It will be noticed that the sentence was to be executed as soon as made public. The time fixed was between the 15th and 22d days of June. This was the 18th. The sentence had been received the preceding day, and the time employed in clearing a spot of wooded ground then lying east of the city cemetery, but since included in its bounds, and in erecting a scaffold there. But no word of the awful preparations had been allowed to reach us. According to the orders of General E. Kirby Smith, several days' respite might have been allowed; but in a communication to the Confederate Secretary of War, Colonel G. I. Foreacre, post-commander at Atlanta, says, "General Smith only sent from Knoxville instructions and orders to have seven of them hung, which was promptly attended to by myself." After the sentences had been read came the farewells,--which, in their full meaning, we could scarcely realize,--farewells with no hope of meeting again in this world! Our comrades were dear as brothers to us, and to stand helpless while they were dragged away to the scaffold froze our blood and crushed our hearts. These doomed men were brave. On the battle-field they had never faltered in the presence of danger. They were ready to die, if need were, for their country; but to die on the scaffold,--to die as murderers die,--this was almost too much for human nature to endure. Then, too, they were destitute of the best support a man can have in the presence of death. Although most of them had been of excellent moral character, yet they had no firmly-grounded religious hope. The near prospect of eternity, into which they were thus to be hurled without a moment's preparation, was black and appalling. Wilson had been a professed disbeliever in revelation, and many a time had argued with me for hours at a time. But in this awful moment he said to me, "Pittenger, I believe you are right now! Oh, try to be better prepared, when your turn comes to die, than I am!" Then laying his hand on my head, with a muttered "God bless you!" we parted. I saw no more the one I had loved and trusted as few others in the world. Shadrack was profane in speech and reckless in action, but withal exceeding kind-hearted, lovable, and always merry. Now turning to us with a voice the forced calmness of which was more affecting than a wail of agony, he said, "Boys, I am not prepared to meet my Jesus." When asked by some of us, in tears, to trust in His mercy, and to think of heaven, he answered, still in tones of thrilling calmness, "I'll try! I'll try! But I know I am not prepared." Samuel Slavens, who was a man of immense strength and iron resolution, turned to his friend Buffum, and could only articulate, "Wife--children--tell--" when utterance failed. John Scott had been married only three days before he came to the army, and the thought of his young and sorrowing wife nearly drove him to despair. He could only clasp his hands in silent agony.