“Tell all my friends to come out of the woods”
Regardless of how factual the following letter may have been, it would certainly seem to have had propaganda value as Confederate armies prepared for the upcoming spring campaigns. The Dispatch would have liked it also because the paper would much prefer to have army numbers increased by rounding up deserters instead of by drafting newspapermen.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch April 7, 1864:
“had been hiding in the woods in Mississippi.” (1864 map)
Last letter of a Deserter.
–Our cavalry, under Col. H. Maury, recently captured a number of deserters from the Confederate army, who had been hiding in the woods in Mississippi. One of them, named Mitchell, was among those who were hung. The following is a copy of a letter written by him just before his execution:
Jones County, March12, 1864
My Dear Wife:
–I avail myself, through the kindness of a friend and minister, to write you a few lines, the last communication you will ever have from me on this earth. It is very painful for me never to see you any more, and in this I bid you a final farewell.
My child! my only child! be a good girl and try to meet me in heaven!
My dear wife, I can only say to you that I am gone to eternity ere you read this letter, and I wists you to do the best you can in this world and try to meet me in the better land. I have a strong hope that I shall be better off. I am going to hang by the neck, which is a torture to my body; but, thank God, the immortality cannot be tortured in this life or in this world. I want you all to get home to heaven when you die.
I have but a short time to reflect, and my mind is very much disturbed and must omit many things that I would like to say. I wish all my friends better than to come to share my fate. I want my relations to take warning by me not to come to my end. I advise my brothers to come in and give up if they can be pardoned, and hear there is a pardon for all that are not caught in arms. Tell all my friends to come out of the woods; it is a bad life and I have come to a bad end, and it may overtake them also. So farewell, my wife and child, for the last time, and may heaven bless you.
Your own dear husband,
H. Mitchell.
