Chapter 71

THE GENEALOGY OF THE ARTICLES OF WAR.

As the Articles of War form the ark and constitution of the penal
laws of the American Navy, in all sobriety and earnestness it may
be well to glance at their origin. Whence came they? And how is
it that one arm of the national defences of a Republic comes to
be ruled by a Turkish code, whose every section almost, like each
of the tubes of a revolving pistol, fires nothing short of death
into the heart of an offender? How comes it that, by virtue of a
law solemnly ratified by a Congress of freemen, the representatives
of freemen, thousands of Americans are subjected to the most despotic
usages, and, from the dockyards of a republic, absolute monarchies
are launched, with the "glorious stars and stripes" for an ensign?
By what unparalleled anomaly, by what monstrous grafting of tyranny
upon freedom did these Articles of War ever come to be so much as
heard of in the American Navy?

Whence came they? They cannot be the indigenous growth of those
political institutions, which are based upon that arch-democrat
Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence? No; they are an
importation from abroad, even from Britain, whose laws we
Americans hurled off as tyrannical, and yet retained the most
tyrannical of all.

But we stop not here; for these Articles of War had their
congenial origin in a period of the history of Britain when the
Puritan Republic had yielded to a monarchy restored; when a
hangman Judge Jeffreys sentenced a world's champion like Algernon
Sidney to the block; when one of a race by some deemed accursed
of God--even a Stuart, was on the throne; and a Stuart, also, was
at the head of the Navy, as Lord High Admiral. One, the son of a
King beheaded for encroachments upon the rights of his people,
and the other, his own brother, afterward a king, James II., who
was hurled from the throne for his tyranny. This is the origin of
the Articles of War; and it carries with it an unmistakable clew
to their despotism.[4]

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[FOOTNOTE-4] The first Naval Articles of War in the English language were
passed in the thirteenth year of the reign of Charles the Second,
under the title of "_An act for establishing Articles and Orders
for the regulating and better Government of his Majesty's Navies,
Ships-of-War, and Forces by Sea_." This act was repealed, and, so
far as concerned the officers, a modification of it substituted,
in the twenty-second year of the reign of George the Second,
shortly after the Peace of Aix la Chapelle, just one century ago.
This last act, it is believed, comprises, in substance, the
Articles of War at this day in force in the British Navy. It is
not a little curious, nor without meaning, that