The Hanging of Sam Davis 

Sam Davis was a student at Western Military Institute, in Nashville, Tennessee, when the War For Southern Independence broke out. At the young age of 19, Sam returned home to Rutherford County, Tennessee and joined the Confederate army unit, the "Rutherford Rifles," which soon became Company I, 1st Tennessee Volunteer Infantry, CSA.

By April of 1862, Sam Davis had already served under four of the greatest leaders that the war would produce, Generals Albert Sidney Johnston, P.G.T. Beauregard, Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. Davis was making his mark in the Confederate army as a splendid soldier. Because of his reputation he was selected to be a member of an elite, close-knit group of men known as "Coleman's Scouts." In this unit he would operate behind enemy lines, collecting vital information for Braxton Bragg's army. Once, when Davis was in U.S. occupied Nashville, he was seated in the dining room of the St. Cloud Hotel as the same table as U.S. General William S. Rosecrans, listening to the plans of the unsuspecting Yankee general. Many times Coleman's Scouts proudly wore their Confederate gray trousers and their butternut jackets behind enemy lines, making their presence all the more dangerous.

In November of 1863, Davis slipped into his home, Rutherford County, which was deep into U.S. occupied territory. While there his mother gave him an old U.S. army overcoat that she had dyed with the only dye available at that time, butternut hulls. This would be the jacket that Davis was wearing when he was captured. After stealing a peek at the sleeping children in the house, Davis stole away from his home and family, for the

last time.

Davis set out from Smyrna, Tennessee and went to Nashville, then traveled south, where he made a rendezvous with Coleman. It was there agreed that each man should go into north Alabama and then head east towards the Confederate line at Chattanooga, Tennessee, where they would give their scouting observations to General Bragg. It was also at this meeting that Coleman (in reality Captain Henry Shaw) gave Sam Davis the papers for General Bragg which were to cost young Davis his life within little more than a week.

On November 20, 1863, Davis was captured in Giles County, Tennessee and taken at once to Pulaski, eleven miles north of where he was captured. He was jailed and put under direct charge of General Dodge. General Dodge quickly became convinced that Davis knew the true identity of the elusive E. Coleman. He accused Davis of being a spy, threatening him with a U.S. court-martial and death by hanging if he didn't tell him who gave him the papers. Due to the accuracy of the papers that Davis held, General Dodge was laboring under the possibility

that E. Coleman must be, in reality, someone on his own staff or very near it.

Davis refused to give any information, reportedly saying, "I know that I will have to die, but I will not tell where I got the information, and there is no power on earth that can make me tell. You are doing your duty as a soldier, and I am doing mine. If I have to die, I will do so feeling that I am doing my duty to God and my country."

The general held a hasty court-martial in which all of the soldiers in the arresting party testified that Davis was, indeed, dressed as a Confederate soldier when captured, conclusive evidence that he was not a spy. Regardless, the commission sentenced Sam Davis to be hung as a spy, and the date for hanging was to be Friday, November 27, 1863.

Davis repeatedly refused to divulge any information, amidst offers from U.S. officers to save his life if he would. Davis said that he would never betray the trust placed in him and that if Tennessee could not be restored to the Confederacy, he would prefer to die anyway.

On November 20, three other Scouts were rounded up and placed in the same jail as Davis. Joshua Brown and W.L. Moore were two of those placed in the jail, but the most ironic twist of all was that the third person arrested was none other than Captain Henry Shaw - alias E. Coleman. The man that Gen. Dodge was looking for was there in his own jail, only, he did not know it.

It would have been so very easy for Sam Davis to point out Capt. Shaw to save his own neck. But not for Davis. He would not sell out his country to save his own life. Many times, Shaw and the other men would watch as Davis responded to the offers for his life if he would only name his informants. 

Many U.S. soldiers, noting Davis's firm resolve came to have admiration for him. They often visited him in his cell, begging him to save himself from such a useless death. Sam replied that life was, indeed, so sweet and that he did so much want to live, but that he could not betray a friend and would rather die a thousand deaths. The citizens of Giles County even visited him. Chaplain James Young, of the 81st Ohio Infantry, was so touched by the plight of this boy that he spent the final day and night with him. He prayed with him to the end. At Sam's request, on the night before the execution, the chaplain sang with him "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand." He was there when he spoke his last words, refusing one last offer of freedom if he would betray his friends and country.  Before he died, Davis gave the coat that his mother had dyed for him to his new friend, Chaplain Young. Sam also wrote one last letter to his parents that he committed to Chaplain Young for delivery to his mother and father.

