Now desertion is a great offence in a soldier; in this army it is one of the most common; for nearly ten per cent of the American army has deserted in Mexico, not to mention the desertions before the army reached that country. It is related that forty-eight men were hanged at once for desertion; not hanged as you judicially murder men in time of peace, privately, as if ashamed of the deed, in the corner of a jail, and by a contrivance which shortens the agony, and makes death humane as possible. These forty-eight men were hanged slowly; put to death with painful procrastinations, their agony wilfully prolonged, and death embittered by needless ferocity. But that is not all: it is related, that these men were doomed to be thus murdered on the day when the battle of Churubusco took place. These men, awaiting their death, were told they should not suffer till the American flag should wave its stripes over the hostile walls. So they were kept in suspense an hour, and then slowly hanged one by one. You know the name of the officer on whom this barbarity rests: it was Colonel Harney, a man whose reputation was black enough and base enough before. His previous deeds, however, require no mention here. But this man is now a General, and so on the high road to the Presidency, whenever it shall please our Southern masters to say the word. Some accounts say there were more than forty-eight who thus were hanged. I only give the number of those whose names lie printed before me as I write. Perhaps the number was less; it is impossible to obtain exact information in respect to the matter, for the Government has not yet published an account of the punishments inflicted in this war. The information can only be obtained by a "Resolution" of either house of Congress, and so is not likely to be had before the election. But at the same time with the execution, other deserters were scourged with fifty lashes each, branded with a letter D, a perpetual mark of infamy on their cheek, compelled to wear an iron yoke, weighing eight pounds, about their neck. Six men were made to dig the grave of their companions, and were then flogged with two hundred lashes each.
I wish this hanging of forty-eight men could have taken place in State street, and the respectable citizens of Boston, who like this war, had been made to look on and see it all; that they had seen those poor culprits bid farewell to father, mother, wife, or child, looking wistfully for the hour which was to end their torment, and then, one by one, have seen them slowly hanged to death; that your representative, ye men of Boston, had put on all the halters! He did help put them on; that infamous vote, I speak not of the motive, it may have been as honorable as the vote itself was infamous, doomed these eight and forty men to be thus murdered.