OFFENCES AND PUNISHMENTS.
They braced my aunt against a board,
To make her straight and tall;
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small;
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins;—
Oh, never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins.
HOLMES.
[Illustration: BALL AND CHAIN.]
No popular history of the war has yet treated in detail of the various
indiscretions of which soldiers were guilty, nor of the punishments
which followed breaches of discipline. Perhaps such a record is wanting
because there are many men yet alive who cannot think with equanimity
of punishments to which they were at some period of their service
subjected. Indeed, within a few months I have seen veterans who, if not
breathing out threatenings and slaughter, like Saul of Tarsus, are still
unreconciled to some of their old commanders, and are brooding over
their old-time grievances, real or imaginary, or both, when they ought
to be engaged in more entertaining and profitable business. I shall
not, because I cannot, name all the offences of soldiering to which
punishments were affixed, as no two commanding officers had just the same
violations of military discipline to deal with,—but I shall endeavor in
this chapter to include all those which appeal to a common experience.
The most common offences were drunkenness, absence from camp without
leave, insubordination, disrespect to superior officers, absence from
roll-call without leave, turbulence after taps, sitting while on guard,
gambling, and leaving the beat without relief. To explain these offences
a little more in detail—no soldier was supposed to leave camp without a
pass or permit from the commander of the regiment or battery to which he
belonged. A great many _did_ leave for a few hours at a time, however,
and took their chances of being missed and reported for it. In some
companies, when it was thought that several were absent without a permit,
a roll-call was ordered simply to catch the culprits. Disrespect to a
superior officer was shown in many ways. Some of the more common ways
were to “talk back,” in strong unmilitary language, and to refuse to
salute him or recognize him on duty, which military etiquette requires to
be done. The other offences named explain themselves.
[Illustration: CARRYING A LOG.]
The methods of punishment were as diverse as the dispositions of the
officers who sat in judgment on the cases of the offenders. In the early
history of a regiment there was a guard-house or guard-tent where the
daily guard were wont to assemble, and which was their rendezvous when
off post during their twenty-four hours of duty. But when the ranks of
the regiment had become very much depleted, and the men pretty well
seasoned in military duty, the guard-tent was likely to be dispensed
with. In this guard-tent offenders were put for different periods of
time. Such confinement was a common punishment for drunkenness. This may
not be thought a very severe penalty; still, the men did not enjoy it, as
it imposed quite a restriction on their freedom to be thus pent up and
cut off from the rest of their associates.
[Illustration: BUCKED AND GAGGED.]
Absence from camp or roll-call without leave was punished in various
ways. There was no special penalty for it. I think every organization
had what was known as a Black List, on which the names of all offenders
against the ordinary rules of camp were kept for frequent reference,
and when there was any particularly disagreeable task about camp to be
done the black list furnished a quota for the work. The galling part
of membership in the ranks of the black list was that all of the work
done as one of its victims was a gratuity, as the member must stand his
regular turn in his squad for whatever other fatigue duty was required.
Among the tasks that were thought quite interesting and profitable
pastimes for the black-listed to engage in, were policing the camp and
digging and fitting up new company sinks or filling abandoned ones. A
favorite treat meted out to the unfortunates in the artillery and cavalry
was the burying of dead horses or cleaning up around the picket rope
where the animals were tied. In brief, the men who kept _off_ the black
list in a company were spared many a hard and disagreeable job by the
existence of a good long list of offenders against camp discipline.
[Illustration: POSTED.]
