Manuscript General Orders #13 for the CSA signed Captain William Henry Whitner (1836–1872), as Assistant Adjutant General to Brigadier General Roger Atkinson Pryor (1828–1919). Blackwater, Virginia, 21 December 1862, 1 page, 8vo.

Brigadier General Pryor issues a General Orders concerning the handling of deserting soldiers. Given the "scandalous prevalent[ce]" of desertion among Confederate soldiers, Pryor declares that "any person of this command caught two miles from this camp...shall be shot at once without the formality of a trial." 

Even at this relatively early stage in the Civil War, desertion rates ran high, particularly among Confederate soldiers. It is estimated that nearly as many as one Confederate soldier in every three deserted during the course of the conflict. While desertion constituted a capitol offense, executing every recovered deserter was logistically challenging; punishments of this level were often employed strategically in highly public ceremonies before entire regiments as a deterrence to other would-be fugitives.

Whitner, the scribe of these Orders, began his Confederate service as a 2nd Lieutenant in Co. F, 1st Florida Infantry. He was later appointed AAG to Brigadier General Pryor and later served on the staffs of Generals Micah Jenkins and Bushrod Johnson. On May 6, 1864, during the Battle of the Wilderness, he suffered a gunshot wound to his pinkie finger, resulting in its amputation.

Pryor, at whose bequest the Orders were written, was a lawyer, politico, and secessionist from Virginia whose prominence within the Confederacy earned him a brigade command. Unfortunately, this rank proved to be far beyond Pryor's actual worth as a commanding officer, and after numerous disappointments on the battlefield, he resigned his commission in 1863. Pryor reenlisted as a private and scout in August of 1863, and served in that capacity for just over one year before he was captured and confined in Fort Lafayette, New York.

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