Winchester
negatively plays on the reader’s emotions when describing in detail the final incident
in which Dr. Minor finally steps over into the world of insanity. He begins by
telling the readers how the army was towards desertion during the Civil War and
the punishments dealt to the cowards. They began by shooting the soldiers who
ran, but by doing so they realized that by doing so they were diminishing their
numbers; numbers each side of the Civil War so desperately needed. “This piece
of grimly realistic arithmetic persuaded most Civil War commanders, on both
sides, to devise alternative punishments for those who ran away… most
first-time offenders—were usually subjected to public humiliations of varying
kinds.” These punishments varied from shaving half of one’s head to being
forced to carry a yard of rail wherever you went. One of the more permanent
punishments is what drove Dr. Minor off the deep end. “here it seemed was the
perfect combination of pain and humiliation—he could be branded. The letter D
would be seared onto his buttock, hip, or his cheek. It would be a letter one
and a half inches high—the regulations became quite specific on this point—and it
would either be burned on with a hot iron or cut with a razor and the wound
filled with black powder, both to cause irritation and indelibility.” Minor was
forced to brand an Irishman who ran away from the terrors of the Wilderness;
one of the most gruesome battles in the war. He was to use a hot iron on the
man’s cheek. Winchester gave a brief description of the punishment by saying, “The
flesh sizzled, the blood bubbled and steamed; the prisoner screamed and
screamed.”