Robert's Senior Project- 5

I thought I would spend this post talking about punishment in the Civil War. Bottom line, it was severe. No one did something bad and got off easily. Desertion was rampant, of course, and the deserter was not always caught. If the person was caught, a lot of the time the punishment was death. If not, the punishment was still severe. The captain of the 19th OVA, Captain Shields, liked to punish would be deserters by putting them in a really heavy ball and chain and make them do a couple months of hard labor. So you definitely did not want to be caught deserting. There would also be similar punishments if men became really drunk (which often happened). One time, the captain punishment two drunk men by tying them to a tree for a night. Knowing how sever punishments were, the men became really good at hiding whisky and other stolen things. When word got out of an surprise inspection of the camp, the men would hide everything really quickly but in very good hiding spots so the inspector could not find anything. But if you were caught with something, you would really pay for it.