Look into the kindly eyes of Robert E. Lee, still America's greatest military hero, and a true Virginia gentleman. Look more closely and you will find a man who extended almost no mercy to men convicted in the Army of Northern Virginia. Unlike Union commanders, Lee rarely saw a death sentence he didn't like. A thorough statistical analysis of the Union army and the ANVA shows that the Union army had double the rate of men court-martialed, but...
A soldier in the ANVA was twice as likely to be shot, four times as likely to be branded with a red-hot iron, five times as likely to be tattooed with the name of his crime, and six times as likely to be flogged with a whip. CONFEDERATE DEATH SENTENCES is a reference work, cataloging every known death sentence in every Confederate army.
The Confederate armies maintained discipline by flogging, branding, tattooing, hanging, and shooting their soldiers. The disruptions of 1865 scattered and/or destroyed most the records of rebel military justice. The authors have assembled, from many sources, the most complete record of Confederate death sentences ever published. In addition to individuals facing a firing squad, there were mass executions, brothers shot together, fathers and sons shot together, and wives watching their husbands being shot. These vignettes, together with tabulated lists, tell of a hard and unglamorous war, and will be a guide for future writers. 2009, BookSurge Publishing, 86p.
