treat captured black soldiers of the Union Army as escaped slaves, and not as prisoners of war, subject either to summary execution or to re-enslavement in the Confederacy; likewise, the white officers commanding the captured black soldiers would be denied prisoner-of-war status and would be arrested, tried, and condemned as common criminals for helping slaves escape human bondage. Hard measures Regarding a successful military occupation, the Lieber Code proposed a reciprocal relationship between the U.S. military authority and the Confederate civilian population, whose co-operation with the military authority would ensure considerations and good treatment for the civilian populace. That against guerrilla warfare and armed resistance to martial law the Union Army would subject the insubordinate, enemy civilians to imprisonment and death. Moreover, to defend against the Confederate Army’s violations of the laws of war, by way of irregular fighters, the Lieber Code allowed retaliation by musketry against Confederate POWs, and allowed the summary execution of captured enemy civilians (spies, saboteurs, francs-tireurs, guerrillas) caught attacking the Union Army and the United States. In the 19th century, the Lieber Code’s legalized retaliation against prisoners of war derived from Lieber’s preference for short wars fought and won with decisive warfare, as proposed in the strategy and tactics of the Prussian military science of Carl von Clausewitz. To that end, the Lieber Code legitimized and justified aggressive war to expand the operational range of the Union Army’s prosecution of the civil war to conquer the Confederacy and free the slaves. Occupation of the Confederacy For the conquest and military occupation of the Confederate States of America, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman based his Special Field Orders No. 120 (9 November 1864) upon General Orders No. 100 (14 April 1863) for the Union Army. To realize a peaceful military occupation of the state of Georgia, Special Field Order No. 120 stipulated that “in districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but, should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.” Moreover, the Lieber Code (1863) was the military law applied to the prosecution of war crimes and for equal prisoner-of-war exchanges between the Union Army and the Confederate Army, regardless of the skin color of the