Customer Reviews

Confederate Death Sentences: A Reference Guide

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This seventy-nine-page reference guide is invaluable for scholars or just interested laymen researching the Confederacy or the Civil War Justice System. One example of the fascinating things I learned from reading this volume was that Robert E. Lee was not the South's most senior general. That honor goes to General Samuel Cooper. "Cooper never heard a secessionist cannon fired in anger. Instead he oversaw the less glamorous but still essential task of filing, compiling and directing the army's records." His work provides much of the data included in this research tool.
The book is divided into the seven following sections: "Death Sentences in the Index Project, Sources for Death Sentences and Executions, Men Executed in Civil War Tennessee, The Roster of Confederate Courts-Martial, Death Sentences in the Army of Tennessee, Dead for Certain" and "General Orders Illustrated."
The above information has been statistically analyzed as well. "In brief, compared to a convicted Union soldier, a convicted Army of Northern Virginia soldier was more than twice as likely to be ordered shot, four times as likely to be ordered branded, five times as likely to be ordered tattooed and three times as likely to be ordered flogged." Not all the Confederate Army's death sentences were carried out and because most of the records were burned by the Confederacy at the war's end, it's very difficult to know for certain. The information has to be discovered piece-meal using some of the other sources listed in the book. Most Confederate deserters who were sentenced to death were shot. Hanging was reserved for "spies, rapists and traitors." It's doubtful any Union Officers were executed and only two or three (?) Confederate officers were executed. One exception was "a chaplain hanged for encouraging mutiny. Sixteen deserters were shot at the same time."
This is a very useful, if somewhat morbid research tool. It shows how much the military justice codes for both the Union and Confederate Armies were alike. Most of the commanders on both sides of the war were friends who had been educated at West Point.
The authors and researchers involved in this project have made a very valuable contribution to understanding the Civil War.

Once again Tom Lowry has shared the fruits of his intensive & extensive research with the reference guide to Confederate court-martial cases which resulted in the sentence of death. Finding any type of Confederate documentation is often difficult, especially due to the destruction of Confederate records in the Fall of Richmond in early April, 1865. Tom and his wife Beverly have literally spent years of research of both Union and Confederate court-martial cases, the results of which Tom has published in several books and magazine articles. CONFEDERATE DEATH SENTENCES is not a book that you can sit down and read but an excellent guide to allowing the reader or researcher to find more specific information on a particular case. A case in point: the execution of Privates Dennis Corcoran and Michael O'Brien on 9th December 1861 at Centreville, Virginia. These two members of Wheat's Louisiana troops were the first two Confederate soldiers to be executed in what would become the Army of Northern Virginia. References to their death sentences can be found in CONFEDERATE DEATH SENTENCES on Pages 12 and 19 (in Pvt. Corcoran's case, the guide refers to the man as Private Cochrane, but his tombstone in Centreville and local historical markers show his name as Corcoran).
Anyone wishing to find out more information about these two unfortunate soldiers (their execution was also meant to be an example by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston for cases of lack of discipline in the ranks---he ordered his entire army out to view the execution) can use CONFEDERATE DEATH SENTENCES as a starting point to the actual records and additional information. Tom also directs the researcher or reader to consider the only other recent works on Confederate court-martial cases, thus allowing the researcher or reader to attain the full complement of what's available today on these cases. CONFEDERATE DEATH SENTENCES is highly recommended as a reference work, and reflects the usual excellent efforts made in the field of research by Dr. Tom Lowry and wife Beverly,