Execution by hanging

[Bobbie]

80% of the ammunition failing is amazing. The description gives the dates but not the year and where this took place. being that it was a draftee and a substitute it must have been in 1864 (Sept 1863 was a bit too early in the draft process) when the system of ammunition manufacture and distribution had been pretty well organized.

Sometimes heavy rain might have effected ammunition but this doesn't seem to be the case. I have never before seen such wholesale ammunition failure. Imagine if that CT regiment was holding a crucial point in a line of battle during a large scale engagement and then experienced 80% failure rate? I assume the ammunition failed to fire which would mean that a time consuming process would be involved in clearing the weapons.

Prroh,
I checked this in the book that I had taken this excerpt from, and it appears that this event happened in September 1863, at Robinson's Run, near Cedar Mountain.
Maybe the 80% failure rate could result from soldiers' unwilingness to shoot their comrades, and not only from any ammunition defects?

 

[Bobbie]

I am curious as well regarding the hanging for the offense of rape . . . desertion is defintely not considered honorable and yet those soldiers were subject to a firing squad. Could it be because desertion is not a violent crime?

Interesting question, Rebelgurl. I guess that it could have something to do with a need for a more immediate effectuation of the death sentence without time-consuming preparation. But it's only a guess.

 

[prroh]

Prroh,
I checked this in the book that I had taken this excerpt from, and it appears that this event happened in September 1863, at Robinson's Run, near Cedar Mountain.

Thanks for the date and I find it amazing, the draft was only three months old and already desertions among draftees and substitutes had started. Most executed deserters were not first time offenders.

Maybe the 80% failure rate could result from soldiers' unwilingness to shoot their comrades, and not only from any ammunition defects?

Could you explain how the unwilling soldiers could have caused defects-looking outcomes? Not putting caps in their rifles would be easily corrected. Pulling the bullet off the cartridge on such a large scale would have been noticed. The fact that new ammunition was exchanged sounds like the officers had pretty solid grounds. They had just come back from picket or skirmish duty. Even if there was no combat, the normal custom was to fire off the round in the rifle as you went off duty, especially in the morning.

 

[ole]

The fact that new ammunition was exchanged sounds like the officers had pretty solid grounds.

My first thought echoed Bobby's: reluctance to shoot. But that the ammo was quickly replaced suggests otherwise.

Execution for desertion was not so much a punishment as it was a deterrence for others who might wish also to desert. Execution for a real crime was another matter.

Loved the nail and sharp knife examples.

Ole

 

[Bobbie]

Could you explain how the unwilling soldiers could have caused defects-looking outcomes? Not putting caps in their rifles would be easily corrected. Pulling the bullet off the cartridge on such a large scale would have been noticed. The fact that new ammunition was exchanged sounds like the officers had pretty solid grounds. They had just come back from picket or skirmish duty. Even if there was no combat, the normal custom was to fire off the round in the rifle as you went off duty, especially in the morning.

Prroh,
I'm kind of ignorant about technical details and this is why I asked this question. I appreciate your reply.

 

[prroh]

My first thought echoed Bobby's: reluctance to shoot. But that the ammo was quickly replaced suggests otherwise.

Execution for desertion was not so much a punishment as it was a deterrence for others who might wish also to desert. Execution for a real crime was another matter.

Executions, so the accepted story goes, are for the deterrent value and for the fitness for the crime, not for revenge, regardless of the crime.

When the PA troops mutioned at Morristown, Washington ordered that the mutioneers be decimated, so that one in ten were executed by the remaining nine. When one member of a firing party complained that he could not fire into his brother and wished to relieved of the duty, Washington agreed to the request on the condition that the brothers exchange places. The request was dropped. One did not doubt that Washington maintained discipline.

Military tradition holds that at least one of the rifles/muskets should not contain a live round so that the soldiers would never know for sure if they had anything to do with the killing of a comrade.

When Eddie Slovik was executed in WWII, the OIC loaded the M-1 rifles and put a blank round in one. What he had forgotten, in the excitment, was that the M-1 was semi-automatic, meaning that a live round would be ejected in a very noisy and conspicous way, but a blank would not move the bolt nor eject the round and would have to be ejected manually.

 

[prroh]

Prroh,
I'm kind of ignorant about technical details and this is why I asked this question. I appreciate your reply.

Watching your fellows being shot to dealth was a harrowing part of army life in those days. Witnessing an event with 80% defective ammunition must have been horrible with soldiers trying to clear fouled weapons and, no doubt cursing, officers shouting in attempts to regain order and maybe specators shouting out from the ranks for a merciful coup de grace.

When Eddie Slovik was shot for desertion in Jan 1945 , the only such execution since the Civil War, he did not die instantly and Huie, in his book The Execution of Pvt Slovik, describes almost total confusion as to what happens next, despite hours spent reviewing the appropriate field manuals before the event, including making a restraining litter should Slovik need to be carried to the execution site.