Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/327

Rh matters which emanated from Washington. Secretary Stanton's reports regarding the operations around Richmond in 1864 were discounted and represented as deliberate falsifications.

Such utterances lead us to conclude that among newspaper "disclosures" at the North we should include the disclosure of editorial disappointment at Union success.

In considering the remedies for newspaper abuses which were available during the Civil War, it should be noted in the first place that correspondents accompanying an army were within the range of military law, and were liable to discipline by court martial. The general principle that camp followers or army retainers were subject to military jurisdiction would perhaps have sufficed to cover the case of news-writers, and in addition there was a clear provision in the fifty-seventh Article of War against "holding correspondence with, or giving intelligence to, the enemy, either directly or indirectly". Offenders under this article were to suffer death "or such other punishment as shall be ordered by the sentence of a court martial". As an amplification of this article a general order of the War Department was issued, declaring that all correspondence, verbal or in writing, printing or telegraphing, concerning military operations or movements on land or water, or regarding troops, camps, arsenals, intrenchments or military affairs within the several military districts, by which intelligence might be given to the enemy, without the sanction of the general in command, was prohibited, and that violators should be proceeded against under the fifty-seventh