Journey of the Captives

Sunday, November 10, 1861
General Jonathan Winder, the provost marshal of Richmond, received orders from the Confederate War Office to select from the prisoners at Ligon Factory fourteen officers as hostages for Confederates privateers on trial for piracy. From this pool of fourteen seven were selected by lots for hanging if the Confederates on trial were to be likewise treated. Colonel W. R. Lee and Major Paul Revere were among the seven officers selected for confinement in squalid quarters at Henrico County jail later in the week.¹

References:
¹George A. Bruce, The Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry 1861 - 1865 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Riverside Press, 1906), 66; Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2005), 91-92.