Sentence of Death for a Tiger

In a post on April 16th I promised I would explain the case of Charles Linton, one of the few casualties of the Pamunkey Heavy Artillery during the war. 

In short how, did he wind up being put up against the wall.

Sentence of Death.- On Saturday morning last Capt. Alexander, Assistant Provost Marshal, read the sentence of death, pronounced by a Court-Martial, on Charles Kelley, alias Charles Linton, formerly a member of the company I, 15th Louisiana regiment, now confined in Castle Thunder, for substitution and desertion. The accused, it seems, after being released from the 15th La. regiment, became a substitute in the Pamunkey Artillery, from which he deserted. The sentence is that the accused is to be taken to Chaffin's Bluff, on the 20th of June, and there shot to death by musketry. Linton denies being the man who substituted and deserted, and is getting up a petition to Gen. Elzey*, asking a pardon.

- Daily Dispatch, June 8, 1863

Execution of a Deserter.- Charles Kelly, alias Linton, who has deserted twice and substituted twice, was shot at Chaffin's Bluff Saturday morning. He met his fate very calmly, requesting the firing squad to take good aim at him. At the signal the squad fired, three balls piercing his heart and three entering his head.

-Daily Dispatch, June 22, 1863



*General Arnold Elzey, Commandant of the Department of Richmond

February 1864- The Fate of Private Boyle

 "He carries ..with, him," says Major Cronin "not only the guilt of an atrocious murder, but the consciousness of having thwarted one of the boldest and best planned expeditions of the whole war."-New York Times.

Once Condemned to be Hanged.

From the New York Sun.

 John Boyle was sentenced to be hanged in Williamsburg, Va., in 1863 for killing an officer, and he escaped from confinement. He was met in New York by a former comrade in arms about fifteen years ago, where he was working in a boiler shop, and afterward fled the city, fearing, it is supposed, that he would be rearrested and executed. He had relatives living in New York and a brother of his is an employe of a railroad in Jersey City. He has been living under an assumed name in the west, and has written to his relatives here at regular intervals. They received a letter from him last week. He was then working as a miner at Crested Butte, Col., in the mine where the disastrous explosion occurred on Jan. 24. His relatives believe he was one of the fifty victims of that disaster.

. . .

How the rebels had learned of Wistar's expedition has never been made known with certainty. A rebel prisoner however, taken after the disappointment at Bottom's bridge declared that a man giving bis name as John Boyle had been captured nearly dead from exhaustion and exposure, in their lines on the night of February 2. He told them he was a deserter from Wistar, and gave them, so the rebel prisoner said, the intelligence that enabled them to throw a strong force in the way of Gen. Wistar, and thus thwart what might have been one of the most brilliant and important movements of the army during the war.

-The Worthington Advance(Worthington, Minn.)February 14, 1884