. Mackey — Yes, assuming that the witness has been re- called for the purpose of this question. (To the witness :) Did or did not the Secretary of War state to you at that interview that the Secretary of the Navy and himself had come to this conclusion ? Tlie Judge- Advocate — Do I understand, Mr. President, that tiie Court adopts the question ? The President — There has been no objection to it. I can- not tell. Mr. Mackey — It is assumed that he is recalled. (To the witness :) Did or did not the Secretary of War state to you at that time, if you can bear in memory his answer, that *^the Secretary of the Navy and myself have come to the conclusion," etc.? A. I do not think the Secretary of War premised the statement with that. He handed me the decision and said, "This is the decision," or "■ This is my decision" — I am not cer- tain which ; but he handed me the paper, which of itself showed that it was the decision, or, what it purports to be, the decision of the Secretary of the Navy and himself. The Judge -Advocate — The accused's telegram shows that. There being no questions by the Court, the witness was ex- cused. The Presiden'T — Have the defence any more witnesses to present at this time ? Mr. Mackey — We might call Mr. Hudson, if the Court please. The Preside:n'T — The defence may proceed by calling Mr. Hudson as a witness. The Judge-Advocate — Before proceeding with the next witness for the defence, if the Court will permit I would like to submit a letter which I have just received from the defence. I will read it : 120 THE HAZEN COUET-MARTIAL. ' Couet-Martial Chambers, Ebbitt House, March 13, 1885. ' ' In the matter of the trial of General W. B. Hazen. " Captain J. W. Clous, Judge- Advocate : "Please have summons issued for the following witness : Charles S. Sweet. " T. J. Mackey, "Counsel for General Hazen." I submit this application of the accused to the Court, unde the same circumstances that I submitted a like application to the Court this morning, and the remarks I then made I desire to apply to this case, without now repeating them and unneces- sarily taking up the time of the Court. Mr. Mackey — We invoke the same decision, may it please the Court, as was made this morning. The witness resides in the city and is a material witness. The Peesidei^t— The decision of this morning applies to this case. That will be the action. The Judge-Advocate— Very well ; the witness will then be summoned. I presume it is the purpose of the defence to go on with their witness, with the permission of the Court. The PEESiDEi^T — I presume so, after he has been sworn. Edmukd Hudson", a witness called by the defence, then came before the Court and was duly sworn by the Judge- Advo- cate. By Mr. Mackey : Q. Please state your name, your place of residence, and oc- cupation. A. Edmund Hudson ; I have so many occupations in connection with newspapers that I can hardly state, but I am editor of the Capital; residence, 134 Pennsylvania Avenue, S. E., Washington. Q. Please state whether you were the editor of the Capital on the first day of March, 1885. A. I was. Q. Is this a copy of the issue from, your office of that date, March 1, 1885 (handing a copy of the paper in question to the witness) ? A. Yes, sir, it is. THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. 121 The Judge-Advocate — I would like to ask the defence to state their purpose in the introduction of this paper. Mr. Mackey — It will be very rapidly developed, if the learned Judge-Advocate will wait. (To the witness :) Can you state who wrote that paragraph enclosed with blue lines ? I will read the paragraph to the Court, if there is no objection. The counsel read as follows : ^^ From the Washington Capital of March 1, 1885, under the title of 'Sub Rosa.^ "I am told that General Hazeii has prepared a letter in which he under- takes to lay the whole responsibility of the failure to relieve the Greely ex- pedition in 1883 on Secretary Lincoln's shoulders. Efforts have been made to collect evidence to prove that another expedition might have been sent after the Proteus disaster in 1883. It is said that Secretaiy Lincoln's atten- tion has been called to the existence of this letter, and that it may not be published. I cannot believe the story that General Hazen asked for leave to go South on an inspection tour, intending to have the letter published in his absence, and not be here on the day when Secretary Lincoln shall take leave of the Department. I regret to hear that any such motive should have been attributed to him." (To the witness :) Did you write that ? The Judge- Advocate— Mr. President, I object to the intro- duction of any newspaper articles like that read by the defence just now, as immaterial and not relevant to the issues in this case. This case is to be tried upon the facts involved. What newspaper reports may have been written or composed by this witness or any other person have, so far as I can see, no rele- vancy to this case. While it is my earnest desire to assist the defence as much as possible in bringing out all the material facts in this case — in fact, I consider it my duty to do so — yet I cannot sit by here in the discharge of my duties and permit col- lateral and foreign matter to be dragged in here on this trial. There is no telling where it is going to end if we once commence to investigate th(} newspapers. There are thousands of them in this country, and many of them, perhaps, have written about these matters (I do not know whether they have or