Homefront: Capture and Execution of 42nd Va. Deserters by Franklin County Vigilantes
863/09/11=863/09/12
On 863/09/18, Danville Register reported that “the citizens of Franklin County have inaugurated a regular war against deserters.

“In the early part of last week, a band of deserters went to the plantation of three individuals, Monroe Thompson, Harvey Thompson and Mrs. Hays, a widow lady, and burned their barns, with the crops contained in them, together with their hay, oats, and everything they could set fire to. The people having ascertained that these incendiaries were living in a cave about eight miles from Franklin Court House, armed at once, surrounded and succeeded in capturing them on Friday night last [863/09/11].

“On Saturday [863/09/12], three of these deserters thus taken, who were known to be guilty of burning the barns, etc., viz: Robert Saul, James Saul and a man named Patterson, were brought forward for a trial before a jury of the citizens who had taken the matter in hand and, the evidence being deemed conclusive of their guilt, they were without any regular process of law condemned to be shot.
“On Saturday evening [863/09/12] the two Sauls were conducted by a large body of citizens into an old field and executed in military style; Patterson having turned evidence against [the Sauls] was sent to jail and now awaits further conciliation [consideration?]. Fifty one guns were fired at the two criminals who were shot, but no person belonging to the army took a hand in the exectution, the affair being managed and conucted wholly by citizens of that county. The men confessed their guilt previous to the execution.” [42Va: 393, 16] “

Lynchburg Virginian on 863/09/16 reported: “Two deserters, named Saul, brothers [James P. and Robert K., K/42nd Va], were shot in Franklin County Monday [863/09/14] by citizens. They had perpetrated acts of incendiarism and other outrages, when the citizens of the neighborhood rose up and executed summary vengeance on the offenders. The mountain regions of that county are said to be infested with deserters who commit all manner of depredations. Vigourous steps are now being taken for their arrest both by military and civil authorities and many have already been brought to justice. Enrolling officer Ridgeway [Capt. William C. Ridgeway, D/58Va.] is much commended for his vigiliance.” [42Va: 393, 15]

A story, “The Saul Brothers,” by L.S., appearing in the 984/11/00 Virginia Appalachian Notes, reported: “During the Civil War there were three Saul Brothers in the Boone’s Mill area of Franklin County, who were Union sympathizers and were accused [of] burning barns in the neighborhood. Their hideout was in a cliff behind the present day Antioch Church of the Bretheren. Here they apparently found a cave and used this as their base of operations until captured.
“Not far away Hickman had erected a mill on the Blackwater River. The brothers undertook to post a warning that this would be burned. At the same time the sheriff of Franklin County was Owen Price and an all out effort was made to capture the Union sympathizers. The three Saul brothers were captured and a trial took place at Charity Chapel, which stood on the site of the present intersection of 643 & 641, approximately half way between Antioch Church of the Bretheren and Hickman’s Mill. This is near Retreat Store. The three Saul brothers were tried, found guilty and were executed by firing squad.

“Twelve rifles were loaded without shot and six were loaded with shot. My great-grandfather told me that one gentleman stated he knew his rifle was loaded because he aimed at a button and the ‘button jest went aflying.’ I can remember one of the small Kentucky rifles that was used.

“’Charity Chapel’ no longer exists and the present roadway passes over the site of the orgininal Charity Chapel. The county poor farm was located nearby and was in existence many years before this event.” [42Va: 393, 15]

Editorial by Gordon E. Saul, Col. U.S. Army (ret.) in the 993/10/25 Franklin News-Post this day, entitled “Book on county history brings disappointment,” criticized the account in the “Bicentennial of Franklin County” by John Salmon of the execution of the Saul brothers at Charity Chapel on 12 Sept. 1863. Saul accused the author of “the grossest oversimplification, superficial analysis and lack of factual substantiation,” resulting in “a grievous injustice to a pioneer family of Franklin County, the descendants of Samuel Saul, who have lived in Franklin County continuously from 1794 to the present time.” To support his criticism, Saul noted the following:
1. The legal process guaranteed by the Constitution, as well as the District Court and Franklin County sheriff, who had a militia contingent to support him, were responsible for ensuring the due process of law.
2. Neither of the wartime newspaper accounts were based on reporters at the scene; and both papers' editorial history marked them as “propagandist for the Confederacy.”
3. There was no account in the oral tradition of Franklin County that linked the Saul brothers with the deserters who fortified themselves in the mountains of Franklin County. In fact, the cave of the Saul brothers was located on land adjacent to the Rutraugh (sic) family cemetery between Gogginsville and Retreat, the communities from which the Saul boys were drafted, and less than two miles from the site at which they were executed.
4. The men who carried out the “mob justice” at Charity Chapel likely were themselves relatives of or themselves draft evaders. No family was more prominently represented in any Confederate Army unit than was the Saul family in K/42nd Va. Seven young [Saul] men [served in K/42nd], only two of whom survived the war and one of them was severely wounded.
5. “No company sized unit during the Civil War experienced less ingenious tactical leadership, was more poorly supported or suffered more devastating losses” than did K/42nd Va. at Cedar Mountain in August 1862. John Saul, the brother of the Saul boys at Charity Chapel, was KIA at Cedar Mountain. His brothers, “at least in part, deserted to notify his widow of John Saul’s death and to look out for the welfare of their own wives and children.” The Charity Chapel executions created two widows and six small children without fathers.
6. James D. Saul, Sr., a veteran of the War of 1812, who had opposed Virginia’s secession, was forced at gunpoint to watch the execution of “his two surviving sons.” There is no account of an identified individual presenting material evidence, or who testified against the Saul brothers, except the man Patterson.

“To summarize…in its best light Charity Chapel was a vigilante action by irate neighbors, who took the law into their own hands in an effort to protect their homes and property. Equally persuasive is an argument that Charity Chapel was a vindictive and vicious crime, visited on two young fathers who, like thousands of other contemporaries, demoralized by the disintegrating confederate army and fearful for the safety and welfare of their families, drifted back home. However, these boys were harassed and eventually murdered by their neighbors.” [42Va: 393, 16-17]