On November 27, 1863, at 10:20am, Sam Davis was hanged. A soldier named John Randal - one of those who had helped capture Davis - said that never in all his life had he witnessed such a pathetic and heroic scene; that he sat on his horse with tears streaming down his face; that he saw many other Federal soldiers in tears.

Mr. and Mrs. Davis, hearing the story through the grapevine that their son had been hanged, asked a most trusted and able friend, Mr. John C. Kennedy, to go to Pulaski for them. There he was to obtain all of the details possible and, if it were Sam, to bring home the earthly remains of their boy.

Mr. Kennedy tells of the trip, in that when he reached Pulaski he went to the Provost Marshal and told him that he had come for the body of Sam Davis, that Sam's parents wanted it at home. The Provost Marshal immediately changed his manner of stubbornness and told Mr. Kennedy, "Tell them for me that he died the bravest of the brave, an honor to them, and with the respect of every man in this command." When he was asked, by Kennedy, if there would be any problems with him removing the body from the grave, he replied, "No sir. If you do, I will give you a company...yes, a regiment, if necessary." Mr. Kennedy exhumed Davis's body, verifying his identity after he was dug up. He then met Chaplain Young who gave him the keepsakes that Sam had asked him to see that his

mother and father received.

The body was placed in a new casket and loaded onto Mr. Kennedy's wagon. Upon reaching Nashville, the body of Sam Davis was turned over to a Mr. Cornelius, an undertaker, with specific instructions about shrouding the body, as Mr. Davis had told Mr. Kennedy, "If you think it is best that Jane and I should not see him, do as you think best about the matter."

On the evening of the seventh day after leaving home, Mr. Kennedy, with the casket on his wagon, drove into the big gate of Sam Davis's home. Mr. and Mrs. Davis were watching, and when they saw the casket, Mrs. Davis threw her arms above her head and fell. All was sorrow in that home. Mr. Kennedy was going to go home, but Mr. Davis prevailed upon him to stay.

The next morning, while standing in the yard, Mr. Davis came to Mr. Kennedy. He hesitated, then catching his breath almost between each word, said, "John, don't you think it's hard a father can't see the face of his own child?" Mr. Kennedy replied that he thought it best that he and Mrs. Davis should remember him as they saw him last. Mr. Davis turned and left. Mr. Kennedy drove the carryall that afternoon, across the creek to the old family graveyard where he buried Sam Davis. 

The Confederate Medal of Honor was authorized near the end of the war, but due to day to day situations across the South at that time, no one was ever bestowed with the honor. But, in 1976, at the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ convention in Memphis, Tennessee, with great pride it was unanimously decided that Sam Davis would become the first to receive the honor. The medal is on display at the Sam Davis Home in Smyrna, Tennessee.

References: "The South Was Right" by James R. Kennedy and Walter D. Kennedy, Chapter 4.  "The Story of the Confederacy", by Robert S. Henry, Chapter 25.  Also 6 pages of documentation (available upon request) found in: Confederate Military History, Vol. 12 THE MORALE OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMIES. Southern Historical Society Papers. Vol. XXV. Richmond, Va., January-December. 1897. Sam Davis--A Southern Hero. A Tribute to this Martyr by ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, with a Simple Account of the Sacrifice. [From the Pulaski. Tenn., Citizen, January 6, 1898.]

H. The United States' Use of Human Shields

In the summer of 1864 the city of Charleston, South Carolina was under a U.S. blockade. The guns of the Yankee-held forts and navy were shelling the city. The Confederate army was returning fire from ashore. The U.S. government then took 600 Confederate POW's and sent them to Charleston. These POW's, often referred to as "The Immortal 600," were to be placed in a stockade less than two acres square, directly beneath the guns of a United States fort which was located on Johnson's Island.  According to Captain Walter MacRae of the Seventh North Carolina, who was one of the POW's, they were situated so that every shot from the Confederate guns "must either pass over our heads or right through the pen. Any which fell short or exploded a tenth of a second too soon, must strike death and destruction through our crowded ranks." The POW's were placed under the guard of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts and their cruel commander, Col. E. N. Howell. Col. Howell gave an order to the black troops of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts to shoot into any gathering of POW's larger than ten men or at any POW who broke any other rule of the prison. Any POW who walked too close to a roped off perimeter that was inside the stockade was also ordered to be shot.