not), and I do not see what this Court has to do with any newspaper arti- cles published in the Capital, or in any other newspaper, in 123 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. reference to tlie accused. Therefore I object to the introduction of this article. Mr. Mackey^ — May it please the Court, I regret to hear the authority of newspapers questioned by the learned Judge- Advo- cate. The gravest specification attached to these charges is based upon a newspaper paragraph, written not by the hand of the accused, and not charged to have been written by his hand. The purpose of introducing that is, first, to fix the authorship upon this witness as the assumed author. The main object or fact has not been disclosed. Second, to trace, by gradual and well-connected proof, this paragraph back to the source that inspired it. We propose to follow by a chain of well-connected links this paragraph, and the paragraph in the Chicago Tribune perhaps, and we propose following them to the door of the Secretary of War's chamber, follow them to his desk, follow them to his hand, and to show that the War Secretary who has charged an officer of the Army of the United States with a viola- tion of duty, or an alleged criticising of his action in the public prints, the seeking of a public forum to review official action — that the Secretary of War sat at his desk and coined libel like a mint ; that he inspired that paragraph. The Court has admitted the Chicago Tribune, a dispatch in which was the inducement that led the reporter of the Evening Star to question the accused. It appeared that the accused himself had been assailed, by whose hand he could not tell. We will show that it was by the hand of authority; that the hand that drew the charge and specifications against him for publishing was the hand that indited a publication first that touched his honor and conduct as a soldier. It may be suggested that such a great breach of official duty by the Secretary of War would not justify an officer of the Army, in retaliation or for the vindication of himself, to seek the public press and make that the vehicle of his thought. And I admit that. It would not justify him, even w^itli so great a wrong. For the Secretary of War is but for a day, and the officer of the Army is for all time, for he bears with him in part the honor of the Army, and he may safely appeal to the just judgment of his government in proper form against libels in- THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. 123 dited or inspired by the Secretary of War. It is nofc for justifi- cation, but it is for mitigation. Suppose — which I do not apprehend, but it is one of the safeguards that counsel sliould erect to prepare for the worst — suppose this Court should come to the conclusion, on weighing the evidence impartially (as it will weigh it impartially), that the accused has done the thing set forth in the specifications. This would be considered in mitigation ; and, as a safeguard, in mitigation we oifer it, not concediug that the accused has done what he is charged with having done, or performed any act vio- lative of the duty of an officer of the Army. But assuming that he had, we present this in mitigation, and by strong circum- stance we will go directly to the door of truth in this matter, and we will touch the Secretary of War with it ; we will reach him by the circumstances and the proof, we believe, may it please the Court. The Judge- Advocate — The defence is veering around the question by trying to prove the justificatiou of General Hazen in speaking to the reporter. In order to get around the third specification, the evidence sought to be elicited from this wit- ness is now offered for the purposes of mitigation. Mitigation of what ? There cannot be any mitigation when the matter has been established. They have denied it ; consequently they can- not justify it. Mr. Mackey — We are not justifying it. The Judge-Advocate— Consequently they cannot justify it. Seeing that that proposition would be ridiculous, they shift their ground very conveniently and say that this evidence was to be introduced in mitigation should the fact be established. In the first place, they have denied the fact — have strenu- ously denied it — and if they desire to justify General Hazen's action in talking to that reporter they should first admit that he did talk to him and did cause the publication. The first specification is, I presume, the one that this con- troversy refers to. I would like to say to the Court that no matter what may have been published by anybody, by the Sec- retary of AVar or his subordinates, that did not justify in the slightest degree the accused's seeking the journals of the public 124 THE HAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. press for redress. If he had any evidence or any idea that the Secretary of War or any of his subordinates had assailed him in the papers, there was a channel open for him through which he could seek redress — a legitimate channel, a legitimate process — through his superiors in the Army. How could he right himself by appealing to the tribunal of the public press or to public opinion ? Had they any control of the question ? Not at all. If he believed himself aggrieved it was his duty to seek redress from his legitimate superior, to ap- peal to him respectfully. There is no evidence that he did so. Therefore I consider the introduction of these newspaper arti- cles as entirely immaterial to this cause. In the first