Item #44611 [Manuscript Document Signed] [Court Martial of Thomas Bevins] State of Connecticut. General Orders March 24th 1814. War of 1812. Connecticut. Law.

[Manuscript Document Signed] [Court Martial of Thomas Bevins] State of Connecticut. General Orders March 24th 1814.

Connecticut: 1814. [2] pp. Bifolium with integral address. 7.25 x 11.75 inches. Very good, light tearing around folds, slightly obsuring text, some very minor repairs to tears from opening of seal, contents browned and lightly soiled, owner stamp to bottom edge of blank. Item #44611

The orders to publish the court martial verdict of Thomas Bevins, an extremely important case involving the free speech of citizen soldiers.

A True copy of a General Court Martial, "presided by Abel Rossiter in New Haven in trial of Thomas Bevins... charged with offering personal abuse to the Capt. of said fourth company at Regimental meeting of officers on August 31 [1813]"... found guilty of "ungentlemanly & unofficiallike conduct"...sentenced to be cashiered."

As Chris Bray notes in his: "Court-Martial: How Military Justice Has Shaped America from the Revolution to 9/11 and Beyond" (New York: Norton & Company, 2016), the issues raised in this court martial were central to the conflict between citizens' rights and military control.

"Thomas Bevins didn't deny the accusation.... But it didn’t matter, he added, because he wasn’t a military officer when he spoke. 'I distinctly admit,' Bevins told his Connecticut court-martial, 'that in the evening of the 31st of August named after the officers were dismissed I did say in answer to Capt Isaac Beach’s remark to me that I was a d-d Irish buggar—that he was not fit to command a company any more than my dog. If this be abuse of Capt Isaac Beach I have abused him. But I beg leave to remark that this was in the evening after we were dismissed, + when as men + gentlemen, we were on the same footing.'

Who are you, and when? If, in a society that intends to defend itself with a militia, every farmer and clerk and merchant is an occasional member of the armed forces, then when does the man set aside his identity as a citizen and take on his identity as a soldier? More important, when does he not? On that August day in 1814, Ens. Thomas Bevins trained all day under Capt. Isaac Beach; then the militia was dismissed and they sat down to dinner together, and they began to trade insults. But who was trading those insults—Captain Beach and Ensign Bevins, or Mr. Beach and Mr. Bevins? An important implication follows, and it was one that militiamen constantly contested: Who can punish you, and for what, and when do they have the power do it?"

The document is then signed by Brig. Maj. R. T. Ingersoll, and then addressed to Captain Oliver Clark by Truman Coe, adjt., 32nd Reg., ordering Clark to "publish them to the company under your command on or before the Annual Training in May next." Dated April 26, 1814, with integral address noted "In haste" to Captain Oliver Clark, of Millford.

Provenance:"From the Historical Collection of Raymond F. Yates / Lockport, NY" stamp. Yates (1895-1966) was an author and the first President of the Niagara County Historical Society.

Price: $400.00