Andersonville Raiders - Arrest and Punishment

Arrest and Punishment

Most of the Regulators' arrests of suspected Raiders took place between June 29 and July 10, 1864, when the main offenders were tried and hanged. The Regulators were able to round up most of the Raiders by attacking them at their headquarters; while the Raiders put up considerable resistance, they were overthrown by the Regulators. In his diary, Ransom notes that the first night of arrests were successful because, "thirty or forty of the worst characters in camp had been taken outside".

Ransom also notes that it was very difficult to protect the captured Raiders from being lynched, rather than being given a fair trial as promised. Estimates of how many Raiders were arrested vary from source to source, but the number is likely to be somewhere between 75 (according to what Ransom believed) and 150 (as estimated by McElroy).

After the Raiders' arrests, as promised by Captain Wirz, the offenders were put on trial for their crimes against their fellow prisoners. The court was set up much like a typical court, including a judge and jury of the offenders' peers. Of those who were convicted by the court, many were given relatively light sentences, such as "setting in the stocks, strung up by the thumbs, thumb screws, head hanging, etc." Another of the lesser punishments was the running of the gauntlet. Those sentenced to this punishment were forced to run through a gauntlet of inmates who were given clubs and allowed to hit the offenders as they ran by. In some cases, the Raiders running the gauntlet were able to escape with just a few blows to the head, but a few were beaten so badly that they died as a result of their injuries.

While most of the convicted Raiders received non-lethal punishments, six members, who were considered the group's leaders, were given the most severe punishment: death by hanging.

The six leaders – Sarsfield, Collins, Curtis, Delaney, Munn, and Sullivan – were executed on July 11, 1864, on a set of gallows that was built that day. On the way to the gallows, Curtis escaped from his rope ties and fled, but was caught by the police and returned to the gallows. Each man was given time to say some last words before he was hanged. Munn expressed great remorse for his acts and hoped that God would show him mercy; Collins pleaded for mercy from the crowd and claimed that he was innocent; and Sarsfield gave a long speech in which he, too, expressed some regret. Delaney and Curtis, however, showed no contrition; Delaney went so far as to say that he would "rather be hanged than live here ". All six were buried separately from the rest of those who died at the camp. Their execution marked the end of the Raiders' reign over Andersonville.