The murder of a Confederate soldier by Gen. Wilde.
The
Norfolk (Virginia) correspondent of the New York
Times gives a full account of the hanging in
North Carolina of
private Bright 62d Georgia cavalry, by
Gen. Wilde, upon the charge of being a "bushwhacker." The murder was one of the most deliberate and fiendish that has been committed during the war. The letter says:
‘
Two hundred men, under command of
Captain Frye, were sent to a point near the mouth of the
Pasquotank, with orders to scour the country to
Currituck Sound.
The long train of wagons to accompany the main column was ordered to be in readiness by day light the next morning, and lastly a court martial was convened to try the prisoners in our possession, now numbering about twenty.--Of these eight were found guilty of various offences and ordered to be taken to
Norfolk, two were retained as hostages, the guerilla was sentenced to death, and the rest were ordered to be discharged.
The following morning the pickets were called in, and the column moved, and in the midst of a drenching rain the place was evacuated, having been held six days.
’
About noon, the sun coming out, a halt was ordered.
The General and his staff ode forward to a small unfinished building, designated for a post-office, standing upon a knoll at a cross road.
Sufficient boards and laths were knocked off to afford an unobstructed view of the proceedings from two sides, when one of the officers, producing a cord, tied a hangman's knot at one end of it, and, standing upon the head of an empty cider barrel, made the other rast to one of the joists overhead.
After considerable experimenting, the barrel was made to serve for both the scaffold and the drop, being ingeniously balanced upon one of the floor timbers, and held in place by a wedge which could be instantly removed.
From this to one of the windows a board was laid, and thence another to the ground outside, forming an inclined plane.--Meanwhile most of the officers had ridden forward and tied their horses to the tence of an adjacent farm house, whose inmates had closed all the window blinds, and a crowd of colored soldiers encircling the building, watching in silence those ominous proceedings.
Lieutenant-Colonel Shorttiff, of the Fifth United States, was appointed spiritual adviser to the criminal, and went back with a guard to bring him to the place of execution.
When in formed that he had but a few minutes to live, and was counseled to improve this time in making his peace with God, he dropped upon his knees in the road and prayed. "O, merciful Father, look down upon me! " These words alone he repeated a hundred times, until the acting
Chaplain stopped him. He then rose to his feet walked up the inclined board with a firm step, at the point of the bayonets of the colored guard, advanced quickly to the head of the cider barrel, and stood under the house.
This being placed around his neck,
Col. Shorttiff invoked the throne of Grace in behalf of the guilty wretch.
As the word "Amen" dropped from his lips, the
General, who had taken charge of the drop, pulled the wedge — the barrel tipped, the guerilla dropped.
He was a man of about thirty, a rough, stout fellow, was tressed in butternut homespun, and looked the very ideal of a guerilla.
He died of strangulation, his heart not ceasing to beat for twenty minutes. Then a slip of paper was pinned to his back, on which the
General had previously written: "This guerilla hanged by order of
Brigadier- General Wild-Daniel Bright, of
Pasquotank county." And the body was left hanging there, a warning to all passing bushwhackers.