The POW's food ration consisted of provisions that had been condemned by the U.S. federal government as unfit for U.S. troops. These "rations" consisted of worm-and insect-infested hardtack, a one-inch square, one-half inch thick piece of pork, and eight ounces of sour corn meal. They had to eat, sleep, and care for their wounded in the same place where garbage and sewage were dumped. Their only supply of water was from holes they dug in the sand. The water holes quickly filled with a mixture of rain water, salt water, garbage and sewage.

The attempt by the United States army to use Southern POW's as human shields to protect their positions did not work though. Captain MacRae noted that the Southern gunners did slow down and take more time to aim. With each well-placed shot from the Confederate artillery, a great shout of joy would go up from the POW's. When the

Confederate guns fired, someone in the stockade would shout and everyone would hit the dirt and watch as the friendly fire would hit it's mark.

After a few months of this bombardment, the POW's were removed to another prison where they were treated no better, but at least they were in no danger of being killed by their own men. In contrast, United States Major General C. V. Foster stated: "Our officers, prisoners of war in Charleston, have been ascertained to be as follows [rations]: Fresh meat three quarters of a pound or one half pound hard bread or one half pint of meal; beans, one fifth pint." "Many of the people of Charleston exerted themselves in every way to relieve the necessities of our men, and freely, as far as their means would allow, made contributions of food and clothing."

He also stated that the kind treatment of the U.S. POW's by their Southern captors had induced over half (sixty-five percent) of the men to go over to the Southern cause and sign an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Only one percent of the six hundred POW's held by General Foster went over to the U.S. side.

U.S. Gen. W.T. Sherman assured his wife in the summer of 1862 that if the North could hold on, the war would soon take a turn toward the extermination not only of the rebel armies but of civilians! He quickly put his ideas in practice. Exasperated by the way in which Confederates fired on supply steamboats from the banks of the Mississippi, he ordered an Ohio colonel, September 24, 1862, to destroy every house in the town of Randolph, scene of such an attack, and this without inquiry into the guilt of the inhabitants. Three days later he ordered that for every instance of firing onto a boat, ten families should be expelled from Memphis, and began placing Confederate prisoners on boats exposed to attack!

References: "Immortal Captives" by Mauriel Joslyn , 1999",  "The South Was Right" by James R. Kennedy and Walter D. Kennedy, Chapter 4. "The Truths of History" by Mildred L. Rutherford, Chapter 10. "The Lost Cause", by Edward A. Pollard, Chapter 40.  Also 4 pages of documentation (available upon request) found in: O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XVII/2 [S# 25] CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN WEST TENNESSEE AND NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI FROM JUNE 10, 1862, TO JANUARY 20, 1863.  UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.--#10,  O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XVII/1 [S# 24] SEPTEMBER 25, 1862.--Burning of Randolph, Tenn. Report of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, U.S. Army. O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XVII/2 [S# 25] CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN WEST TENNESSEE AND NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI FROM JUNE 10, 1862, TO JANUARY 20, 1863. UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.--#11

I. General Grant's Slaves

General Grant was the last of the United States Presidents that bought, owned, and worked a slave. The slave’s name was William Jones. In 1858, while attempting to make a go in civilian life as a farmer near St. Louis, Missouri, Ulysses S. Grant bought the slave, William Jones, from his brother-in-law. Grant's also became the owner of record of his wife’s inheritance of four slaves, but as was the case at the time, women could not actually own slaves, so they were under the control of Grant. There is no record of these slaves having been freed prior to emancipation in Missouri in 1865.  In 1862, U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant's army had become encumbered by runaway slaves. Grant decided to go into the cotton business, using the runaway slaves to pick cotton in the Mississippi fields. Gen. Grant did pay them though - a small wage which was just enough to cover the cost of their food that was provided for them.  The cotton was shipped back to factories in the North, with Grant collecting the profit. Grant did not own the land or the crops! General Grant owned slaves that were not freed until the passage of the 13th Amendment.

