SHOT FOR DESERTION

Being citizen soilders in the best of American tradition, often men would leave army life to return home to plant or harvest. Or perhaps they would return home during times of family need. They would then return to Army life when harvest was over or planting. It was a common practice early in the war, more in the south than in the north. As the war progressed this tradtion, was put to rest. Often ,like in this case, an example was made of men who were found to be Awol. This is the account of what happened to P . F. CHILDRESS of the 26th inf. 1st Co.I, Tenn. CSA from:

TUPELO BY REV. JOHN H. AUGHEY, A.M.,

CHICAGO:RHODES & McCLURE PUBLISHING CO.1905

"About 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I approached two prisoners who were heavily ironed. They were handcuffed, had bands and chains upon their ankles, similar to mine, and were also chained together and to a bolt in the floor. I inquired for what offence they were incarcerated. The prisoner whom I addressed was a tall gentleman with a very intellectual expression of countenance and of prepossessing manners. He was pale and sad.

"We are charged with desertion."

"Did you desert?"

"I enlisted in the Confederate service for twelve months. At the expiration of my term of service I asked permission to return home, stating that I had learned from a trustworthy source that my family were suffering from a lack of the necessaries of life; that they lived in Tennessee, which is occupied by Federal troops. Confederate money there has no purchasing power, not being worth the paper on which it is printed; that I desired to relieve my family from their distress, and as my term of service had expired, I demanded my discharge. This they refused, stating that the Confederate congress had passed a law requiring all soldiers who had enlisted for any term, however short, to be held to service during the war, and that all who left before its close would be considered guilty of desertion, and if arrested would be shot. Regarding the law as a tyrannical enactment, and of no binding force, I attempted to return to my family, but was arrested and committed to this prison."

"What will be your fate?"

"I don't know, but fear the worst. At our trial Gen. Bragg said some salutary examples must be made to deter soldiers from deserting, or the army would waste away as snow before the bright beams of the vernal sun. His bile and bitterness overflowed in acrimonious invectives."

The other prisoner's statement was a perfect counterpart of his comrade's. The first was named Melville Baillie, of Raleigh, Tennessee, and the other Polk Childress, of Hickory Wythe, Tenn. Their friend, Parley Van Horn, of Colliersville, Tenn., they left sick at the home of his cousin, Felix Grundy Ayres, in Byhalia, Miss., who thus escaped. I left them and walked to the opposite side of the prison, when I observed a file of soldiers drawn up in front of the prison. Two officers entered, and walking up to the prisoners with whom I had just been conversing, unfastened their chains, and ordered them to follow. As the officers passed Capt. Bruce, he asked,

"What are you going to do with these men?"

"Going to shoot them," was the reply.

They then showed him the warrant for their execution, having written across it in red letters, "condemned to death." When the prisoners reached the door, the file of soldiers separated, received the prisoners into the space in their midst, marched them across the railroad, and shot them.

Thus was perpetrated an act of cruel tyranny that cries loudly to heaven for vengeance. Two families, helpless and destitute, were thus each deprived of its head, upon whom they were dependent for support, and abandoned to the cold charity of a selfish world. The wages earned by a year's service in behalf of the wicked, cruel, and vindictive Confederate states, was an ignominious death and a dishonored grave. The widow and the fatherless cry to heaven for vengeance, and their cries have entered into the ears of the Lord Of Sabaoth."