This placing of men on the black list was not as a rule resorted to by
officers who cherished petty spites or personal malice, but by it they
designed rather to enforce a salutary discipline. Such officers had
no desire to torture the erring, but aimed to combine a reasonable
form of punishment with utility to the camp and to the better behaved
class of soldiers, and in this I think they were successful. But there
was a class of officers who felt that every violation of camp rules
should be visited with the infliction of bodily pain in some form. As a
consequence, the sentences imposed by these military judges all looked
towards that end. Some would _buck and gag_ their victims; some would
_stand them on a barrel_ for a half-day or a day at a time; a favorite
punishment with some was to knock out both heads of a barrel, then make
the victim stand on the ends of the staves; some would compel them to
wear an inverted barrel for several hours, by having a hole cut in the
bottom, through which the head passed, making a kind of wooden overcoat;
some culprits were compelled to stand a long time with their arms,
extending horizontally at the side, lashed to a heavy stick of wood that
ran across their backs; others were lashed to a tall wooden horse which
stood perhaps eight or nine feet high; some underwent the knapsack drill,
that is, they walked a beat with a guardsman two hours on and two or
four hours off, wearing a knapsack filled with bricks or stones. Here is
an incident related by a veteran who served in the Gulf Department: One
day a captain in General Phelps’ Brigade put a man on knapsack drill;
in other words, he filled his knapsack with bricks, and made him march
with it up and down the company street. The General had the habit of
going through the camps of his brigade quite frequently, and that day
he happened around just in time to see the performance, but returned to
his quarters apparently without noticing it. Soon, however, he sent his
Orderly to the Captain with a request to come to his tent. The Captain
was soon on his way, dressed in his best uniform, probably expecting,
at least, a commendation for his efficiency, or perhaps a promotion.
On reaching the General’s tent, he was admitted, when, after the usual
salute, the following dialogue took place:—
General P.—“Good-morning, Captain.”
Captain.—“Good-morning, General.”
General P.—“I sent for you, Captain, to inquire of you what knapsacks
were made for.”
Captain.—“Knapsacks!—why, I suppose they were made for soldiers to carry
their spare clothing in.”
General P.—“Well, Captain, I passed your camp a short time ago and saw
one of your men carrying bricks in his knapsack up and down the company
street. Now, go back to your company, send that man to his quarters, and
don’t let me know of your ordering any such punishment again while you
are in my brigade.”
[Illustration: A LOADED KNAPSACK.]
One regiment that I know of had a platform erected, between twenty-five
and thirty feet high, on which the offender was isolated from the camp,
and left to broil in the sun or soak in the rain while a guard paced his
beat below, to keep away any who might like to communicate with him.
Some were tied up by the thumbs, with arms extended full length, and
compelled to stand in that position for hours; some were put into what
was known as the sweat-box. This was a box eighteen inches square, and
of the full height of a man, into which the culprit was placed to stand
until released. Some had their full offence written out on a board with
chalk, and, with this board strapped to their backs, were marched up and
down through camp the entire day, without rest or refreshment.
In the artillery, the favorite punishment was to lash the guilty party
to the spare wheel—the extra wheel carried on the rear portion of every
caisson in a battery. In the cavalry, men were sometimes punished by
being compelled to carry their packed saddle a prescribed time—no small
or insignificant burden to men unused to a knapsack. Sometimes the guilty
parties were required to carry a heavy stick of wood on the shoulder. I
knew one such man, who, because of this punishment, took a solemn oath
that he would never do another day’s duty in his company; and he never
did. From that day forward he reported at sick-call, but the surgeon
could find no traces of disease about him, and so returned him for duty.
Still the man persistently refused to do duty, claiming that he was not
able, and continued to report at sick-call. By refusing to eat anything,
he reduced himself to such a condition that he really appeared diseased,
and at last was discharged, went home, and boasted of his achievement.
[Illustration: ISOLATED ON A PLATFORM.]
Sometimes double guard-duty was ordered for a man on account of an
omission or act of his while on guard. This punishment gave him four
hours on and two off his post or beat instead of the reverse. His offence
may have been failing or refusing to salute his superior officer. It
may have been that he was not properly equipped. It may have been for
being found off his beat, or for leaving it without having been properly
relieved; or he may have failed in his duty when the “Grand Rounds”
appeared.
[Illustration: ON THE SPARE WHEEL.]
When non-commissioned officers sinned, which they did sometimes, they
were punished by being reduced to the ranks.
In some organizations gambling was not allowed, in others it was carried
on by both officers and privates. In one command, at least, where this
vice was interdicted, culprits in the ranks were punished by having
one-half of the head shaved—a most humiliating and effective punishment.
[Illustration: ON A WOODEN HORSE.]
