Digital Commonwealth — Boston Public Library
Troops drawn up in hollow square to witness an execution
August 1864
From "War Memories" catalog: This view was taken before Petersburg in 1864, and shows the troops formed in a hollow square to witness the execution of a Negro soldier named Johnson, who was hanged on this scaffold, by order of a general court-martial, having been convicted of an attempted rape of a white woman, whose house was within the Union lines near here, but whose husband was in the Rebel army.
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