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This chapter explores President Abraham Lincoln's policies for their impact on Southern civilians, with Lincoln's evolving policies on enemy private property, including the practice of “devastating” enemy territory. One of Lincoln's earliest acts as commander in chief was to promise respect for the property of enemy civilians. Legitimate operations necessarily impinged on civilian property. Lincoln proposed to deal with the broader issue of enemy civilian property. He had drafted three military orders for the cabinet to consider, and remained reluctant to issue general instructions on the treatment of enemy private property, even when suggested by the commanding general he had personally selected.

This chapter elaborates Abraham Lincoln's policy toward bombardment of cities. It is noted that, at the time of the Civil War, army commanders had no recognized obligation to ensure that enemy civilians did not starve. It is also stated that a Confederate government which could not protect its citizens' property would lose legitimacy. Union lack of discipline had become a way to make a political point about the powerlessness of the Confederate government. The Confederate destruction of forage at Sandersville was not the act of local civilians, guerrillas, or bushwhackers. In the case of President Lincoln and General Sherman in Georgia, based on the general's very limited sharing of plans with Washington, Lincoln had no reason to expect more damage to civilian property than would be normal whenever a Civil War army moved through a populated countryside.

This chapter addresses a narrow but important point relating to the nature and constitution of trusts, and one which appears to have been satisfactorily resolved in Scots law but unsatisfactorily addressed in Louisiana. In Scotland, the law has followed practice: trusts exist, and questions of what they are and why they work have been seen as of secondary importance. In Louisiana, the trust has met with rather more resistance, being gradually facilitated by legislation. There has never been anything approaching a code of trust law in Scotland, but the prohibition of fidei commissa and substitutions in Louisiana law meant that the recognition of trusts required enabling legislation, first for charitable trusts (in 1882) and then for private trusts (in 1920), the law in both areas having been gradually liberalised over time to allow for wider use of the device. The chapter addresses the following issues: whether trusts are even necessary, who owns trust property in Louisiana, who owns trust property in Scotland, and the trustee-as-owner theory.