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I / Social Disorder and Violence in the Land ofthe Vanquished O N MARCH 2, 1865, Confederate officers mustered the elevenhundred men of the Galveston, Texas, garrison on an open field near the main barracks. Shortly after 2 P.M., a private in Dege's Artillery Battery, flanked by the post commander and an army chaplain , marched to the center of the field. At the sight of the mule-drawn wagon with its open coffin, the young soldier began weeping, then recovered his composure and stood at attention as an officer read the findings of the court martial. "You have been found guilty of willful desertion from the Army of the Confederate States of America," he concluded, "and it is the judgement of this court that you be executed without delay as a just punishment for your crime and a fitting examplefor your comrades." With the sharp rattle of a rifle volley, Antone Ricker, age seventeen, was dead.1 Two weeks later as Nathan Bedford Forrest maneuvered his troops west of Columbus, Mississippi, to avoid encirclement by Union troops, three of his soldiers defiantly called him out from his breakfast at a Mississippi farmhouse where he had set up temporary headquarters. They "told him dey wasn't going to fight no more," Henry Gibbs recalled nearly seventy years later. Forrest "served de law on em," remembered the former slave, who had brought the general his breakfast that morning. "Dem three men stood in a row," said Gibbs, and at the roll ofa drum, a firing squad aimed, "dey fired and de three men was no more."11 i. Flake's Bulletin (Galveston, Tex.), March 3, 1865; Houston Tri-WeeUy Telegraph, March 6, 1865. a. OR, Vol. II, Pt. a, pp. 1134-95; George G. Rawick (ed.). The American Slave: A 6 Social Disorder and Violence / 7 Such executions were designed to stem the spreading wave of desertions in the Confederate army, but they succeeded only in advertising its disintegration . The Confederacy was dying and neither draconian measures nor patriotic exhortations could stem the spreading defeatism of soldiers and civilians alike. As late as December of 1864, a South Carolina planter had commented that most of his friends were like ostriches, plunging their heads into the sand. Even those who suspected the worst were "reticent, not daring to speak what they think."3 The continuing list ofConfederate defeats in January and February finally flushed peace advocates into the open. Although their criticism was often expressed in cautious and veiled language, it reflected the widespread loss of confidence in the future of the Confederacy. By March, a peace movementof sorts existed in every southern state and rumors of "special conventions" were rife throughout the region. Such defeatism enraged those Confederate patriots who demanded lastditch resistance. Capitulation was "unthinkable," argued the Richmond Whig, for any settlement short of independence would leave the "cultivated and refined ladies" of the South "subject to their own slaves, overawed by negroes in Yankee uniforms . . . and forced . . . to the embrace of brutal Yankee husbands." Other opponents of surrender railed against "traitorous croakers and submissionists" and outlined nightmarish scenarios of slave insurrections, Negro supremacy, property confiscation, and the inevitable "savage cruelty" that would be inflicted by the "fiendish Yankees." The Confederacy, said one southerner, represented all that remained between anarchy and "constitutional law and conservatism" in America.4 Those who found it hardest to face the prospect of defeat during the fading weeks of the Confederacy coupled each confirmed disaster with the hope of some miraculous reprieve. The outlook was bleak, a Georgia soldier admitted after he learned of the fall of Fort Fisher on January 15. But he eagerly endorsed the suggestion of the Richmond Enquirer that the Composite Autobiography, Supplementary Ser. i (is vols.; Westport, Conn., 1977), VIII, 834-35. 3. James Hemphill to Robert Hemphil], December 30, 1864, in Hemphill Collection, DUL. Southerners1 privatediariesand correspondenceas a rule reflected a gloomy pessimism at odds with their public statements.For example, seeGeorge Anderson Mercer Diary, SHC, January 15, 1864; David Schenck Diary, SHC, February 19, 1864; A. R. Rowzie to Thomas Ruffin, March 4, 1865, in Thomas Ruffin Papers, SHC. 4. Richmond Whig, February n, 1865; Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, April 34, 1865; Columbia Carolinian, n.d., quoted in Yorkville (S.C.) Enquirer, February I, April 36, 1865; Columbia (S.C.) Phoenix,April aa, 1865; Selma Daily Messenger, March 30, 1865; Mobile Daily Advertiser and Register, January 34, February 8, 1865; Richmond Daily Dispatch,January ao, 1865; Lucy Walton...

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