“On a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, a man stood and looked down at the fast waters twenty feet below him. His hands were tied behind his back. There was a rope around my neck. One end of it was attached to the crossbeam above his head and hung down to his knees. Several planks laid on the sleepers served as a platform for him and for his executioners, two Federal soldiers under the command of a sergeant, who in peacetime most likely served as a deputy sheriff. Somewhat further away, on the same makeshift scaffold, stood an officer in full captain's uniform, with a weapon. At both ends of the bridge there was a sentry with a gun “on guard”, that is, holding the gun vertically, against the left shoulder, in a hand bent at a right angle - a tense pose, requiring an unnatural straightening of the body...”