John Yates Beall, Son of the South: The Life and Death of a Confederate Privateer

John Beall, a Confederate soldier whose execution President Lincoln upheld despite appeals for clemency from his staff, was a scion of a prominent Virginia family. Wounded while fighting with Stonewall Jackson's legendary brigade, he fled to Canada intending to sit out the war.

Beall found a way back into the war that did not involve the killing he came to abhor, engaging in privateering on the Chesapeake Bay. Captured and released in a prisoner exchange, he made a daring attempt to free C...