Posted on 12/04/2002 8:19:53 PM PST by stainlessbanner
I do not accept your logic,often advanced by liberal opponents of capital punishment today, that it is wrong to execute some guilty murders because other equally guilty (but white or wealthier) murders are not executed. All are deserving of execution and it should not be heard as an exculpation that others, equally deserving, escape their just fate.
You have no idea what I think about capital punishment. You are welcome to your opinion but it seems to me more likely that the confederates decided to kill a few to make up for their embarassment at having been caught with their pants down.
Really? How many men captured from units under the command of your namesake were executed by the Union forces?
I did not presume to devine your opinion of capital punishment. I only commented on the (ill)logic of your stated position as it related to the execution of these prisoners.
You may be right that these men were executed only out of embarassment and that would be a war crime in my book. But we do not know that that was the case. We do know, evidently, that they were commiting sabotage behind enemy lines out of uniform.
Do we know that Forrest's men, for example, were captured raiding behind lines, out of uniform, i.e. with no indicia at all?
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