By OLIVER W. LONGAN,
Adjutant General’s Office, War Department.

Lest the term “military prisoner” should mislead some reader whose recollection of the events of the late civil war, or of the stories concerning the treatment of prisoners brings to mind the captured soldier and his hardships and sufferings, it should be stated that a “prisoner of war” and a “military prisoner” sustain entirely different relations to the authority they serve. The former is a prisoner because of capture and detention by an enemy. The latter is a prisoner undergoing discipline or punishment because of some misdemeanor or crime committed against military law or regulations. In the greatest number of cases the offense is simply an absence without leave, now called desertion, which is the act of one who wilfully absents himself from his proper command with the intention not to return to it again. A military prisoner may be called a convict, and he may be a criminal, but either name is inappropriate in its ordinary sense. It is true the prisoner has been convicted of an offense against a law, but if a single example may be used to illustrate the majority, his offense has not been prompted by a vicious disposition or an evil nature. His guilt is not such as necessarily indicates degraded impulses or base endowments, hence it is manifest that a well defined line of separation may easily be drawn between the military prisoner and the one who may properly be called a criminal or a convict. The reason is also manifest why the institution where he is to be detained for punishment should be one especially set apart for his class.

It has been stated that the majority of military prisoners have been guilty of the one crime of desertion. The fact is the number will reach eighty-five or ninety out of every hundred. It is proper in this connection to refer to some of the causes or supposed causes for the commission of so serious a crime which, if it could be entirely prevented, would reduce the number of “military prisoners” to an exceedingly small percentage of those who now suffer penalty for a crime committed without criminal intent.

The number of men who applied during the last year for enlistment in the military service of United States was nearly thirty thousand. Of the number applying only about one-third were found qualified. The other two-thirds were rejected on account of disqualifications either legal, moral, social, mental, or physical. About one-twelfth of those rejected were boys under the age of twenty-one years. About the same proportion were foreigners who had not sufficient knowledge of the English language to enable them to learn their duties. Now, if the standard for acceptance be ever so high it can not reach absolute perfection, for there are disabilities or disqualifications which it is impossible to discover, particularly under the effort which is apt to be made by the applicant to conceal his defects, until time and conduct develop them. Manifest defects there are in all who are rejected, yet some, in the natural order of things must come very near the standard, some again, who reach the standard and are accepted, have so little margin upon which they succeed that they are separated a very little from those who are rejected.

The motives are various which induce men in time of peace to relinquish the privileges enjoyed as civilians, to give up their freedom of movement and their right of choice in all things which aid in making up the sum of their liberties, and to voluntarily enter into an agreement obligating themselves for a term of years to render any service that may be ordered by proper authority and accept such remuneration and privileges as may be given them by the same authority, and they are perhaps impossible to enumerate, but it is known that many seek the service for a livelihood, others out of a desire for adventure, others to escape some threatened penalty or impending difficulty likely to result from the commission of some crime or misdemeanor. Very few enter the first time with any intention of making a profession so poorly paid their own, and none, it may be, have a good idea of what they are to encounter. They are met at the outset with lessons which teach them subordination to a commander rather than to a duty. They find that food and clothing are measured to them by a rule which makes no discrimination between them, and the one with great expectations is under no better care than the one of smallest desires. They receive treatment at the hands of petty officers which they choose to believe is cause for resentment. They incur sharp rebuke for some error or delinquency and seeking redress in their own way, as for an injury, they learn that “what in the captain is but a choleric word, in the soldier is flat blasphemy.”

Recollections of home, and repentance for the hasty act which separated them from it, and many other reasons, both real and imaginary, make them feel that they must escape from contact with the source of so many woes, and without designing to commit any crime they become “deserters.” It must be admitted that the responsibility rests upon the individual as the cause is primarily in him, and his surrounding circumstances are only secondary, but there is no act called “crime” around which so many mitigating circumstances may be found. We must view the matter as a disease, the conditions for which are favorable in a service into which men are hurried without any instruction in its duties. The skeleton army, of which so much is required, demands the rapid replenishing of new flesh to take the place of the old that has yielded to the disease itself. The important question to follow is, what is the remedy and how is it applied? A preventive has been sought with care and diligence, but none has been found. A remedy then is the only recourse, and this must be applied in the shape of discipline or punishment for the offender. If he is of an inquiring turn of mind he may learn first of all that there is an exact measure of value attached to him as a deserter, and that for his capture and delivery to the military authorities the sum of thirty dollars will be paid in full liquidation of the service.

