What is National Archives?

National Archives today hold massive documentation on military law during the Civil War from a variety of agencies and commands, hopelessly confused as the issuing bodies and intermediary repositories are closed and the papers folded together. Much of the data has been microfilmed and is now open to scholars, but past confusion makes confirming earlier figures impossible and precludes a comprehensive view of the effect of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus possible. Author Mark E. Neely, Jr., gives up examining records after about 14,000, when he finds no new patterns of arrests emerging.