place, I deny most emphatically that the Secre- tary of War himself had anything to do with any of these pub- lications. And admitting, for the purposes of the argument, that he had, would it have justified the accused in going to the Star reporter and seeking the columns of the 8tar to right him- self ? There is no authority in such a tribunal. Why did he not go to his legitimate superiors ? He wants to establish by these newspapers a provocation. An officer can have no provo- cation for disrespect to his superiors on account of any news- paper articles that may have been written about him. I still insist upon my objection, and leave the matter to the Court. Mr. Mackey — May it please the Court, the learned Judge- Advocate has argued the admissibility of this as justification. I distinctly disclaim that it was introduced to that end. The learned Judge-Advocate has recited that the accused sought the Star reporter, when the Star reporter testifies that he sought the accused. The allegation as to publication is not in the first specifica- tion, as stated by the learned Judge- Advocate, but in the third, which alleges that General Hazen did " intentionally make a statement, in answer to said newspaper reporter, with a view to its publication." The Court will recollect that the reporter tes- tified that the inducement to him to seek General Hazen was certain publications in Western newspapers, and one in the Chi- cago Tribune, and so on. Now, it enters into the matter of the THE IIAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 125 charge against the accused that he did publish. Language, in- deed, has been imputed to him which was the language of the very publication that assailed him — language in the specifica- tion. And the purpose of this, as stated, is to show that the Secretary of War, who charges the alleged publication upon the accused, inspired the publication, indited it we hope to prove, but we proj)ose to prove certainly that he inspired the publica- tion that led to that interview — not conceding that the prisoner at the bar has performed any act in violation of the sixty-second Article of War, as charged, but presenting them so that, if per- chance this Court should hold the specifications establislied, it may consider any fact in mitigation if we trace that publication to the Secretary of War. The Judge- Advocate states that the Secretary of War did not do that. That is not evidence. I state my conviction that he did do it, and that is equally without the force of testimony. The PeesidekT: — What is understood to be the question ? Mr. Mackey — We understand the paper was offered in evi- dence. There was no objection to the admission of the paper, but when I came to the question as to who wrote that para- graph the objection was made. Then the paragraph was read by me. The Court cannot anticipate what the answer of this witness will be and rule it out. The Judge- Advocate — I object to the introduction of the paper and the article in it. The Pkesident — The Court will now be closed for the con- sideration of this question, and after the doors are reopened it will adjourn until to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock. The Court was then cleared for deliberation. Upon the re- opening of the doors, the hour of three p.m. having arrived, the Court adjourned until to-morrow, Saturday, March 14, 1885, at eleven o'clock a.m. FOURTH DAY. Rooms of the General Oourt-Maetial, Ebbitt House. WASHii^GTo:^", D. C, Saturday, March 14, 1885, 11 a.m. The Judge- Advocate — I am dkected by the Court to an- nounce that the objection of the Judge-Advocate which was pending at the close of yesterday's session is sustained. The Judge-xIdyocate— I will now announce to the Court that the prosecution here rests. TESTIMONY FOE THE DEFENCE. Mr. Mackey — Mr. President and gentlemen of the Court, the defence proposes to introduce so much of the report of the Sec- retary of War for the year 1884 — the annual report — as is em- braced in red lines, commencing on page 22 and ending on page 26. It may not be read now, but I desire to introduce it in evidence. It has been shown to the Judge- Advocate, and it is pei-tinent. The Judge- Advocate — I would ask the counsel for the ac- cused to be kind enougli to state the purpose in introducing it, so that I may offer any objections I may have. Mr. Mackey— One of the purposes for which it is intro- duced is in explanation of the meaning and intent of the para- graph cited in one of the specifications — in the first specification — from the annual report of the Chief Signal Officer, in which the Chief Signal Officer referred, in the opening of the letter which has been read to the Court, to certain harsh strictures made upon him by the Secretary of War. This is the portion of the annual report that relates to the Arctic work, and I propose to introduce in evidence all that the Secretary of War said in his 126 THE IIAZEN COURT-MAETIAL. 