MIlitary Executions

[BettyO]

I've been doing a bit of research regarding military executions and have found out that music also seemed to play a large part in these affairs.

According to various reports, music was played before the condemned were marched to the gallows or to the firing squad. There are various reports to the effect that Southern bands played, and before those who were hanged or shot were marched to their death, the usual choice by southerners was a funeral dirge; in most cases, Handal's Dead March from Saul, taken from his famous opera, Saul.

One instance of a Union execution records that: "Through the corps, ranged in hushed masses on the hill-side, the procession moved to the funeral march, the culprits walking each behind their own coffin." - Harper's Weekly, September 26, 1863. Therefore, Federals also had a liking for dirges....

Which leads me to believe that of course, the execution of the conspirators was perhaps one and the same, and that the last "music" that ever reached the ears of the hapless foursome on July 7, 1865, was at least a military cadence (perhaps not a full band), but a drumbeat, deadly and steady. There are no records that Hartranft had a band on site at the Arsenal.