It is interesting to note some of the thoughts of General Grant. Grant informed his family that his only desire was, "…to put down the rebellion. I have no hobby of my own with regard to the Negro, either to effect his freedom or continue his bondage. I am using them as teamsters, hospital attendants, company cooks and so forth thus saving soldiers to carry the musket. . . . it weakens the enemy to take them from them."

Robert E. Lee personally owned at least one slave, an elderly house servant that he inherited from his mother. It is said that Lee continued to hold the slave as a kindness, since he was too feeble to have made his way as a free man. Although it is commonly believed that Lee owned the Arlington Plantation and the associated slaves, these and two other plantations totaling over 1,000 slaves were the property of Lee's father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis. Upon Mr. Custis's death in 1858, Lee did not personally inherit either the plantations or slaves, but was named the executor of the estate. Mr. Custis willed that his slaves should be freed within 5 years. Legal problems with the fulfillment of other terms of the will led Lee to delay in the execution of the terms of manumission until the latest specified date. On 29 Dec 1862, Lee executed a deed of manumission for all the slaves of the Custis estate who were still behind Confederate lines. Arlington was in Union hands by that time in history.

References: "Lee & Grant", by Gene Smith.  "The Civil War: Strange and Fascinating Facts", by Burke Davis; "Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and Politics of War and Reconstruction", by Brooks D. Simpson.

J. The Order To Execute

On March 13, 1862, U.S. Major General Henry Halleck, Commander of the Department of the West, issued "Order Number Two." The order labeled all Confederate guerrillas as outlaws and required that they beexecuted immediately upon capture.

In contrast, the Confederate Congress, on April 21, 1862, passed the Confederate Partisan Ranger Act, which recognized Southern guerrilla forces as legal military groups with official officers. With this action by the Confederate Congress any Confederate Partisan Ranger (legally a Confederate soldier) captured by the U.S. armed forces should have been treated as any captured Confederate soldier. The U.S. authorities refused to recognize these men as part of the Confederate States’ armed forces. The U.S. extermination policy continued to be practiced throughout the remainder of the war. This was simply the authorized murder of Confederate prisoners of war by a United States General.

K. Ewing’s General Orders No. 10 & 11

U.S. Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, commanding the District of the Border, issued General Order No. 10 in August of 1863. General Order No. 10 included this drastic provision:

"...officers will arrest, and send... for punishment, all men (and all women not heads of families) who willfully aid and encourage guerrillas, with a written statement of the names and residences of such persons and of the proof against them. They will discriminate as carefully as possible between those who are compelled, by threats or fears, to aid the rebels and those who aid them from disloyal motives. The wives and children of known guerrillas, and also women who are heads of families and are willfully engaged in aiding guerrillas, will be notified by such officers to remove out of the district and out of the State of Missouri forthwith. They will be permitted to take, unmolested, their stock, provisions, and household goods. If they fail to remove promptly, they will be sent by such officers, under escort, to Kansas City for shipment south, with their clothes and such necessary household furniture and provision as may be worth removing."

General Order No. 11, issued on August 25, 1863, is regarded by some as one of the cruelest and most unusual orders issued by a general during the War Between The States. This order, issued by U.S. Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, commanding the District of the Border, ordered the evacuation of four counties in western Missouri. Independence and a few other settlements were exempted, and part of one county fell outside the

boundaries of the military district; otherwise, every resident had to move. Those who could establish their loyalty to the satisfaction of the commanding officer of the nearest military post would be issued certificates allowing them to move to military posts in the state. Everyone else was supposed to leave the state.

The order, it is estimated, may have created as many as twenty thousand refugees from the western Missouri counties. Though it did not directly create any political prisoners, many of these homeless refugees must have wandered eventually into Union lines and were doubtless arrested.

