Page News & Courier
Heritage and Heraldry
The stern discipline of Stonewall Jackson and the Hard-Luck Page Grays
Article of May 20, 1999
The execution of deserters during the Civil War was not uncommon but the Page Grays of Company H, 33rd Virginia Infantry held a remarkable record of execution sentences - the most of any single company in the 33rd Virginia and likely the highest of any single company in the entire Stonewall Brigade. Interestingly, the majority of all of these men had returned to the company voluntarily, faced their punishments, and fought in future battles - some being killed in battle and one dying as a prisoner-of-war in 1865.
At the �high tide� of the abundance of courts-martial in Stonewall Jackson�s Second Corps in the winter of 1862-63, in addition to seven men sentenced to death, there were eleven others from the Page Grays sentenced to various other punishments including the laying on of between 25 to 39 lashes across a bare back.
Four of those that had been sentenced to execution were fortunate enough to have escaped on technicalities - the courts-martial recorder having improperly maintained a complete record of the courts. Gabrill L. Price, Andrew J. Knight and William Pence were not as fortunate. However, despite their sentences, brigade commander General E.F. Paxton, intervened, writing General Jackson on several points including the fact that the execution of three men from the same company and county might bear undesirable implications in discipline and morale. Instead, Paxton suggested to Jackson that the men be allowed to draw lots leaving only one to be executed. Not one for leniency, Jackson made his comments about the matter and routed the paperwork on to General Robert E. Lee who in turn made his recommendations. Though staff member Henry Kyd Douglas inaccurately stated in later years that on the day of execution the men were all pardoned by President Jefferson Davis, ultimately it appears that the decision for drawing lots was found agreeable. On that fateful day of February 28, 1863, William Pence, the thirty-one year-old laborer from Leakesville, was the unlucky man of the lot.
Map-maker Jedediah Hotchkiss recollected that the condemned man �wept bitterly, wishing to see his family.� However, Mager William Steele, of the 48th Virginia Infantry, recollected much more. After the entire division had formed near the site of the execution in a deep hollow near Camp Winder �the condemned man leaning on the arms of two chaplains� was brought into view. Steele wrote: �we went up to the stake playing the Dead March . . . When we got to the place the men that were carrying the coffin put it down by the side of the stake and the condemned man sat upon it leaning against the stake. The preachers sang and prayed and then shook hands with him.� When asked for his last statements, Pence stated he wished to see his brother, which was not honored. Again the condemned Page man was asked for a last statement to which he replied �No, nothing.� When the order to fire was given Pence �threw up his hands and fell over. He did not speak after he was shot, he gasped for breath twice. His last words were �O what will my poor wife do. . . .� It was just over weeks since William�s seventh wedding anniversary with his wife Rebecca.
On a final note, Andrew Jackson Campbell, a member of the Page Grays and one of the discoverers of the Luray Caverns barely escaped a court-martial of his own that winter. Having been absent without leave from November to December 1862, Campbell however, delivered a satisfactory excuse and went on to see the end of the war and the development of tourism in Luray.
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