Then “back talk,” as it was commonly called, which, interpreted, means
answering a superior officer insolently, was a prolific cause of
punishments. It did not matter in some organizations who the officer
was, from colonel or captain to the last corporal, to hear was to obey,
and under such discipline the men became the merest puppets. In theory,
such a regiment was the perfect military machine, where every man was
in complete subordination to one master mind. But the value of such a
machine, after all, depended largely upon the kind of a man the ruling
spirit was, and whether he associated his inflexibility of steel with
the justice of Aristides. If he did that, then was it indeed a model
organization; but such bodies were rare, for the conditions were wanting
to make them abundant. The master mind was too often tyrannical and
abusive, either by nature, or from having been suddenly clothed with
a little brief authority over men. And often when nature, if left to
herself, would have made him a good commander, an excessive use of
“commissary” interfered to prevent, and the subordinates of such a
leader, many of them appointed by his influence, would naturally partake
of his characteristics; so that such regiments, instead of standing
solidly on all occasions, were weakened as a fighting body by a lack of
confidence in and personal respect for their leaders, and by a hatred
begotten of unjust treatment. Hundreds of officers were put in commission
through influence at court, wealth or personal influence deciding
appointments that should have been made solely on the basis of merit. At
the beginning of the war it was inevitable that the officers should have
been inexperienced and uninstructed in the details of warfare, but later
this condition changed, and the service would have been strengthened and
materially improved by promoting men who had done honorable service and
shown good conduct in action, to commissions in new regiments. It is true
that such was the intent and partial practice in some States, but the
governors, more or less from necessity, took the advice of some one who
was a warm personal friend of the applicant, so that shoulder-straps,
instead of being always conferred for gallant conduct in the front rank,
were sometimes a mark of distinguished prowess in the mule-train or
the cook-house, which seemed to maintain readier and more influential
communication with the appointing power at the rear than was had by the
men who stood nearest to the enemy.
[Illustration: IN THE SWEAT-BOX.]
To bow in meek submission to the uneducated authority of the civilian,
or to the soldier whose record was such as not to command the respect of
his fellows, was the lot of thousands of intelligent and brave soldiers,
the superiors in all respects, save that of military rank alone, of these
self-same officers; and to be commanded not to answer back, when they
felt that they must utter a protest against injustice, was a humiliation
that the average volunteer did not fully realize when he put his name to
the roll,—a humiliation which grew bitterer with every new indignity.
Punishments or rebukes administered by social inferiors were galling even
when deserved.
[Illustration: ON THE CHINES.]
It seems ludicrous to me when I recall the threats I used to hear
made against officers for some of their misdeeds. Many a wearer of
shoulder-straps was to be shot by his own men in the first engagement.
But, somehow or other, when the engagement came along there seemed to
be Rebels enough to shoot without throwing away ammunition on Union
men; and about that time too the men, who in more peaceful retreats
were so anxious to shoot their own officers, could not always be found,
when wanted, to shoot more legitimate game. In these days, when private
soldiers are so scarce and officers so exceedingly abundant, the question
might very naturally arise how the abundance came about if the officers
were so often between two fires; but what I have said will furnish a
solution to the mystery.
Then, there were hundreds of officers that were to be settled with when
they reached _home_, and were on an equality with the private soldier
so far as military rank was concerned. But while there were, as I have
previously intimated, a few who took their resentments out of the
service with them, they were _only_ few in number, and it is doubtful
whether any of them ever executed their threatened deeds of violence.
Poor underpaid non-commissioned officers, who occupied the perplexing
and uncomfortable position of go-betweens, were frequently invited by
privates to strip off their chevrons and be handsomely whipped for
some act annoying to said privates; but I never heard of any n. c. o.
sacrificing his chevrons to any such ambition—for various reasons, of
which the fear of a thrashing was not necessarily one.
[Illustration: A WOODEN OVERCOAT.]
There were regiments each of which, when off duty, seemed to contain at
least two or three hundred colonels and captains, so much social freedom
obtained between officers and rank and file, yet at the proper time there
was just one commander of such a regiment to whom the men looked ready to
do his bidding, even to follow him into the jaws of death. These officers
were not always devout men; at an earlier period in their lives some
of them may have learned to be profane; some drank commissary whiskey
occasionally, it may be; but in all their dealings with subordinates,
while they made rigid exactions of them as _soldiers_, they never forgot
that they were _men_, and hence, endeavoring to be just in the settlement
of camp troubles, protecting their command in the full enjoyment of all
its rights among similar organizations, never saying “go!” but “come!”
in the hour of danger, they welded their regiment into a military engine
as solid and reliable as the old Grecian Phalanx. Punishments in such
regiments were rare, for manliness and self-respect were never crushed
out by tyrants in miniature. The character of the officers had so much to
do with determining the nature and amount of the punishments in the army
that I consider what I have thrown in here as germane to the subject of
this chapter.
