| Summary: | One of Hartshorne's men, Jack Davis, had been arrested for drunkenness and disorderly conduct by a Colonel Taylor. Hartshorne is on trial for failing to assist Taylor in the arrest; for allowing Davis to misbehave; and for rebuking Taylor for "wounding unnecessarily a drunken soldier" while making the arrest. Semple argues that Hartshorne is innocent because he could not hear Taylor's call for assistance; did not know that Davis was intoxicated; and was justified in correcting Taylor's behavior: " If there was anything to the prejudice of good order & military discipline it was on the part of Colo Taylor and not on the part of accused - Any officer has a right and it is his duty, to protect his men against all unlawful violence, and the fact that it is offered by an officer of superior rank does not alter the case - I submit to the court that the rebuke to Colo Taylor was entirely justified by the circumstances...One who acts as an public officer and forgetting his public character attempts to gratify his own passions, becomes a trespasser...and subjects himself to arrest by any officer under the 27th article of war." During the Civil War, Semple served as a captain of an artillery battery organized in Montgomery (known as Semple's Battery). He was later appointed a major and transferred to Mobile.
|
|---|
