Murder of Union Soldiers [caption title of U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee Report].

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Report on the murder of Union soldiers in South Carolina, a capital case touching on habeas corpus and the jurisdiction of military courts in the post-Civil War occupied South.

In October 1865, Crawford Keyes of Anderson Court House, South Carolina, his sons, and their friends, were tried for the murder of three Union soldiers. The soldiers were guarding 15 bales of cotton seized by the U.S. Treasury Department. Keyes was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted.

The text includes a “Minority Report” by Congressman Edmund Cooper of Tennessee and testimony from several involved parties: Major General Daniel E. Sickles, the military commander of occupied South Carolina; Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, and various commanders of other Southern military jurisdictions.

“Following the commutation, Keyes was transferred to Delaware and brought before a U.S. District Judge. The Judge issued a writ of habeas corpus to examine the imprisonment and ruled the trial by military commission illegal. Keyes was freed, making a triumphant return to Anderson Court House where the populace greeted him with a large picnic.”¹ The concluding section of the House Select Committee report prints the judgment of the Delaware Federal District Court.

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