127 annual report. It covers four pages, and is in reference to liis connection with the Arctic work, his action and the obnoxious faction of the Chief Signal Officer. That is one of the purposes, and I presume that is sufficient to make it relevant. The Preside^tt — Has the Judge- Advocate anything to say- on the subject ? Tlie Judge- Advocate — For the purpose as just stated by the counsel, and for that purpose only, I have no objection to the admission of the document. Mr. Mackey— If the- Court desire to hear argument I am prepared to enter upon it, to show that we are entitled to use it for all relevant purposes in this case. You will find it useful for many purposes in this case far beyond that. Shall I read it ? The Peesidext — Wait a moment and we will see whether there is any necessity of proceeding in that direction further. (After consultation with the members of the Court : ) That paper will be admitted. Mr. Mackey — I will read so much of it as is necessary. The counsel read as follows : (This report is fully reviewed in the argument, and hence, to economize space, it is not given here. — T. J. M.) The Judge- Advocate — That document, the annual report of the Secretary of War for the year 1884, will be appended to the record and marked Exhibit F. Mr. Mackey — Mr. President and gentlemen of the Court, the second specification and the third specification cite princi- pally a letter alleged to have been written by the Chief Signal Officer, the accused, addressed to the Secretary of War, on the 17th day of February, 1885, and that letter has been read in evidence. It appears in the text of the letter that there were enclosed with the letter certain statements made by Arctic navigators, Chief-Engineer Melville and others, extracts from which appear in the letter itself. I now propose to introduce the documents to which the letter refers, and from which the extracts are made. I submit to the Court that it should be introduced as an entirety, be- cause these are the enclosures sent with the letter. 128 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. The Peesidekt — What has the Judge- Advocate to say on that subject ? The Judge- Advocate — I have no objection, Mr. President, to admitting that twelve enclosures belong to this document that was introduced by the prosecution. I have no objection that those enclosures might accompany this letter for the pur- pose of showing that those twelve enclosures belong to the letter, but for no other purpose. Mr. Mackey — I propose reading these enclosures. They are intensely interesting. The Judge-Advocate — I do not wish it to be understood that I admit as true the papers submitted in every particular. I simply wish to admit that they are the enclosures that accom- pany that letter to the Secretary of War. The Peesidei^t — The Court will be cleared for the purpose of determining the question in closed session, after which there will be a recess of fifteen minutes. The Court was then cleared for deliberation. When the doors were reopened (a recess having been in the meantime taken), and the accused and his counsel had resumed their seats, the Judge-Advocate announced the decision of the Court as follows : The Judge-Advocate — I am directed by the Court to an- nounce as its decision that it decides to admit the enclosures. The PEESiDEi^TT — I would say to the counsel for the accused that it has been suggested that possibly if these papers were filed, to be used by the counsel when they come to the argu- ment, it might save the time of the Court which would be con- sumed in hearing them read now. Mr. Mackey — I will state to the Court that I can best pre- serve the proper order of the defence by reading them now, but will not read them again, and merely refer to them in passing. They are generally brief, with the exception of one of them. A member of the Court — I move that the papers be filed. The PEESiDEiq-T — ^Upon consultation the Court have directed that the exhibits be filed, and used hereafter as suggested by the counsel, but that they be not read now, so that the court may proceed without delay, believing it not to be material to THE IIAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 129 a correct judgment of this case that they should be read at this time. Mr. Mackey — The Court does not, by its decision, prechide the reading at a later stage, however ? This is a dumb witness, that speaks only through counsel. The PRESiDEi^T — The Court thinks that the accused has a right to use these papers, but the Court does not desire at pre- sent to hear them read, because the progress of the case may be somewhat delayed thereby. The papers are before the Court, and can be used by the defence as other papers are used. The Court prefers that the reading of them should be deferred for the present. Mr. Mackey — May I be permitted to read them by their ti- tles, so as to identify them ? The Presidei«"t — There is no objection to the reading of the titles, I suppose. Mr. Mackey — I propose to file as an exhibit one of the enclo- sures in that letter of February 17, 1885, of the Chief Signal Officer of the Army to the honorable Secretary of War — a letter from Chief-Engineer George W. Melville, U. S. N., dated December 5, 1884, and addressed to the Chief Signal Officer of the Army. (The paper referred to is appended to the record, marked Exhibit G.) Also a letter of December 10, 1884, from Lieutenant A. W. Greely, U. S. A., to the Chief Signal Officer of the Army. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit H.) Also a letter of date Washington, D. C, December 19, 1884, from D. L. Brainard, Sergeant Signal Corps, addressed to the Chief Signal Officer of the Army. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit I.) Also a letter, dated St. John's, JST. F., December 22, 1884, from T. iST. Molloy, United States Consul, addressed to the Chief Signal Officer of the Army, authenticating certified statements of sealing-captains therewith enclosed. (x^ppended to the record, marked Exhibit J.) Also a letter from Captain Eichard Pike, from St. John's, 130 THE HAZEN COUET-MAETIAL. IN". ¥., or a statement of Captain Richard Pike, of St. John's, N. F., dated St. John's, N. F., December 18, 1884, addressed to the Chief Signal Officer of the Army. