Capture of the "Boy Hero of the Confederacy" (20 NOV 1863)

Photo By Erin Thompson | "Sam Davis Questioned by General Dodge," undated painting by Harold Von Schmidt (Tennessee Historical Society)  

UNITED STATES

11.17.2023

Story by Erin Thompson 

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian

20 NOVEMBER 1863
On 20 November 1863, Union troops captured 21-year-old Pvt. Sam Davis, a Confederate scout acting as a courier of information for Gen. Braxton Bragg. After refusing to cooperate with his captors, Davis was executed eight days later.

Samuel C. Davis was born in Smyrna, Tennessee, on 6 October 1842 and grew up on his family’s plantation. At nineteen, he enrolled at the Western Military Institute in Nashville before enlisting with the 1st Tennessee Infantry. He was wounded twice in 1862, during the battles of Shiloh and Perryville. Sometime that same year, he joined a scouting company under Capt. Henry B. Shaw called “Coleman’s Scouts,” named for E.C. Coleman, an alias Shaw often used. Davis and other scouts—including his brother, John, and Coleman Davis Smith, a slave from the Davis plantation serving as Sam Davis’ body servant—obtained information on the Union Army of the Tennessee, including troop movements and strength, fortifications, and maps and descriptions of militarily important locations in the Nashville-Murfreesboro region. By 1863, the group was primarily around the cities of Nashville, Franklin, Columbia, Smyrna, and Pulaski in central Tennessee.

Operating in that same region in late 1862 was Union Brig. Gen. Grenville M. Dodge. After suffering an injury during the Battle of Pea Ridge earlier that year [see "This Week in MI History" #176 8 March 1862], Dodge became responsible for the construction and rebuilding of major railroads throughout the central and southeast states. His work on the rail lines impressed Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who later described Dodge as “a gallant and superior officer.” Grant also recognized General Dodge as a masterful intelligence officer, as exemplified at Pea Ridge. Grant gave him command of a division of the Army of the Tennessee. While in command, Dodge oversaw one of the war’s largest intelligence operations in Grant’s Vicksburg campaign of December 1862.

General Dodge’s intelligence network grew to include more than one hundred spies and scouts operating from Alabama to Tennessee. In late 1863, Dodge’s division left Corinth, Mississippi, to reinforce Grant’s army during the Chattanooga campaign, and he established his headquarters in Pulaski, Tennessee. While stationed there, he realized information about his operations was being leaked to the Confederates. Davis and five other spies had been assigned to gather information on General Dodge’s activities in northeast Mississippi and central Tennessee.

On 20 November 1863, Davis was captured by Joseph Farrar and R.S. King of the 7th Kansas Cavalry, two of Dodge’s scouts working to capture “Coleman”—Captain Shaw. On Davis’ person, they discovered a letter from the provost marshal of the Confederate Army of Tennessee with information about Dodge’s army, as well as newspapers and maps Davis was delivering to the army’s headquarters for Captain Shaw. The scouts brought Davis to General Dodge, who extensively questioned him about the identities and whereabouts of other spies. Based on the contents of the papers Davis had been carrying, Dodge was concerned one of his own men was passing information to the Confederates.

When Davis refused to answer Dodge’s questions, he was charged with being a courier of Confederate mail and with spying. He pleaded not guilty to the latter charge but was found guilty by military tribunal and sentenced to death. A week later, on 27 November 1863, Private Davis was led to the gallows, where General Dodge offered him one last chance to reveal the source of his information; still Davis refused. His hanging cemented his legacy as a martyr for the Confederate cause, earning him the nickname “Boy Hero of the Confederacy.”

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• Date Taken: 11.17.2023
• Date Posted: 11.17.2023 12:06
• Story ID: 458059
• Location: US