From the Richmond Enquirer, 11/27/1862, p. 1, c. 7

PRISON DISCIPLINE – PUNISHMENT OF ROGUES. The frequency of robberies in the military prisons has induced the adoption of the summary punishment known as “bucking,” which obviates the ordeal of formal trial, and answers, to all intents, the purposes of a court martial. An unusually extensive display of this “brief and appropriate” visitation of vengeance occurred on Tuesday evening at Castle Thunder. An Englishman had been arrested and placed in the prison for drunkenness, and was no sooner locked in among the motley crew of thieve, vagrants and deserters, than he was set upon and robbed of a gold watch and all the money of which he was possessed. He lost no time in informing the Assistant Provost Marshal, in charge of the prison, and that officer caused every one of the occupants of the room, several hundred in number, to be drawn up in line, and the Englishman was requested to point out the parties who perpetrated the robbery. He recognized eight, and they were accordingly secured in the usual way, their hands being bound under their knees, and each one suffered the infliction of twenty-five rousing thwacks with a big strap made for the purpose. This mode of punishment is certainly most appropriate, and if generally adopted towards rogues, would save the courts, civil and martial, much trouble.

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