[The following relates a common punishment for Confederate deserters during the American Civil War. Specifically, these are the recollections of Columbus Sykes, a colonel and a planter in the 43rd Mississippi.]
”Two men of the 31st Miss. Regt. and one of the 33rd Miss. are condemned to be ‘Shot to death with Musketry’ at 3 o’clock p.m. for desertion,” he wrote. “The entire Brigade is ordered to witness the execution. What a solemn warning to those who are tired enough to desert their colors. The Government is determined to stop it by visiting upon the offender the extremest penalty known to military law.”
A week later, Sykes was so affected by the episode that he wrote home again, this time describing the firing squad itself.
The execution took place between 3 and 4 o’clock. I need not tell you that it was a sadly solemn scene. To see men in the full tide of a vigorous manhood, sitting manacled on their coffins, hearing the sentence of the Court Martial read which, while it proclaimed their infamy to the assembled army, fixed the mode and hour of their death with the inexorable certainty of fate, to hear the last solemn prayer of the chaplain in their behalf, the order to stand up, have their arms bound behind them, eyes blindfolded, the last messages delivered for wife and children to the commanding officer, the command to the guard “ready, aim, fire,” they fall on their backs lifeless corpses.
Source:
Jenkins, Sally, and John Stauffer. “The Third Front.” The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy. Anchor Books, 2010. 214-15. Print.
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