Here is a truly unique study of how the Confederate armies established and maintained their system of military justice. Although breaking new ground in its creation of military courts, the leaders of the new military did build on the old United States practices as they carried over army regulations, the Articles of War, and military customs. They were the best available codes at hand. But those politicians and generals could not foresee the impact of four years of bloody war on their efforts to provide proper justice.

Based on exhaustive research, Jack Bunch takes the student of Confederate history through the South's entire trial process. From the origins of courts-martial through the steps involved in one of the punishments meted out, he gives the reader a fresh understanding of how the beleaguered Confederates enforced discipline and maintained justice. Facing a high rate of desertion, and coping eventually with a continually deteriorating military scene, the system survived major stresses to function to the end of the war. After all Southern leaders held those arguments, investigations, trials, and executions to a high standard as both the army's senior generals and the government in Richmond, Virginia, carefully monitored the trials described in Military Justice in the Confederate States Armies.