The Lieutenant Who Beat the Army
A National Guard officer successfully sues the state to get his job back after a botched, 'railroaded' court-martial.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
W. H. Gorham, of the First Washington National Guards, who was court-martialed last August, won a victory in the superior court yesterday. Charles B. Ames, who was elected to replace him, was ousted and ordered to stop meddling with the office of second lieutenant of Company D. The suit, brought to test the validity of the military proceedings, resulted in a ruling by Judge Lichtenberg that the court-martial was fundamentally flawed. The conflict originated in March 1890, when Captain C. L. F. Kellogg allegedly allowed the Hibernians to use the Armory on a night reserved for the company's drill. When Lieutenant Gorham confronted his superior about the decision, a move was initiated to remove him. Judge Lichtenberg held that the court-martial lacked legal standing, citing that the military's own rules were poorly defined and that Gorham had been denied his right to proper notice of charges. 'A court-martial is one of the processes; but notice to the defendant is required,' the judge stated. 'It is plain and clear that here there was no such service on this officer, but that the case against him was railroaded through.'
“Court-martials are generally railroaded through; the accused may be arrested one evening and shot the next, but then the accused generally knows what he is being tried for.”
This 1891 case highlights the tension between military-style internal hierarchies and civil oversight—a dynamic that remains central to debates over police and institutional accountability in modern Seattle. The judge’s insistence that an officer’s commission is a form of 'property' protected by due process echoes contemporary legal fights over labor rights and public sector transparency.
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