A gruesome execution on Granny White Pike in Nashville

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Granny White Pike bore witness to its share of Civil War activity beyond the Battle of Nashville. Soldiers skirmished along its stretches, pitched tents beside it and stood at attention nearby for musters and reviews. But on May 15, 1863, the road became the stage for a grisly spectacle: a public execution.

That day, Private Julius Milika of Company E, 10th Michigan Infantry, faced a 12-man firing squad for desertion — “one of the gravest military crimes,” the Nashville Daily Union warned. The punishment was swift.

The Daily Missouri Democrat of St. Louis
 (May 16, 1863) was among the newspapers
that published accounts of the execution.

Around noon, about a mile and a half from Nashville, soldiers and townspeople lined the pike in tense silence. In their midst, Milika arrived in an ambulance, seated atop his own coffin. Kneeling in prayer, he appeared unnervingly calm.

The ugly event seared itself into the mind of William Painter of the 22nd Michigan. “Awful,” he wrote in a letter to his wife, adding: “The worst thing I ever witnessed in my life.”

Painter described how the Prussian-born Milika, blindfolded, prayed with four ministers, who then shook hands with the condemned man. Milika stood, saluted the firing squad and told his executioners that he was ready to die. Six of them had loads in their guns, six had nothing but powder. “Take good aim, men; all is over now,” Milika said in German, his voice steady, according to the Daily Union. Then came the command — and the volley.

“One shot hit him in the mouth, two in the neck, one in the breast and one in the belly,” Painter wrote. “I did not learn where the sixth hit, but all six struck him, as the [executioners] stood only ten paces away.” Within thirty minutes, Milika had been placed in his coffin and buried. Milika’s crimes were serious. About 30 years old, he had deserted his regiment, joined another for bounty money and deserted again. Arrested in Louisville, he was returned to Nashville to face a court-martial.

“Until he joined the army his habits were praiseworthy; but in the service, he neglected his religious duties, contracted intemperate habits, and grew fond of bad company,” the Nashville paper reported.

Rev. Herman Egger, who was present that day, later reflected that Milika accepted his fate as the will of God and seemed to hope his death might serve as a warning to other soldiers. The scene left such an impression on Egger that he resolved to make it the subject of his next Sunday sermon, posing a sobering question to his congregation:

“What brought Julius Milika to his untimely end?”

POSTSCRIPT: Despite his execution for desertion, Milika may rest today in Nashville National Cemetery in Madison. According to the government’s 1869 Roll of Honor, a “Julius Malika” of the 10th Michigan Infantry is listed among the dead buried on its vast grounds. If the entry refers to the same man, the condemned deserter now lies among thousands of Union soldiers who died in service. I have yet to locate his grave.

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SOURCES 

• Jackson (Mich.) Eagle, May 23, 1863 
• Nashville Daily Union, May 16, 1863 
• Nashville National Cemetery “Roll Of Honor” 
• Painter letter (May 15, 1863) sold on Heritage Auctions, Dec. 6, 2020