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit K. ) Also a statement of Thomas White, Arctic navigator, of St. John's, N. F., of date December 20, 1884. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit L. ) Also the statement of the Hon. John Syme, St. John's, N". F., certifying to the character and standing of certain parties as Arctic navigators, dated December 20, 1884. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit M.) Also the statement of Samuel Walsh, ice-master and Arctic navigator, of St. John's, N. F., of date December 18, 1884. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit N.) Also statement of William Carlson, ice-navigator, of St. John's, 'N. F., dated December 18, 1884. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit 0.) Also a statement of Peter McPherson, ice-navigator and late chief -engineer steamer Proteus, dated December 20, 1884. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit P.) Also tabulated statement in eight columns, showing the temperature Fahrenheit at Upernavik, Greenland, in latitude 72° 47' K, and longitude W. 56°, in the winters of 1883 and 1884. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit Q.) Also letter of the Hon, John Syme, of St. John's, N. F., with reference to the same subject, of date December 22, 1884. (Appended to the record, marked Exhibit E.) Mr. Macket — The official annual report, may it please the Court, of the Chief Signal Officer of the Army for the year 1884 has been introduced by the Judge-Advocate. I propose to present specially, and call the attention of the Court to, so mucli of that report as commences at the fifteenth line of page 16, with the word *^up," and ends with the words ''the entire party saved," on page 19. The portions which have been marked THE HAZEN COURT-MARTIAL. 131 on the original copy introduced contain the matter which was made the subject of the alleged harsh strictures embodied in the report of the Secretary of War for 1884, which I read just before the Court took a recess; and for that reason I beg leave to read so much of it, so that the order may be preserved in the regular sequence. This is the subject of the Secretary's strictures. It is not very long. The counsel then read as follows : "Up to the return of the expedition this year I had hoped there would be no occasion for raising the question of blame at this or any future time. But new light has been cast upon the subject, and with it my duty becomes plain, and the truth of history, and justice to all, call for such impartial in- quiry and authoritative judgment as a tribunal broad enough to embrace the whole question shall institute and pronounce, and the Congress of the United States is manifestly such tribunal. " The International Polar Expedition was organized and set in motion by the direct order of the President of the United States, pursuant to the au- thority vested in him by an Act of Congress. Its progress and achievements have commanded the attention and challenged the admiration of foreign countries, and reflected new lustre upon our own. *' The magnitude of those achievements has only been paralleled by the disaster in which it terminated. That such disaster could have been avert- ed, and that it was in no respect due to the commander of that expedition, can be established by indubitable evidence. The causes that co-operated to produce a tragedy tliat has appalled the civilized world, and the responsi- bility for such dire result, can be traced with certainty. " I therefore trust that tliis whole matter of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, and the expeditions organized for its relief, will be deemed worthy of a thorough investigation by Congress — a body that will perform its duty and stand above the suspicion of being swayed by partisan consid- erations. " This expedition will stand among the foremost of its kind. It car- ried its work further north than any other. It gained detailed geographi- cal knowledge of greater breadth in that region than any other. It brought back more complete data upon physical problems than any other. It dis- pelled the myths and superstitions of Arctic living, and completed in a masterly way all the services it was sent to do, in the exact manner as it was arranged, having made a clear addition to the sura of human know- ledge, and returned to the place of rendezvous intact and perfect, and it is proper that the fault of failure afterwards be fully understood. Both Lieu- tenant Greely in the Arctic, and the Signal Bureau in Washington, car- ried out their parts of the prearranged plan of rescue literally and success- fully in every particular. This plan seemed to be a good one, and Lieuten- 132 THE HAZEN COURT- MAETIAL. ant Greely reiterated it after reaching his station and seeing what he wanted, and it proved to be good. " The sinking of the Proteus, which terminated this success, which to that time was complete and faultless, was an accident for which there may or may not have been blame. But means to substantially restore the losses so incurred had been provided and were at hand. The Proteus was the best ship with the best captain for the purpose to be had, both being the same employed by Lieutenant Greely in 1881, and she was very perfectly supplied and well equipped. She