Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field

SECTION II

Public and private property of the enemy – Protection of persons, and
especially of women, of religion, the arts and sciences – Punishment of
crimes against the inhabitants of hostile countries.

Art. 31. A victorious army appropriates all public money, seizes all public
movable property until further direction by its government, and sequesters
for its own benefit or of that of its government all the revenues of real
property belonging to the hostile government or nation. The title to such
real property remains in abeyance during military occupation, and until the
conquest is made complete.

Art. 32. A victorious army, by the martial power inherent in the same, may
suspend, change, or abolish, as far as the martial power extends, the
relations which arise from the services due, according to the existing laws
of the invaded country, from one citizen, subject, or native of the same to
another.

The commander of the army must leave it to the ultimate treaty of peace to
settle the permanency of this change.

Art. 33. It is no longer considered lawful – on the contrary, it is held to
be a serious breach of the law of war – to force the subjects of the enemy
into the service of the victorious government, except the latter should
proclaim, after a fair and complete conquest of the hostile country or
district, that it is resolved to keep the country, district, or place
permanently as its own and make it a portion of its own country.

Art. 34. As a general rule, the property belonging to churches, to
hospitals, or other establishments of an exclusively charitable character,
to establishments of education, or foundations for the promotion of
knowledge, whether public schools, universities, academies of learning or
observatories, museums of the fine arts, or of a scientific character such
property is not to be considered public property in the sense of paragraph
31; but it may be taxed or used when the public service may require it.

Art. 35. Classical works of art, libraries, scientific collections, or
precious instruments, such as astronomical telescopes, as well as
hospitals, must be secured against all avoidable injury, even when they are
contained in fortified places whilst besieged or bombarded.

Art. 36. If such works of art, libraries, collections, or instruments
belonging to a hostile nation or government, can be removed without injury,
the ruler of the conquering state or nation may order them to be seized and
removed for the benefit of the said nation. The ultimate ownership is to be
settled by the ensuing treaty of peace.

In no case shall they be sold or given away, if captured by the armies of
the United States, nor shall they ever be privately appropriated, or
wantonly destroyed or injured.

Art. 37. The United States acknowledge and protect, in hostile countries
occupied by them, religion and morality; strictly private property; the
persons of the inhabitants, especially those of women: and the sacredness
of domestic relations. Offenses to the contrary shall be rigorously
punished.

This rule does not interfere with the right of the victorious invader to
tax the people or their property, to levy forced loans, to billet soldiers,
or to appropriate property, especially houses, lands, boats or ships, and
churches, for temporary and military uses

Art. 38. Private property, unless forfeited by crimes or by offenses of the
owner, can be seized only by way of military necessity, for the support or
other benefit of the army or of the United States.

If the owner has not fled, the commanding officer will cause receipts to be
given, which may serve the spoliated owner to obtain indemnity.

Art. 39. The salaries of civil officers of the hostile government who
remain in the invaded territory, and continue the work of their office, and
can continue it according to the circumstances arising out of the war –
such as judges, administrative or police officers, officers of city or
communal governments – are paid from the public revenue of the invaded
territory, until the military government has reason wholly or partially to
discontinue it. Salaries or incomes connected with purely honorary titles
are always stopped.

Art. 40. There exists no law or body of authoritative rules of action
between hostile armies, except that branch of the law of nature and nations
which is called the law and usages of war on land.

Art. 41. All municipal law of the ground on which the armies stand, or of
the countries to which they belong, is silent and of no effect between
armies in the field.

Art. 42. Slavery, complicating and confounding the ideas of property, (that
is of a thing,) and of personality, (that is of humanity,) exists according
to municipal or local law only. The law of nature and nations has never
acknowledged it. The digest of the Roman law enacts the early dictum of the
pagan jurist, that “so far as the law of nature is concerned, all men are
equal.” Fugitives escaping from a country in which they were slaves,
villains, or serfs, into another country, have, for centuries past, been
held free and acknowledged free by judicial decisions of European
countries, even though the municipal law of the country in which the slave
had taken refuge acknowledged slavery within its own dominions.

Art. 43. Therefore, in a war between the United States and a belligerent
which admits of slavery, if a person held in bondage by that belligerent be
captured by or come as a fugitive under the protection of the military
forces of the United States, such person is immediately entitled to the
rights and privileges of a freeman To return such person into slavery would
amount to enslaving a free person, and neither the United States nor any
officer under their authority can enslave any human being. Moreover, a
person so made free by the law of war is under the shield of the law of
nations, and the former owner or State can have, by the law of postliminy,
no belligerent lien or claim of service.

Art. 44. All wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded
country, all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized
officer, all robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by
main force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants,
are prohibited under the penalty of death, or such other severe punishment
as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offense.

A soldier, officer or private, in the act of committing such violence, and
disobeying a superior ordering him to abstain from it, may be lawfully
killed on the spot by such superior.

Art. 45. All captures and booty belong, according to the modern law of war,
primarily to the government of the captor.

Prize money, whether on sea or land, can now only be claimed under local
law.

Art. 46. Neither officers nor soldiers are allowed to make use of their
position or power in the hostile country for private gain, not even for
commercial transactions otherwise legitimate. Offenses to the contrary
committed by commissioned officers will be punished with cashiering or such
other punishment as the nature of the offense may require; if by soldiers,
they shall be punished according to the nature of the offense.

Art. 47. Crimes punishable by all penal codes, such as arson, murder,
maiming, assaults, highway robbery, theft, burglary, fraud, forgery, and
rape, if committed by an American soldier in a hostile country against its
inhabitants, are not only punishable as at home, but in all cases in which
death is not inflicted, the severer punishment shall be preferred.

SECTION III

Deserters – Prisoners of war – Hostages – Booty on the battle-field.

Art. 48. Deserters from the American Army, having entered the service of
the enemy, suffer death if they fall again into the hands of the United
States, whether by capture, or being delivered up to the American Army; and
if a deserter from the enemy, having taken service in the Army of the
United States, is captured by the enemy, and punished by them with death or
otherwise, it is not a breach against the law and usages of war, requiring
redress or retaliation.

Art. 49. A prisoner of war is a public enemy armed or attached to the
hostile army for active aid, who has fallen into the hands of the captor,
either fighting or wounded, on the field or in the hospital, by individual
surrender or by capitulation.

All soldiers, of whatever species of arms; all men who belong to the rising
en masse of the hostile country; all those who are attached to the army for
its efficiency and promote directly the object of the war, except such as
are hereinafter provided for; all disabled men or officers on the field or
elsewhere, if captured; all enemies who have thrown away their arms and ask
for quarter, are prisoners of war, and as such exposed to the
inconveniences as well as entitled to the privileges of a prisoner of war.