Ungentlemanly Acts: The Army's Notorious Incest Trial - Hardcover

Barnett, Louise K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809073978 ISBN 13: 9780809073979

Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub, 2000

Synopsis

A fascinating chronicle of an 1879 Texas courtmartial, in which Captain Andrew Geddes was tried and convicted for accusing a fellow officer of committing incest, offers revealing insights into attitudes toward sex, parental rights, and privacy in the postCivil War era.

About this title

About the Author:

Louise Barnett, professor of English at Rutgers University, is the author, most recently, of Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer. She lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Ungentlemanly Acts
One BEGININGS 1 SCANDAL Today, Americans are accustomed to the image of the court stenographer, clacking away at a machine that will spew forth a printed transcript of a trial almost immediately. But in 1879, transcripts were still copied out in longhand. For army courts-martial, these transcripts were boiled down into bare-bones abstracts, which provided an official printed summary of the proceedings. Each abstract listed the name of the defendant, the accusation, the verdict, and the sentence. Accusations were broken down into two parts: charges, which were general ("conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman," for example), and specifications, which described exactly what was done, where, and when. In the case of Captain Andrew J. Geddes, whose trial lasted for the extraordinarily long period of three months, an exception was made. Geddes was tried for "conduct unbecoming," but in the space where specifications were usually listed in the printed record appeared the phrase "not fit to be specified." What abhorrent crime had Geddes committed? What deed so horrifying that the Army's official record could not mention it? In the answer lies the true irony of this case. Geddes had accused a fellow officer, Lieutenant Louis H. Orleman, of an unspeakable offense--but instead of investigating Orleman, the Army tried Geddes for speaking of Orleman's alleged crime. And as it turned out, there would be a great deal in the proceedings against Captain Geddes that would not be fit to be specified.  
 
