behind AotW

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23 year old Lieutenant Colonel William H Betts, a former farmer from Tuskegee, AL, led the 13th Alabama Infantry in combat at Sharpsburg, MD on 17 September 1862 and was wounded there. His brigade and division commanders, Col. A.H. Colquitt and Maj.Gen. D.H. Hill respectively, spoke highly of him and his men.

Betts had quite a different life in peacetime after the war. He was accused of murdering at least three men in his lifetime, and acknowledged killing them. He was excused in each case as “justified.”

The first murder, according to the New York Times piece above, was of a soldier of his regiment who had somehow insulted his wife in camp at Pensacola, FL. Betts was said to have shot him on the spot (or to have stabbed him with a knife when the soldier pulled a gun). The story has at least one problem – I can find no point at which Betts and his regiment were ever in Pensacola. Perhaps it’s a mis-translation of an event at another camp in another place.

In any case, if this New York Times article is to be believed, Betts had quite an adventure in the years after the war and before his death in 1884 of kidney disease, at the relatively young age of 45 years.

See also the San Jose (CA) Daily Morning Times of 14 April 1882 and the Albany (GA) Weekly News and Advertiser of 8 April 1882, in which Betts, while testifying in someone else’s murder trial, acknowledged killing 3 men, and briefly describes the circumstances. These accounts bears only passing resemblance to the NYT story.

His death notice in the Columbus (GA) Daily Times of 1 August 1884 has him killing 6 men in his lifetime, but does have a good description of his death.