A few words concerning the instrumentalities through which the “military prisoner” receives his punishment will not be out of place. There are three—more correctly four—kinds of tribunals before which a soldier may be brought to answer for his misdeeds, and to receive judgment and sentence. The first to be mentioned is the “field officer’s court,” which can be appointed only in time of war. This court is one officer, either a colonel, lieutenant-colonel, or major of a regiment, who is detailed by order of a superior officer of the same regiment, or the commander of a brigade, division or corps. The officer so detailed is counsel, jury and judge, and may try the case of any soldier of his own regiment for an offense not capital, and impose sentence. The next in order are the “regimental” and the “garrison” court-martial, differing so little except in the source of appointment, that they need no separate description. They are composed of three officers, and may try and sentence any cases not capital. The authority of these courts with respect to the sentences they may impose is so limited that ordinarily only petty offenses are brought before them, but because of the form of punishment usually imposed the results are anything but beneficial, and it is a question whether it would not be better to wink at the offense than to sensibly degrade the offender and aid him in developing a disposition to repeat breaches of discipline until stronger hands are laid upon him. The last to be mentioned is the “general court-martial,” the appointment of which may be made by the general commanding the army, by the general commanding a military department, or in certain cases by the President of the United States.

The system of the military courts which have been mentioned is no doubt as carefully arranged as can be and contemplates as full recognition of the individual rights of the soldier as can be obtained before a civil court under civil law for a civilian. The selection of the officers to compose the courts is a matter of discretion in the authority appointing them, governed only by the exigencies of the service, but after their appointment they are under no restrictions with reference to the extent of the sentences which they shall impose in the cases of soldiers whom they find guilty of desertion, except that in time of peace the death penalty can not be inflicted, and in nearly all other cases the law declares that the punishment shall be such “as a court-martial may direct.” The result of this has been and still is a variation in the degrees of punishment for the same offense which defies any calculation outside the theory of chances. None can foresee or measure the considerations or influences which shall give to any case, the circumstances of which can not be just like those of an other case, its quality or quantity of punishment. Probably the disposition to administer severe discipline with the expectation that a pruning by the reviewing authority and a mitigation by the executive authority will most likely follow, is the most common cause of inequality in punishments. The remedy for the evil in the law which fixes no limit must be sought in other legislation, but the possibility of a remedy in a special prison system, and a separate prison for military prisoners drew attention to the duty of providing an institution where inequalities might be removed.

June 30, 1871, a board of officers was appointed of the Secretary of War to investigate the subject of army prisons. The report of this board was transmitted to Congress by the honorable Secretary of War January 16, 1872, with a draft of a bill for consideration. The closing sentence of the letter of transmittal reads as follows: “It is of the utmost importance to the efficiency of our army that a thorough and practical system of punishment and military discipline be established, and experience has proven that the one now in use is wholly inadequate to meet the end desired.” After due consideration the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives made a favorable report to the House May 7, 1872, in which, after mentioning certain facts concerning 384 military prisoners then distributed in the penitentiaries of eleven states, and the guard-houses of thirty-two military posts, these words occur: “Many of these prisoners have been guilty of crimes against military law, and not involving any moral turpitude. They are cast into prison with the basest characters and punished with ‘those stained by every crime known to the law.’ Your committee feel convinced that this can not be done without injury to the prisoner whose offense may have been affected with but slight moral obliquity. To prevent this unnecessary contamination we think a separate prison should be provided.” This was followed within a year by the passage of an act which was approved by the President and became a law March 3, 1873, “to provide for the establishment of a military prison, and for its government.”

The law required that the prison should be established on Rock Island, Illinois, an island in the Mississippi of about 1,000 acres, and about 180 miles west of Chicago. It is now entirely devoted to the purposes of an extensive government arsenal. It also required the appointment of a board of commissioners, to consist of three officers of the army and two persons from civil life,[B] who were to adopt a plan for a prison building and to frame regulations for the prison. Its provisions required frequent inspections—twice each year by the Secretary of War and the board of commissioners, and four times a year by one of the inspectors of the army (monthly inspections are also made by the principal medical officer in the Department of the Missouri), all of which were intended to be, and are, so many safeguards against any neglect or failure in the proper and humane treatment of the prisoners. The law also provided for mitigations of sentence for good conduct and industry, for the care of the health and physical wants of prisoners. It gave the privilege of using newspapers and books, and of writing letters to friends, and directed that they be furnished decent clothing on discharge from the prison. The location was afterward changed from Rock Island, Illinois, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This change was authorized by an act of Congress approved May 21, 1874, which placed the prison where it is now situated, on the west bank of the Missouri river, about thirty miles north of Kansas City, Mo., and three miles from the city of Leavenworth, Kansas.