President Lincoln approved of the notorious General Order No. 11, far more than he did of interfering with freedom of speech or political organization. Thus, he wrote U.S. General John M. Schofield, commanding the Department of the Missouri, on October 1, 1863, with this broad advice:

"Under your recent order, which I have approved, you will only arrest individuals, and suppress assemblies, or newspapers, and when they may be working palpable injury to the Military in your charge; and, in no other case will you interfere with the expression of opinion in any form, or allow it to be interfered with violently by others. In this, you have a discretion to exercise with great caution, calmness, and forbearance. With the matters of removing the inhabitants of certain counties en masse; and of removing certain individuals from time to time, who are supposed to be mischievous, I am not now interfering, but am leaving to your own discretion."

References: "The South Was Right" by James R. Kennedy and Walter D. Kennedy, Chapter 4.  Also 4 pages of documentation (available upon request) found in: O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XXII/2 [S# 33] Correspondence, Orders, And Returns Relating To Operations In Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, The Indian Territory, And Department Of The Northwest, From January 1 To December 31, 1863. UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.--#19 GENERAL ORDERS, No. 10. and No. 11.  O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XXII/2 [S# 33] Correspondence, Orders, And Returns Relating To Operations In Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, The Indian Territory, And Department Of The Northwest, From January 1 To December 31, 1863.
UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.--#24

L. Ivan Turchin

One U.S. officer who distinguished himself by savagery was Ivan Turchin, a Russian who had come to the United States after serving in the Crimea, and had been made colonel of the Nineteenth Illinois. Insisting that war should be ruthless, he subsisted his men on the country so freely that Southerners called him the robber colonel. He gave notice that if his force was attacked after a town surrendered he would punish the community ruthlessly, and in Athens, Alabama, allegedly told his men: "I close my eyes for two hours. "His troops looted stores and dwellings indiscriminately, destroyed civilian property in the most wanton manner, and insulted women. The report of May 2, 1862 contains information about an attempt to commit "an indecent outrage" on a servant girl and that part of the brigade "quartered in the Negro huts for weeks, debauching the females." Buell ordered him court-martialed, and he was sentenced to dismissal.  But the War Department made him a brigadier general, his Chicago admirers presented him with a sword, and although the South outlawed him and set a price on his head, many in the North regarded him as a hero.

References: "The South Was Right" by James R. Kennedy and Walter D. Kennedy, Chapter 4.  Also 16 pages of documentation (available upon request) found in: O.R.--SERIES II--VOLUME I [S# 114] Union Methods of Dealing with Guerrillas and the Lawless Elements of Missouri.--#1.  Confederate Military History, Vol. 7 ALABAMA--CHAPTER III.  Southern Historical Society Papers Vol. VI, Richmond, Va., October, 1878, No. 4 Two Witnesses On The "Treatment Of Prisoners"-- Honorable J. P. Benjamin and General B. F. Butler. O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME X/2 [S# 11] UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY, TENNESSEE, NORTH MISSISSIPPI, NORTH ALABAMA, AND SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA FROM MARCH 4 TO JUNE 10, 1862.--#8 Extract of orders to Col. J. B. Turchin. O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XVI/1 [S# 22] TRANSCRIPT FROM PHONOGRAPHIC NOTES OF THE BUELL COURT OF INQUIRY. CINCINNATI, Friday, March 27, 1863. O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XVI/2 [S# 23] CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY, MIDDLE AND EAST TENNESSEE, NORTH ALABAMA, AND SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA FROM JUNE 10 TO OCTOBER 31, 1862. UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.--#3 O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XVI/2 [S# 23] CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY, MIDDLE AND EAST TENNESSEE, NORTH ALABAMA, AND SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA FROM JUNE 10 TO OCTOBER 31, 1862. UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.--#4 O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XVI/2 [S# 23]  CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY, MIDDLE AND EAST TENNESSEE, NORTH ALABAMA, AND SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA FROM JUNE 10 TO OCTOBER 31, 1862. UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.--#4 SPECIAL ORDERS No. 93. O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XVI/2 [S# 23] CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN KENTUCKY, MIDDLE AND EAST TENNESSEE, NORTH ALABAMA, AND SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA FROM JUNE 10 TO OCTOBER 31, 1862. UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.--#11 GENERAL ORDERS No. 39. O.R.--SERIES IV--VOLUME II [S# 128] Correspondence, Orders, Reports, And Returns Of The Confederate Authorities, July 1, 1862-December 31, 1863.--#41 CONDUCT OF ENEMY.