Holt

where he was assistant editor of the Louisville
Advertiser for a year and commonwealth's at-
torney for two. Soon afterward, he moved to
Mississippi, where he practised with notable suc-
cess. In his thirty-fifth year, with a considerable
fortune, he retired from active practice and re-
turned to Louisville to recuperate from tuber-
culosis, from which his wife, Mary Harrison,
had died.

For a number of years, Holt took little part in
political life except for an occasional campaign
speech. He was married again, to Margaret,
daughter of Charles A. Wickliffe. For his share
in winning the Democratic victory of 1856, he
was appointed commissioner of patents in 1857
by President Buchanan. In 1859 he was made
postmaster-general, from which office he sanc-
tioned a local ruling barring abolitionist doc-
trines from the mails within the borders of Vir-
ginia, At this time he was opposed to "coercion"
of a state by the federal government; he con-
tributed a letter, dated Nov. 30, 1860, to the
Pittsburgh Chronicle, denouncing the personal
liberty bills passed by Northern states but pro-
claiming his loyalty to the Union on the basis of
"a jaint, hesitating hope that the North will do
justice to the South and save the Republic before
the wreck is complete" (quoted by Montgomery
Blair in The Rebellion . . . Where the Guilt
Lies, n.d., a speech at Clarksville, Md., on Aug.
26, 1865). When the ordinance of secession had
passed and South Carolina's commissioners ap-
peared in Washington, however, Holt joined
Jeremiah Black and Edwin M. Stanton in urg-
ing upon Buchanan a policy of firmness. On Jan.
i, 1861, he succeeded John B. Floyd [q.v.] in the
office of secretary of war, being commissioned
Jan. 18. In the light of his new responsibilities
what he had heretofore termed "coercion" began
to appear as "self-defense," and his latent but
tenacious Unionism developed into an inflexible
belief in the righteousness of the Federal cause.

After the inauguration of Lincoln, Holt ad-
dressed himself to the task of winning his native
Kentucky from its equivocal policy of neutrality.
He kept in close communication with Union
leaders there, writing letters for publication and
making speeches in the border states, and his
efforts were rewarded by Kentucky's voting in
September to support the Federal armies. He
also toured Massachusetts and appealed to an
audience in New York City to give a sturdy sup-
port to the war and to the administration. In
view of his services, President Lincoln deter-
mined to appoint him to office as soon as a suit-
able vacancy occurred, while Holt in the interim
accepted minor commissions to investigate war

Holt

contracts. Meanwhile Lincoln was becoming in-
volved in a struggle with Congressional leaders
in his own party over the possession of the war
powers. Among other matters, his treatment of
political prisoners was challenged by legislation
skilfully steered through Congress by Senator
Lyman Trumbull. The President wished to ar-
rest citizens suspected of disloyal activities and
hold them in prison for indefinite terms by means
of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus,
but successive acts of Congress made specific
provision that the civil courts should punish
such activities. The President, believing that
these courts could not be trusted, turned to Holt,
a War Democrat, to forward his policy of execu-
tive (or military) control of political prisoners,
and appointed him judge-advocate general of the
army on Sept. 3,1862.

Holt was thus the first incumbent of an office
recently created by Congress, the duties of which
consisted in receiving, revising, and causing to
be recorded the proceedings of all courts martial,
courts of inquiry, and military commissions. In
the phase of his work that touched the military
commission the President saw the opportunity to
extend his control of political prisoners. Holt
therefore set to work to develop the jurisdiction
of the military commission so that persons and
offenses not subject to the jurisdiction of courts
martial could be tried by a military body. The
military authorities were thus enabled to arrest
and keep in prison many persons who would
otherwise have been released to the civil courts.
The most conspicuous of the cases tried by mili-
tary commission during Lincoln's lifetime were
those of Clement L. Vallandigham [q.v,] of Ohio
and Lambdin P. Milligan and his associates in
Indiana.

The assassination of Lincoln aroused in the
War Department an added zest for military trial
of civilians. The individuals accused of having
conspired with John Wilkes Booth [q.v.'] against
the lives of Lincoln and high officials of state
were prosecuted by Judge-Advocate General
Holt, assisted by John A. Bingham and Henry
L. Burnett [qq.v.~\, before a military commission
convened in Washington in the midst of much
excitement and general public approval. Holt's
credit with the Radical group soared in propor-
tion to the certainty of his obtaining a conviction,
and when he returned from his conference with
President Johnson bearing the death sentence of
Mrs. Surratt, his popularity stretched its bounds.
The trial of Henry Wirz, ill-starred keeper of the
Confederate prison, followed hard in the wake
of the government's triumph in the case of the
"assassins," and Holt's plans for a further use of

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