Nothing in the extensive professional experience of Civil War veteran General E.O.C. Ord, commander of the Department of Texas, could have prepared him for the document that arrived at his San Antonio headquarters in April of 1879. The sworn and notarized deposition of Captain Andrew J. Geddes of the Twenty-fifth U.S. Infantry baldly accused First Lieutenant Louis H. Orleman, an officer of the Tenth U.S. Cavalry, of incest. Both men were stationed at Fort Stockton, a small frontier post in the still wild and sparsely populated region of West Texas. Ord regarded Geddes as one of his best field officers, but his deposition was shocking, even unprecedented. In an army where officers often preferred charges against each other to settle disputes, the matter of Geddes's charge was extraordinary. Geddes stated that he had spoken out only in self-defense because he had learned that Orleman was bringing charges against him. To defend himself against these charges, he had to expose the relationship of "criminal intimacy" he had accidentally discovered between the thirty-eight-year-old lieutenant and his eighteen-year-old daughter, Lillie: I would state that on Sunday March 2nd 1879 ... I saw Lt. L. H. Orleman, 10th Cavalry, having criminal intercourse with his saiddaughter ... . I heard from the adjoining quarters (the same being of [sic] those of Lt. Orleman, and divided from mine by a partition wall) a voice which I recognized to be that of Miss Lillie Orleman, saying, "Papa, please don't. I'll call Major Geddes,a if you don't quit" and ... in the most piteous and pleading tone, "Oh, Papa, for God's sake don't. Major Geddes is Officer of the Day and will hear us" and other expressions in which my name occurred. Having had my suspicions aroused before this that something was wrong, I went to the window of said room and looked in, and there saw Lt. Orleman in bed with his said daughter, having criminal intercourse with her. On the following day, March 3rd 1879, Miss Lillie Orleman confessed to me that her father, Lt. Orleman, had been having sexual intercourse with her for the past five years, or since she was thirteen years of age, and that he had placed a loaded revolver to her head, threatening that he would blow out her brains if she did not consent to his horrible desires. Miss Orleman begged me repeatedly and implored me on bended knee to save her, and take her from this terrible life of shame that she had been leading since she was thirteen years of age. This I consented to do, with the full knowledge and consent of her father; I having told him, at her urgent request (March 12th 1879, I think) that I had discovered his infamous crime, I made full preparations to take her away, either to her home in Austin, or to my wife--in the latter case, with the understanding that she (my wife) should be made aware of my reasons for so doing, and that Miss Orleman should herself tell to my wife her sad story. Geddes's deposition concluded, aggressively: I would state that I was not alone in my suspicions that criminal intimacy existed between Lt. Orleman and his daughter. Mr. JosephFriedlander of Fort Stockton and myself, together with Lt. Orleman and his daughter, went from Fort Stockton to Fort Davis and return[ed] in an ambulance and while on the road we saw Lt. Orleman fondling with the breast of his daughter, and heard her appealing to him to desist. I respectfully submit that if this unfortunate affair is to be brought before a Court (which on account of the young lady, I deprecate beyond measure) that he who is guilty should be tried, and I believe a Court of Inquiry would determine as between Lt. Orleman and myself that he should be the party who ought to be tried.1 As departmental commander, General Ord had complete latitude in determining how to proceed, and the unusually sensitive nature of the issue might have given him pause. He could have considered Geddes's deposition a privileged document and handled the matter quietly. Well before the events of Geddes's affidavit, Orleman had applied to retire from active duty for reasons of ill health. He and his daughter would soon be leaving Fort Stockton, and with their departure the scandal surrounding the episode might have been contained. As Geddes intimated, a court proceeding was bound to be agonizing for Lillie Orleman. Vindication of her innocence would be a Pyrrhic victory at best. But Ord chose to order a court-martial, not of Orleman, but of Geddes, on the charges Orleman had preferred. Orleman claimed that Geddes had libelled him with a false accusation of incest as part of his attempted seduction and abduction of Lillie Orleman. Why did General Ord so quickly conclude that Orleman's charges had merit and Geddes's did not? Before the trial both sides were represented only by competing stories. But acknowledging the possibility of incest by bringing charges against Orleman would have officially validated and magnified a scandal that would have haunted the Army, and the Department of Texas, for years to come. Fortunately for Orleman, this course of action was unthinkable because incest itself was unthinkable in America in1879. It was far easier for General Ord to believe the familiar kind of wrongdoing set forth in Orleman's accusation: that Geddes's charge was an act of retaliation after his effort to seduce and abduct Lillie Orleman failed. Ord was the single most powerful figure in the trial--although he had no role in the actual court proceedings. It was up to him to rule that a court-martial would take place, on charges that required no "oath to accompany their filing nor a formal pretrial investigation to test their validity."2 He chose the officers who composed the court, appointed the judge advocate who prosecuted the case, and reviewed the verdict and sentence, which were merely recommendations to him. Until 1920, the departmental commander had the power to reverse acquittals or return "inadequate" sentences to the court for augmentation.3 Too many acquittals were considered incompatible with military discipline. As military historian William Generous writes of that period, "charges could be made almost capriciously," and the verdict of a court-martial would be reviewed "by the very commander who levied the charges, convened the court, and appointed its members and officers."4 Under these circumstances, command influence was unavoidable. The judge advocate, who presented the Army's case, was also supposed to represent the defendant, but in practice he usually functioned as a prosecutor. The judge advocate had to approve defense applications for witnesses--an enormous power, although his decisions could be overruled by the court--and he joined in the court's deliberations. That giving the judge advocate such a dominant role in the proceedings might lead to abuse seems to be the message of one military authority on court-martial procedure. Stephen Vincent Benet, whose Treatise on Military Law and the Practice of Courts-Martial was a widely invoked manual, wrote about the judge advocate in a cautionary tone: The court is not required to decide points of law and fact according to his advice or opinion. He is a mere prosecutor, not a judge; and the members of the court, and they alone, are, by their oaths, to administer justice according to their consciences, the best of their understandings, and the custom of war in like cases--and not according to the understanding and conscience of the judge advocate.5 Benet's phrasing suggests that overactive judge advocates might rather easily usurp the prerogatives of the court. As late as the 1950s, another military writer recalled a Judge Advocate Basic Officers' Class in which students training to be judge advocates were taught that they were officers first, lawyers second, and their commander was their most important client.6 A commander could always, if he so desired, "exert great influence over the results of courts-martial."7 In general, courts-martial during the frontier army period (roughly the post-Civil War era to 1898) were characterized by the kind of procedure that may be found today in a small-claims court--an assembly-line approach marked by haste and standardized responses. It was always difficult to round up enough officers for a trial session. Co...

About this edition

• Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0809073978
• ISBN 13: 9780809073979
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 287