A link to history
Civil War-era letter connects past with the present
By JESSICA KELLER
ARGUS OBSERVER
Saturday, November 14, 2009 11:15 PM PST
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| Burrell Lovell, Vale, sits in his living room with some of his military memorabilia from his experience in World War II. Lovell, whose ancestor wrote a letter to a friend during the Civil War that mentioned the hanging of a soldier who killed another, finds the incident described in the letter interesting in light of the recent shootings that took place at Fort Hood, Texas. |
VALE —
Burrell Lovell, 90, Vale, finds the parallels and differences between the recent Fort Hood, Texas, shooting rampage and a story an ancestor told in a letter during the Civil War interesting.
In a copy of a letter from Lovell’s great-great-great-grandfather’s nephew, Japhet Byram Lovell, to a friend dated Dec. 26, 1861, from Fredericks City, Md., Lovell, a member of the 28th New York Volunteer Regiment, describes a hanging his brigade was ordered to watch involving a man from the 46th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment who killed the major of that regiment three months earlier while they were camped at Darnstown. According to the letter, the man was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged.
“The sentence was carried into effect last Monday,” the letter said. “He was brought out by the Provost Guard, a gallows was erected in a field adjoining our camp. The poor devil was brought out blindfolded and in a very few moments out went the ‘drop’ and down went Mr. Man, and there he was in a very embarrassing situation to say the least of it, for didn’t a thing did he have to set his foot on at all. He hung about 30 minutes and was taken down and pronounced a goner.
“Our whole Brigade was ordered out without arms to witness the execution. I never saw as much indifference as was manifested on this occasion. The men did not seem to care any more if a dog had been hanged. — This kind of life has a strong tendency to demoralize. Men become indifferent to anything — they care little what becomes of them.”
Burrell Lovell said what struck him about the letter is it described violence by one member of the military against another in the Civil War. About 150 years later, a tragedy on a larger scale, but still involving violence in the military, took place in Texas.
“It was quite interesting to me because, 150 years ago, that soldier committed the act (of murder) and was court-martialed, and three months later was hung, and the whole regiment was called out to witness it ... with no weapons,” he said, surmising that all the brigade members were involved, albeit weaponless, because the military “didn’t want any more problems, shall we say, with somebody else getting shot.”
He said it is an important point that the murder, investigation and hanging all took place in a matter of three months.
Lovell said he doesn’t have the same faith the current investigation and murder proceedings against Maj. Nidal Hasan, the suspect behind the Fort Hood shootings, will be carried out as expeditiously.
“It’ll be eight years before they complete this investigation, and they never will punish him,” Lovell theorized.
According to an Associated Press story, Maj. Nidal Hasan will be prosecuted in the military justice system and could face the death penalty. According to information from the Death Penalty Information Center, however, the last military execution was on April 13, 1961, when U.S. Army Private John A. Bennett was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempted murder.
Only the president has the power to commute a death sentence or confirm an execution. According to the Death Penalty Information Center Web site, five defendants currently sit on death row, two of whom have exhausted their appeals and one of whom is waiting for an order from the president to be executed.
A military jury must be unanimous to convict and sentence a defendant to death, which would be by lethal injection.
“I would like to live long enough to see what they do,” Lovell said. “I hate to see somebody commit murder and walk away.”
Whatever Hasan’s motives were for the Fort Hood shootings, however, Lovell said he does not believe a lot can be done by the military to prevent incidents such as Fort Hood or even the one his ancestor wrote about.
He said it is impossible to entirely prepare people for the stress of war, nor it is possible to determine who will “crack” or when.
“It’s something that they can’t put their hands on, the psychiatrists,” he said.