It should be said, in justice to both officers and privates, that the
first two years of the war, when the exactions of the service were
new, saw three times the number of punishments administered in the
two subsequent years; but, aside from the getting accustomed to the
restraints of the service, campaigning was more continuous in the later
years, and this kept both mind and body occupied. It is inactivity
which makes the growler’s paradise. Then, in the last years of the war
the rigors of military discipline, the sharing of common dangers and
hardships, and promotions from the ranks, had narrowed the gap between
officers and privates so that the chords of mutual sympathy were stronger
than before, and trivial offences were slightly rebuked or passed
unnoticed.
[Illustration: STRAPPED TO A STICK.]
At the beginning of the war many generals were very fearful lest some
of the acts of the common soldier should give offence to the Southern
people. This encouraged the latter to report every chicken lost, every
bee-hive borrowed, every rail burnt, to headquarters, and subordinates
were required to institute the most thorough search for evidence that
should lead to the detection and punishment of the culprits, besides
requiring them to make full restitution of the value of the property
taken. Our government and its leading officers, military and civil,
seemed at that time to stand hat in hand apologizing to the South for
invading its sacred territory, and almost appearing to want only a proper
pretext to retire honorably from the conflict. But by the time that the
Peninsular Campaign was brought to a close this kid-glove handling of
the enemy had come to an end, and the wandering shote, the hen-roosts,
the Virginia fence and the straw stack came to be regarded in a sense as
perquisites of the Union army. Punishments for appropriating them after
this time were much rarer, and the difficulty of finding the culprits
increased, as the officers were becoming judiciously near-sighted.
[Illustration: DRUMMING OUT OF CAMP.]
_Drumming out of camp_ was a punishment administered for cowardice.
Whenever a man’s courage gave out in the face of the enemy, at the
earliest opportunity after the battle, he was stripped of his equipments
and uniform, marched through the camp with a guard on either side and
four soldiers following behind him at “charge bayonets,” while a fife
and drum corps brought up the rear, droning out the “Rogue’s March.” He
was sure of being hooted and jeered at throughout the whole camp. There
were no restraints put upon the language of his recent associates, and
their vocabularies were worked up to their full capacity in reviling him.
After he had been thoroughly shown off to the entire command, he was
marched outside the lines and set free. This whole performance may seem
at first thought a very light punishment for so grave an offence, and an
easy escape from the service for such men. But it was considered a most
disgraceful punishment. No man liked to be called a _coward_, much less
to be turned out of the army in that disreputable way, and the facts
recorded on his regimental roll side by side with the honorable record
of his fellows. He was liable to the death penalty if found in camp
afterwards. Many more men deserved this punishment than ever received it.
There were very few soldiers put out of the service by this method.
[Illustration: TIED UP BY THE THUMBS.]
Sometimes an officer was assaulted by a private soldier or threatened
by him. For all such offences soldiers were tried by court-martial, and
sentenced to the guard-house or to hard labor at the Rip Raps or the Dry
Tortugas, with loss of pay; or to wear a ball and chain attached to their
ankles for a stated period. These offences were often committed under the
influence of liquor, but frequently through temper or exasperation at
continued and unreasonable exactions, as the victim believed.
The penalty for sleeping at one’s post, that is, when it was a post of
danger, was death; but whether this penalty was ever enforced in our army
I am unable to state. There is a very touching story of a young soldier
who was pardoned by President Lincoln for this offence, through the
pitiful intercession of the young man’s mother. Whether it was a chapter
from real life, I am in doubt. I certainly never heard of a sentinel
being visited with this extreme penalty for this offence.
The penalty attaching to desertion is death by shooting, and this was
no uncommon sight in the army; but it did not seem to stay the tide of
desertion in the least. I have seen it stated that there was no time
in the history of the Army of the Potomac, after its organization by
McClellan, when it reported less than one-fourth its full membership
as absent without leave. The general reader will perhaps be interested
in the description of the first execution of a deserter that I ever
witnessed. It took place about the middle of October, 1863. I was then
a member of Sickles’ Third Corps, and my company was attached for the
time being to General Birney’s First Division, then covering Fairfax
Station, on the extreme left of the army. The guilty party was a member
of a Pennsylvania regiment. He had deserted more than once, and was also
charged with giving information, to the enemy whereby a wagon-train
had been captured. The whole division was ordered out to witness the
execution. The troops were drawn up around three sides of a rectangle in
two double ranks, the outer facing inward and the inner facing outward.
