The Key to 90,000 Civil War military trials, all the amazing stories lost to history – until now. Desertion, rape, murder, espionage, treason, drunken rages, and mutiny, are now fully available from a unique search engine.

The National Archives in Washington, D.C., home to thousands of cubic feet of records, including 75,961 Union army courts-martial, 1,500 Union navy courts-martial, and over 5,000 Confederate courts-martial (the Confederacy burned most of their records).

Until recently, there was no convenient way to search these records.

Beverly A. Lowry and Thomas P. Lowry spent 10 years in the Archives, 5 days a week, reading the hand-written records and summarizing the trials, to make them available in a computer database which can be searched by multiple variables, including name, rank, regiment, crime, and locator number.

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Some sample factoids:

Twenty-five Union brigadier generals were court-martialed.

One hundred twenty-six captains were convicted of being drunk on duty.

One thousand thirty-one Wisconsin soldiers were court-martialed.

1,883 Union soldiers were sentenced to be shot. 

2nd Lieutenant Charles Leathe, 40th Massachusetts, age 20, went AWOL to tend to his insane father after his mother died.

The court-martial which dismissed him suggested clemency. Lincoln agreed, as can be seen in the actual notation, shown to the left.

 
Yes, a ball and chain. This Civil War original has a ten-pound iron ball, with a six-foot chain. Hundreds of men were sentenced to periods of hard labor, wearing a ball and chain.
 
This is a small one. More commonly, men were to wear a 12 or 20-pound ball. The record is 50-pounds. Walking even a few minutes, even with the lighter ones, is very uncomfortable. We did find one deserter who picked up his iron ball and ran off.

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Here is Tom in the Reading Room at the National Archives, following all the rules:

• pencil only, no pen
• only one folder open at a time
• no jacket, hat, or brief case (all must be stored in a hall locker)
• summarize a trial onto an Archive-provided 3 by 5 filing card
• no food, drink, or chewing gum
• conversation reduced to whispers (except upon the discovery of some especially bizarre bit of court-room testimony)

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The Index Project, was incorporated in 1995 and approved by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity,
a status renewed and confirmed in 2009. All donations to the Index Project are tax-deductible to the donor, as pre-scribed by law.