Hon. D. B. Lucas has written a deeply interesting sketch of John Y. Beall, Acting Master of the Confederate Navy, who was hung under sentence of a court-martial February 24, 1865, and whose execution, Mr. Lucas clearly shows, was without the shadow of law or justice. Mr. Lucas thus describes his death:
Thus we find Beall in Fort Columbus, face to face with his doom, all hope extinguished, every avenue of mercy or escape closed. His friends told him there was still a slight gleam of hope. He responded that he himself entertained none, nor would exchange, he declared, the penalty of death for the living death of perpetual or indefinite imprisonment; he preferred an open grave to a vault.
General Dix allowed his friends to visit him freely. Ministers of his own Church brought him the holy unction of their message, and those of other denominations called on similar errands. The Rev. Joshua Van Dyke visited him on the day before his execution and writes: “I found him to be all that you had described him, and much more. He was confined in a narrow and gloomy cell, with a lamp burning at mid-day; but he received me with as much ease as if he were in his own parlor, and his conversation revealed at every turn the gentleman, the scholar and the Christian. There was no bravado, no strained heroism, no excitement in his words or manner, but a quiet trust in God, and a composure in view of death such as I have read of, but never beheld to the same degree before. He introduced the subject of his approaching end himself, saying that while he did not pretend to be indifferent to life, the mode in which he was to leave it had no terrors or ignominy for him; he could go to heaven through the grace of Christ as well from the gallows as from the battle-field, or his own bed; he died in defence of what he believed to be right; and so far as the particular things for which he was to be executed were concerned, he had no confession to make or repentance to exercise. He did not use one bitter or angry expression towards his enemies, but calmly dedared ”