Between these ranks, throughout their entire extent, the criminal was
obliged to march, which he did with lowered head. The order of the
solemn procession was as shown in the accompanying diagram, the arrows
indicating its direction.
First came the provost-marshal,—the sheriff of the army,—mounted; next,
the band playing (what to me from its associations has now come to be the
saddest of all tunes) Pleyel’s Hymn, even sadder than the Dead March in
“Saul,” which I heard less frequently; then followed twelve armed men,
who were deployed diagonally across the open end of the space, after the
procession had completed its round, to guard against any attempt the
prisoner might make to escape; fourth in order came four men bearing the
coffin, followed by the prisoner, attended by a chaplain, and a single
guard on either side; next, a shooting detachment of twelve men. Eleven
of these had muskets loaded with ball, while the twelfth had a blank
cartridge in his musket; but as the muskets had been loaded beforehand by
an officer, and mixed up afterwards, no one knew who had possession of
the musket with the blank cartridge, so that each man, if he wanted it,
had the benefit of a faint hope, at least, that his was the musket loaded
without ball. After these marched an additional shooting force of six, to
act in case the twelve should fail in the execution of their duty.
[Illustration: _P_, prisoner; _C_, coffin; _G_, grave; _F_, firing party;
_R_, reserve firing party; _E_, twelve guards.]
When the slow and solemn round had been completed, the prisoner was
seated on an end of his coffin, which had been placed in the centre of
the open end of the rectangle, near his grave. The chaplain then made
a prayer, and addressed a few words to the condemned man, which were
not audible to any one else, and followed them by another brief prayer.
The provost-marshal next advanced, bound the prisoner’s eyes with a
handkerchief, and read the general order for the execution. He then gave
the signal for the shooting party to execute their orders. They did so,
and a soul passed into eternity. Throwing his arms convulsively into the
air, he fell back upon his coffin but made no further movement, and a
surgeon who stood near, upon examination, found life to be extinct. The
division was then marched past the corpse, off the field, and the sad
scene was ended.
[Illustration: DEATH OF A DESERTER.]
I afterwards saw a deserter from the First Division of the Second Corps
meet his end in the same way, down before Petersburg, in the summer of
1864. These were the only exhibitions of this sort that I ever witnessed,
although there were others that took place not far from my camp. The
artillery was brigaded by itself in 1864 and 1865, and artillerymen were
not then compelled to attend executions which took place in the infantry.
Here is a story of another deserter and spy, who was shot in or near
Indianapolis in 1863. He had enlisted in the Seventy-First Indiana
Infantry. Not long afterwards he deserted and went over to the enemy,
but soon reappeared in the Union lines as a Rebel spy. While in this
capacity he was captured and taken to the headquarters of General Henry
B. Carrington, who was then in command of this military district. He
indignantly protested his innocence of the charge, but a thorough search
for evidence of his treachery was begun. His coat was first taken and cut
into narrow strips and carefully scrutinized, to assure that it contained
nothing suspicious. One by one, the rest of his garments were examined
and thrown aside, until at last he stood naked before his captors with
no evidence of his guilt having been discovered. He was then requested
to don a suit of clothes that was brought in. This he did, and then
triumphantly demanded his release. But the General told him to keep
cool, as the search was not yet completed; that full justice should be
done him whether guilty or innocent. Taking up the trousers again, the
General noticed that one of the spring-bottoms was a little stiffer than
the other, and on further investigation with his scissors, sure enough,
carefully sewed in under the buckram, found a pass from the Rebel General
Kirby Smith.
At this discovery the culprit dropped on his knees, and begged for his
life. He was tried by court-martial, and sentenced to be hanged—hanging
is the penalty for treason, shooting being considered too honorable a
death for traitors. But General Carrington, wishing the influence of the
execution to be exerted as a check against desertion, which was very
common, decided that he should be shot. It is customary to detail the
shooting squad from the company to which the deserter belongs. But so
enraged were the members of this man’s company at his offence that they
sent a _unanimous_ request that the entire company might act as firing
party. This request was refused, however, and a detail of fifteen men
made for that purpose. But whereas it is usual for the sergeant in charge
of such a detail to load the muskets himself, putting blank cartridges
into one, two, or three of the muskets, on this occasion the men were
allowed to load for themselves, and when the surgeon examined the
lifeless body he found _fifteen bullets_ in it, showing that each one of
the fifteen men had felt it to be his duty to shoot his former comrade,
and that he had conscientiously acted up to that duty.
