CXL

Yorktown, Va.,April 13, 1864.

NOTa bit of mail have we had, until yesterday, since our arrival here. Then George Colby came down from Point Lookout, bringing what had accumulated there.

We are expecting to have a military execution of a deserter this afternoon. He is one of our subs, going under the name of John Egin. He was taken while trying to make his way into the rebel lines, was tried yesterday by court martial, and condemned to be shot today between the hours of five and six oâ€™clock in the afternoon. He was making for the rebel lines when he met a man in a gray uniform, and he gave himself dead away. He didnâ€™t know that a gray uniform between the lines was pretty sure to cover one of our scouts, so he unbosomed himself, and was then about-faced and marched back to Yorktown.

Just outside our camp is the grave of a man who was executed a little over a month ago. He was on guard over a prisoner, at Williamsburg, whom he allowed to escape, carrying important information to the rebels. Most of the large number who have deserted since we got here have been picked up at one place or another. Their utter ignorance of the geography of the country has in many instances led to their undoing. It is probable that several of them will meet the same fate that has been decreed for Egin. The second of Gordonâ€™s precious subs, made corporals to spite the old men, made tracks day before yesterday, but was picked up and brought back yesterday. When the bulk of the old men are discharged, and the subs have all run away, and most of the officers have been mustered out, where will the glorious old Second Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers be? I am glad I have not got to stay and serve any longer, for it can never again be the old Second except in name.

Close to our camp is a contraband settlement familiarly known as â€œSlab City.â€ There are several hundred houses. It is laid out in streets, the shanties, built of slabs, split logs, &c., averaging about half the size of an ordinary New Hampshire woodshed. Jess, and I have explored it from one end to the other, and it was as good as a circus. They have quite a corps of teachers, both white and black, and there is more religion to the square inch than in any other part of the United States. There are stores, with little stocks of goods that wouldnâ€™t inventory twenty dollars apiece, and the signs are fine examples of phonetic spelling. Here is one: â€œGROSERIS STOOR.â€ And on two that we saw appeared the magic word â€œGROSEYSâ€â€”the orthography evidently dictated from the same fount of knowledge. The mechanical execution was on a par with the spelling.

Friday, April 15.

This forenoon I witnessed the execution of two deserters from our regiment. One was the John Egin I have spoken of before, who was respited for a day. The other was a man who has gone by the name of Holt, but who last night acknowledged that his name was McGuire, and that he was from Yorkshire, England, where he had a wife and two children. The Second Regiment was drawn up in line, facing the execution ground, with two loaded cannon in position to rake it, one negro regiment in line to the rear of theSecond, and another drawn up at right angles, on its left. When the troops were in position, the two condemned men rode upon the ground, each seated upon his coffin in the bottom of a wagon. Arriving at the spot where they were to be shot to death, they got down from the wagons, their coffins were taken out and placed end to end before the open graves. Then the firing squad of twelve men were drawn up about a dozen paces in front of them. They knelt by their coffins while a Catholic priest, who had come up from Fortress Monroe, conducted the appropriate offices of the church. Then they arose, their handcuffs were taken off, and they removed their coats and vests. Their eyes were bandaged, their wrists tied with white handkerchieves, and each seated on his coffin. What an awful moment it must have been for them when they heard the click of the gun-locks as the executioners cocked their pieces. The next instant they fell back across their coffins, each pierced by five bullets. Holt did not die for several moments, and raised his hands a number of times. There are some eighty or ninety deserters under guard down town, and more will follow in the way these two have gone.

George Colby is down here, and is going into a little sutler business on his own hook, as he does not think Mr. Bailey will take the risk and bother of doing business under present conditions.

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