To trace the history of the prison through the first decade of its existence would be more tedious than interesting. Its progress has been similar to that of all other new institutions of this country which are destined to become permanent. The obstacles in the way of its establishment have not been trifling, and amongst those whose duties brought them to take part in its affairs, not all have been favorable to the system undertaken, particularly with reference to the idea of utilizing the labor of the prisoners for the benefit of the army. Prudence and zeal on the part of the commissioners of the prison and the commandant have overcome all difficulties, and if there are to-day any remaining objections of the kind indicated, they are not proclaimed.

The officers of the prison are a commandant, an executive, an adjutant, a commissary, a chaplain, and a surgeon. The guard comprises two officers and one hundred men. Within an enclosure of about five acres, surrounded by a stone wall averaging in height about 18 feet, surmounted at intervals of from two hundred to three hundred feet with brick watch towers, are located the offices, the hospital, the chapel, the library, the dormitories, the workshops and the store-houses of the prison. The buildings, except the hospital, are of stone or brick, and upon all of the new buildings, as well as the wall, the work has been done by prisoners.

The great features of the institution are quiet and decorum under a kind but absolutely firm administration. Its chief object is the reformation of its inmates, to which end the efforts of the authorities are constantly directed.

The labor of the prisoners is devoted to the manufacture of wagons, harness, shoes, boots, clothing, chairs, brooms and brushes, solely for army supplies and prison uses; to the manufacture of doors and windows and their frames, and to the cultivation of a large farm to obtain produce for the prison; also to the incidental work connected with the prison in its buildings and repairs and sanitary condition. During the eight working hours of each day except Sundays and holidays the hum of machinery and the arrival of material and departure of manufactured articles give the place the appearance of a large manufactory, and a tour through the busy workshops may be made with scarcely a sight of anything in dress or appearance to tell of the character of the place as a penal institution. The greater number of prisoners being under sentence for terms of two years (the sentences are equalized as far as possible by executive orders, after the arrival of the men at the prison), the system under which they are brought gives them knowledge in some mechanical pursuit, trains them in habits of cleanliness, regularity, and sobriety, and subjects them to wholesome discipline which, in that length of time, must work a “correction of life and manners” as far as any human rule can govern the matter. A Christian minister fills the office of chaplain and devotes his entire time to the secular and religious instruction of the prisoners. A library of 1,300 volumes is open to the use of the prisoners, from which they obtain books for reading in leisure hours. As an indication of their tastes the kind of books read may be divided by the hundred into—light literature 56, magazines 25, biography 6, history 4, miscellany 4, travels and science each 3, religious 2.

Since the establishment of the prison more than thirty-two hundred men have been received, and the average number constantly present is five hundred. An abatement of five days for each month of good conduct is allowed, and only thirty-seven have failed to obtain their liberty prior to the expiration of their full terms. Only twenty-two deaths have occurred, showing that even under the disadvantages always present in prisons, and with the class of men found there, it is possible to reduce the ill effects of prison life upon the physical system to almost nothing. Punishment for bad conduct in the prison is in harmony with the purposes of the prison, and in most cases the abatement above mentioned forms a credit account against which the prisoners are careful not to permit debits to be entered. On discharge from prison each prisoner receives a suit of clothing and five dollars, and, if his conduct has been good, a certificate which may enable him again to enter the service as a soldier, if he so desires.

It is not an idle boast to say that the military prison system embodies more than the good features of other systems, and in holding reformation above punishment, providing food, clothing, treatment and surroundings with as little of the stamp of prison upon them as possible, placing the control in the hands of officers thoroughly acquainted with the service from which the prisoners come and the influences which bring them under discipline, shutting out all the evils of the contract system under which prisoners are hired out as beasts of burden to toil for money which they do not receive, and finally offering them the confidence placed only in men intrusted with honorable public service, the military authorities have found the method which shall inflict a penalty sufficient for the offense and yet develop that sense in the prisoner which will, as another self, acknowledge for him that at the end of his term he has not paid that penalty in full and is not at liberty to incur another. He will also feel that he has received something from society and good government which demands from him as a willing subject and copartner with all other good citizens of the commonwealth a more careful restraint, which must be self-imposed until a correct observance of all special obligations and a true attitude in all social relations shall become a matter of natural desire.