llen headlong to the
ground. I didn't faint, but the spectacle, for the time being,
well-nigh made me sick. It is true that from time immemorial the
punishment of a convicted spy has been death by hanging. The safety of
whole armies, even the fate of a nation, may perhaps depend on the
prompt and summary extinction of the life of a spy. As long as he is
alive he may possibly escape, or, even if closely guarded, may succeed
in imparting his dangerous intelligence to others who will transmit it
in his stead; hence no mercy can be shown. But in spite of all that,
this event impressed me as somehow being unspeakably cruel and
cold-blooded. On one side were thousands of men with weapons in their
hands, coolly looking on; on the other was one lone, unfortunate boy.
My conscience has never troubled me for anything I may have done on the
firing line, in time of battle. There were the other fellows in plain
sight, shooting, and doing all in their power to kill us. It was my
duty to shoot at them, aim low, and kill some of them, if possible, and
I did the best I could, and have no remorse whatever. But whenever my
memory recalls the choking to death of that boy, (for that is what was
done), I feel bad, and don't like to write or think about it. But, for
fear of being misunderstood, it will be repeated that the fate of a
spy, when caught, is death. It is a military necessity. The other side
hanged our spies, with relentless severity, and were justified in so
doing by laws and usages of war. Even the great and good Washington
approved of the hanging of the British spy, Maj. Andre, and refused to
commute the manner of his execution to being shot, although Andre made
a personal appeal to him to grant him that favor, in order that he
might die the death of a soldier. The point with me is simply this: I
don't want personally to have anything to do, in any capacity, with
hanging a man, and don't desire even to be in eye-sight of such a
gruesome thing, and voluntarily never have. However, it fell to my lot
to be an involuntary witness of two more military executions while in
the service. I will speak of them now, and then be through with this
disagreeable subject. On March 18th, 1864, two guerrillas were hanged
in the yard of the penitentiary at Little Rock, by virtue of the
sentence of a court martial, and my regiment acted as guard at the
execution. We marched into the penitentiary inclosure, and formed
around the scaffold in hollow squ