Shocking and solemn as such scenes were, I do not believe that the
shooting of a deserter had any great deterring influence on the rank
and file; for the opportunities to get away safely were most abundant.
Indeed, any man who was base enough to desert his flag could almost
choose his time for doing it. The wife of a man in my own company brought
him a suit of citizen’s clothing to desert in, which he availed himself
of later; but citizen’s clothes, even, were not always necessary to
ensure safety for deserters. When a man’s honor failed to hold him in the
ranks, his exit from military life in the South was easy enough.
I have been asked if all deserters captured were shot. No; far from it.
There were times in the war when the death penalty for this offence was
entirely ignored, and then it would be revived again with the hope of
diminishing the rapid rate at which desertions took place. Desertion was
the most prevalent in 1864, when the town and city governments hired so
many foreigners, who enlisted solely to get the large bounties paid, and
then deserted, many of them before getting to the field, or immediately
afterwards. They had no interest in the cause, and could not be expected
to have. These men were called bounty-jumpers, and, having deserted, went
to some other State and enlisted again, to secure another bounty. In this
manner many of them obtained hundreds of dollars without being detected;
but many more were apprehended, and suffered for it. I knew of three
such being shot at one time, each having taken three bounties before they
were finally captured. The greater part of these bounty-jumpers came from
Canada. A large number of reliable troops were necessary to take these
men from the recruiting rendezvous to the various regiments which they
were to join.
The mass of recaptured deserters were put to hard labor on government
works. Others were confined in some penitentiary, to work out their
unexpired term of service. I believe the penitentiary at Albany was used
for this purpose, as was also the Old Capitol Prison in Washington. Many
more were sent to the Rip Raps, near Fort Monroe. On the 11th of March,
1865, President Lincoln issued a proclamation offering full pardon to all
deserters who should return to their respective commands within sixty
days, that is, before May 10, 1865, with the understanding that they
should serve out the full time of their respective organizations, and
make up all time lost as well. A large number whose consciences had given
them no peace since their lapse, availed themselves of this proclamation
to make amends as far as possible, and leave the service with a good
name. This act was characteristic of the Emancipator’s matchless
magnanimity and forgiving spirit, but scarcely deserved by the parties
having most at stake.
I have already intimated that death by hanging was a punishment meted
out to certain offences against military law. One of these offences
was desertion to the enemy, that is, going from our army over to the
enemy, and enlisting in his ranks to fight on that side. In the autumn
of 1864—near Fort Welch, I think it was—I saw three military criminals
hanged at the same moment, from the same gallows, for this crime against
the government. They were members of the Sixth Corps. There was less
ceremony about this execution than that of the deserter, whose end I
more fully described. The condemned men were all foreigners, and rode
to the gallows in an ambulance attended by a chaplain. The ambulance was
well guarded in front, in rear, and on the flanks. The gallows also was
strongly guarded. If I recollect aright, the troops were not ordered
out to witness the spectacle. Nevertheless, thousands of them from
adjoining camps lined the route, and, standing around the gallows, saw
the prisoners meet their fate. No loyal heart gave them any sympathy.
In April, 1864, I saw a man hanged for a different offence, on the plains
of Stevensburg. He belonged to the second division of my own corps.
Most of the corps, which was then twenty-seven thousand strong, must
have witnessed the scene, from near or afar. In hanging the culprit the
provost-marshal made a dreadful botch of the job, for the rope was too
long, and when the drop fell the man’s feet touched the ground. This
obliged the provost-marshal to seize the rope, and by main strength to
hold him clear of the ground till death ensued. It is quite probable that
strangulation instead of a broken neck ended his life. His body was so
light and emaciated that it is doubtful if, even under more favorable
circumstances, his fall could have broken his neck.
The report of the Adjutant-General, made in 1870, shows that there
were one hundred and twenty-one men executed during the war—a very
insignificant fraction of those who, by military law, were liable to the
death penalty.
[Illustration]