was sent at the exact season then believed to be the best for the fullest chances of success, and she was accustomed to Arctic navigation. But when she sank the full responsibility for what followed rested with those on the spot, and it becojnes necessary, in the fuller lights, to discuss it, that censure may not be misplaced. Besides the duty that nec- essarily reposed in the commander present, Lieutenant Garlington's orders read : ' A ship of the United States Navy, the Yantic, will accompany you as far as Littleton Island, rendering you such aid as may become necessary and as may be determined by the captain of that ship and yourself when on the spot.' This was all any commander so situated, imbued with a just appreciation of his duties and responsibilities, could wish. "Lieutenant Garlington failed, when at Cape Sabine, July 23, to re- place the spoiled parts of the cache of food previously left at Cape Sabine, as he was ordered in his instructions to do. Lieutenant Greely says of this in a letter written by him for the Chief Signal Officer, April 30, supposing himself at the point of death : 'Had Lieutenant Garlington carried out your orders and replaced the two hundred and forty rations rum and one hundred and twenty alcohol in English cache here, and the two hundred and ten pounds mouldy English bread, spoiled English chocolate and potatoes, melted sugar, and the two hundred and ten pounds rotten dog-biscuit, we would, without doubt, be saved.' Lieutenant Garlington saved from the wreck about twenty-one hundred rations — ^they being but a part of those put upon the ice and could have been saved — which he landed at Cape Sabine. These rations for Lieutenant Greely's party were priceless ; they were worth many human lives. Of these rations he left for them about one-fourth part, and of this but about one hundred and fifty pounds of meat, taking the re- mainder away in his boats for his own use — seeming only to limit the quantity taken by the capacity of his boats, when his men were strong and well, in the summer season, had suffered no hardships, were abundantly supplied with guns and ammunition, in a region full of game and walrus, in the neighborhood of the friendly Esquimaux, and with their faces set towards plenty. A proper appreciation of a sacred duty and of his obli- gations to his trust and to Lieutenant Greely would have shown him that two-tliirds of these stores ought to have been left, and had this been done Lieutenant Greely says his party ' would all have been saved.' With one- third of the rations taken away and other resources at hand, the retreating party would have been reasonably safe. Besides, the food improvidently THE IIAZEN" COURT-MAETIAL. 133 used and wasted — used for fuel, used to feed to repletion a dog, and left to waste in his camps — would have saved human lives ... at Camp Clay. "On reaching Littleton Island it was found that its shores wepe lite- rally lined with walrus, while there were in the hands of the party lifteen guns and some four or five thousand rounds of ammunition — a better sup- ply than any expedition ever before had in those regions. "There is scarcely any room for doubt that in a few days the party could have killed and packed in the snow, as is often done with fresh meat in Dakota, walrus-meat enough, with stores in caches in the vicinity and saved from the Proteus, to have supplied the combined party of Lieutenants Garlington and Greely a wholesome and abundant ration for a year. " Lieutenant Ray says tliat at Point Barrow, under like circumstances, his party killed walrus enough in one day to have supplied his party a year. "Lieutenant Garlington reports that he left Littleton Island with his party for the south for the purpose of finding the escort ship and returning with it with supplies for Lieutenant Greely. But when he did reach' it, only three days' steaming away from Littleton Island, he made no demand to her captain for her return, while she had on board, as also had Governor Elborg at Upernavik, ample food available for this purpose. "The order of the Secretary of the Navy to the captain of the escort ship gave him latitude to remain at Littleton Island until near tlie close of the season, about September 30; yet, with a full knowledge of the distressing condition Lieutenant Greely would find himself in, and the whole plan of his rescue being familiar to him, he turned southward at once, a month earlier than required by the season, leaving nothing for Lieutenant Greely, and so intent was he to get south that he appears to have had the intention of leaving Lieutenant Garlington's party behind, if not found in his path. The tone of this officer's utterances upon these subjects has impressed me with a want of efficient effort or intent on his part to perform his duties, disqualifying him for their loyal performance. " No language could be more just, aiid yet more severe, than that ad- dressed by the Secretary of the Navy to Commander Wildes after that officer had written a supplementary report to justify his conduct. I beg leave to cite the letter of the Secretary of the Navy as follows : " * Navy Department, Washington, November 2, 1883. " 'The receipt of your letter of October 16 is acknowledged. In the present aspect of the case the Department condemns (1) the agreement en- closed in your letter of June 25 between Lieutenant Garlington and yourself contemplating the separation of the Yantic and the Proteus until August 25; (2") your failure to accompany the P;*o/e?