Desertions became a major problem. He ordered the building of a huge gallows, towering nearly forty feet, as a warning to his men. “I am determined, if I can be justified in the proceeding, to hang two or three on it, as an example to others,” he wrote.69 Two weeks later, he did just that, ordering the executions of two deserters—William Smith, a twenty-year-old saddler, and Ignatius Edwards, twenty-five, a carpenter described as “a great Dancer & Fidler.” He pardoned twelve others who were convicted with them, with some of those reprieved being flogged instead.70 “They were proper objects to
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