man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama,[1] looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners – two private soldiers of the Federal army,[2] directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform