Communing with spirit of Civil War 'badass' in Shepherdstown

The day after the Battle of Shepherdstown (Va.), Lieutenant Lemuel Crocker climbed atop
 these bluffs to retrieve the bodies of three officers from his unit. 
(Crocker image courtesy Ronn Palm)

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In Shepherdstown, W.Va., after cups of Joe at the excellent Sweet Shop Bakery, my friend Richard Clem and I poked around a publicly accessible slice of Civil War battlefield. I’ve visited the site along River Road at least a dozen times, once after wading across from the other side of the Potomac River. Surprisingly, the visit was the first at the Maryland Campaign battlefield for the 81-year-old Clem, the Babe Ruth of area Civil War storytellers. 

Clem and I examined the old War Department tablets and much newer Civil War Trails marker, gazed at the Shepherdstown bluffs, and then peered into the kilns of the old cement mill along the Potomac, where 118th Pennsylvania soldiers became friendly artillery fire casualties on Sept. 20, 1862. Clem, a retired woodworker/relic hunter, often stared at the ground, wondering how many Union Minies and Confederate Gardners remain inches below.

At this cement mill kiln along the Potomac River,
frightened 118th Pennsylvania soldiers hid
from fire from both sides. Some were killed by friendly
 artillery fired from the Maryland side of the Potomac.

And then I spent a moment communing with the spirit of 118th Pennsylvania Lieutenant Lemuel Crocker -- a "badass," Civil War Times editor Dana Shoaf called him in comments below a Facebook post by retired Gettysburg National Military Park supervisory historian Scott Hartwig.

What a soldier. 

For the May 2021 issue of America's Civil War magazine, Hartwig wrote an excellent account of Crocker's heroism at Shepherdstown. In one of the ballsiest moves of the war, the 33-year-old officer rescued wounded comrades and retrieved bodies of some of the unit's dead the day after the battle, disobeying orders. He had been in the U.S. Army less than a month.

Shepherdstown was a disaster for the "Corn Exchange Regiment" -- in their first battle of the war, the Pennsylvanians fought with defective 1853 pattern Enfields, which proved useless. Then "beaten, dismayed, wild with fright," some of them retreated pell mell under fire across a mill dam to the Maryland side of the Potomac. Others plunged to their deaths from the steep, craggy bluffs along the river on the Virginia side. A "sad and purposeless affair, with a most disastrous and fatal termination," a regimental historian called the battle. 

Terrain and ruins of an old kiln on the West Virginia side
of the Potomac River.

One who barely escaped via the dam was 46-year-old Private William Madison, who was peppered with five shots, including one that shattered his jaw. "He vented his anger in a frightful howl," according to the regimental history, "and facing squarely about gave his enemies the last shot he ever fired in the army, for his wounds terminated his service, but not his life." (Madison survived the war.)

In a letter to his parents (see below), published in the Buffalo (N.Y.) Advocate on Oct. 2, 1862, Crocker described his harrowing experience. "Almost a second Ball's Bluff," he called it, referencing a U.S. Army disaster on bluffs near Leesburg, Va., the previous year. 

The next time you visit Antietam, check out Shepherdstown, too. Stare at those precipitous bluffs, gaze across the Potomac, examine the remains of the cement mill and mill dam ... and commune with the spirit of a Civil War badass. 

(Hat tip to Jeffery Stocker, who pointed Hartwig to the Crocker letter. Note: In September 1862, Shepherdstown was part of  Virginia. In the letter published in the Buffalo newspaper, Crocker noted its location as Maryland.)

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Route 118th Pennsylvania took to bluffs at Shepherdstown on Sept. 20, 1862.

An Incident of Noble Heroism. 

We publish elsewhere a letter [see below] from Lieut Crocker, son of L. Crocker, Esq., of this city, detailing his story of the recent sad reverse of the Philadelphia Corn Exchange Regiment. Since the letter was in type, we find the following thrilling reference to Lieut. C. in a Philadelphia paper: 

The regiment had reached the Maryland shore, at least that portion of it which the fortunes of the day  had spared the fate of either death or wounding. The rebels still held the field where the deadly strife had raged. Our suffering heroes languished for help; they cried for water to quench their burning thirst, for bandages to bind up their bleeding wounds.

Without waiting for the formality of a flag of truce, Lieut. Lemuel L. Crocker forded the river in the face of rebel soldiery. He reached the other shore in safety, and in a few moments was ministering to the wants of his beloved comrades. A rebel officer passed the spot, and enquired of Lieut. Crocker the nature of his business, whether he came to surrender in a hopeless cause, etc.  "I come," said he, "in the cause of humanity. If you are human, let my mission proceed."

The words touched the sympathies of the traitor, and, as if forgetting that he was a soldier in so wicked a cause, told our gallant Lieutenant that he would not be held as a prisoner, but that he might remain to take care of the wounded. 

Lient. Crocker was in Company C and this act of heroism and daring forms one of the most cheering episodes of that fatal day.

             PANORAMA: The U.S. Army briefly held its ground in this field atop the bluffs.

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Shepardstown, Md. 

September 22, 1862.

Dear Parents:

I am here alive and safe. Our Regiment has been in a terrible battle -- almost a second "Ball's Bluff." We have lost nearly 300 killed, wounded and missing. Our Regiment has been in the advance of the army of McClellan for the last week. I have seen in the marches all the horrors of war -- the dead and dying lining the road-side and filling the barns. 

We have been on the march for the last week. In the great battle last Wednesday, we were held as reserves behind a battery of two pieces of Rifled Cannon. I saw the whole of the contest. 

An illustration in the 118th Pennsylvania regimental
history of the mill dam and cement mill on the Virginia
side of the Potomac River. Ruins of the mill remain.
Many soldiers in the regiment retreated across
the dam during the Battle of Shepherdstown.

The next day we were put in the extreme advance, following up the rebels until our Reg't was ordered to cross the Potomac by some one who ought to be court-martialed, as we were unsupported; the result was we were met by a force of the enemy amounting to near six regiments, supported within a mile and a half by nearly the whole rebel army. We did not know the force we were contending with. Our Colonel was wounded and carried off the field; our Adjutant was wounded; most of our officers were wounded when the Lieutenant Colonel gave the order for the men to fall back and save themselves, as we were being completely surrounded, and in our rear there was a precipitous bluff. We retreated amidst such a shower of lead I never want to take the risk again of coming out of. 

As we got to the river-side we had to go near a half a mile to a dam over which our men were attempting to cross; and to make this dam many a man lost his life, as the rebels were stationed on the bluff taking deliberate aim during the whole fight. I was cool and collected during my travel by the riverside; but when I reach this dam, I think my cheek blanched, for it seemed to me certain death to cross it, as the rebels had got into a large brick building below the dam, and the main body above on the bluff, picking off our poor fellows. But to stay was death probably, and a prison sure. So I hesitated but the instant, and crossed safely.

                PANORAMA: A view of the Potomac and Maryland side of the river in distance.

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Berdan's Sharp Shooters were stationed on the opposite bank covering our retreat; and this is all that saved our Reg't, for they in a short time prevented a rebel in taking a risk of showing himself. After two hours, at the end of the dam there were about ten wounded and ten more whose courage had given out, and they must be got over. The Captain of Berdan's men and myself walked up and down the bank to try and induce them to come over. I then took off my coat and with Lieut. Marsh's revolver, covered by the Reg't, recrossed the river and brought over every man there, except those on the battle field.

The next day every effort was made by our officers of the Regiment and Brigade to get Maj. Gen. [Fitz John] Porter to send a Flag of Truce to bring off our wounded, and to bury the dead; but of no avail -- he would not do it. I stepped forward and volunteered, and with a volunteer force again crossed the Potomac, and had the satisfaction of bringing off every wounded man, and the dead bodies of our officers. The Brigadier general complimented me personally and that was another satisfaction.

Our Colonel is pretty badly wounded. My Company loses 28 killed, wounded and missing. But I assure you the 118th P. V. Reg't has made itself a name of which every man be proud who belongs to it. We are still in the advance doing picket duty. We are now numbered among the fighting regiments. 

L. L. Crocker.

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SOURCES: 

• History of the Corn Exchange Regiment, 118th Pennsylvania Volunteers, from their first engagement at Antietam to Appomattox, By the Survivors' Association, Philadelphia, J.L. Smith Publisher, 1888.
• Inside the Army of the Potomac, The Civil War Experiences of Captain Francis Adams Donaldson, edited by J. Gregory Acken, Stackpole Books, 1998.
• The Advocate, Buffalo, N.Y., Oct. 2, 1862.

Gettysburg Then & Now: Forbes Rock (and a look at God Tree)

THEN: In this cropped version of Mathew Brady's photo of "Forbes Rock," his assistant sits
 on a boulder in the foreground. (Library of Congress)

NOW: View shot by your blogger on April 17, 2021.

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Last weekend, Civil War Times editor Dana Shoaf, director of photography Melissa Winn and I were wowed by an up-close look of Forbes Rock, among the most famous boulders on a battlefield studded with them. I was in Gettysburg to report for a column in Civil War Times on the rehabilitation of Culp's Hill. As part of that effort, trees and brush have been cleared around Forbes Rock.

The "God Tree," a witness tree on Culp's Hill, 
near Forbes Rock.

In mid-July 1863, Forbes Rock was photographed by Mathew Brady, who was captivated by the area’s battle-riddled landscape. Above, check out the cropped version of Brady’s image and my present-day view. It's not a spot-on then & now, but it's respectable. (Here's another Brady Culp's Hill photograph, from behind U.S. Army breastworks, on my Then & Now blog -- thanks to the clearance of trees and brush, it's much easier to see the scene today than when I took the "Now" image in 2016.)  

The battle-scarred tree in the foreground of the 1863 Forbes Rock image is long gone, but there are other witness trees on Culp’s Hill -- including the "God Tree," which more than 100 years ago someone filled with concrete and rebar in a misguided preservation effort. "Horrible," Jason Martz, our National Park Service guide, told us.

In the 1863 image, a Brady assistant sat on a boulder in the foreground. He gives us a good sense of the size of the massive boulder, used by Confederates for cover from withering fire from the U.S. Army postioned behind breastworks. Is that the “Brady boulder” in the present-day view? Hmmm, if so, it looks different than it appeared in 1863. Weigh in, photo nerds.  

The massive boulder was named for wartime battle sketch artist Edwin Forbes, who created a view of the July 2, 1863, attack here from the Confederates' perspective. 

Great news: The National Park Service soon may have a trail for visitors to this off-the-beaten path spot. 

Edwin Forbes' depiction of Confederates' attack at Culp's Hill on evening of July 2, 1863.
(Library of Congress)

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Fun with Lincoln: But can this also be done with hardtack?

Spotted in Sharpsburg, Md., in the home of an Abraham Lincoln fanatic: a framed Oreo cookie with an icing topping of the profile of you-know-who. This was the highlight of my recent Power Tour of the Eastern Theater. Let's keep history alive. 😁

A visit to Cashtown (Pa.) Inn along Lee's route to Gettysburg

Horsin' around with nags of Frank Cheatham and the 'Wizard'

The grave of Old Isham, Confederate General Frank Cheatham's horse. 
(Cheatham photo: Library of Congress)

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WARNING! This post includes horse puns that may make you wince ... or worse. Some dialogue may be fabricated. Kernels of history, however, are included. 

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Confession: I recently became obsessed with the ties between Civil War horses and their riders. 

“So stop horsin’ around then,” my wife told me, evidently reading my mind. “I don’t want to be a nag, but you really need to get out of the house, drive into the middle of nowhere, and visit the grave of Old Isham, the wartime horse of Frank Cheatham, the hard-drinking Confederate general who was no friend of the incompetent Braxton Bragg. Besides, I have a friend coming over.”

Your tour guide at the grave of Old Isham in
rural Coffee County, Tenn.

Stunned by my wife’s Civil War knowledge, I took her up on the suggestion demand. So I trotted to my 2015 Altima — the one with the below-par horsepower — for a ride to rural Coffee County, about an hour from Nashville. "What an idea!" I said with a smile. "Thanks, Mrs. B, you’re no nag at all."

Feeling my oats, I reached speeds as high as 55 mph on Interstate 24 East, zooming past the exit for Stones River battlefield in overdeveloped Murfreesboro and three or four or 25 Cracker Barrel restaurants.  At the Beechgrove/Bell Buckle exit, I debated whether to go left or right.

Go right and I could visit the area where British military observer Sir Arthur Freemantle witnessed the worst of America in 1863: a speech by an Arkansas politician at the Grand Review of the Army of Tennessee.

The mouthy pol had a "vulgar appearance," wrote the Brit, and delivered a "long and uninteresting political oration, and ended by announcing himself as a candidate for re-election. This speech seemed to me (and to others) particularly ill-timed, out of place, and ridiculous, addressed as it was to soldiers in front of the enemy. But this was one of the results of universal suffrage."

Old Isham's grave in a beautiful valley near unincorporated Beechgrove, Tenn.

My other alternative with a right turn was a visit to Bell Buckle, hometown of former Hee Haw star Molly Bee and the Moon Pie Capital of Tennessee. Bleh, moon pies always give me a stomach ache.

A horseshoe on a fence near
Old Isham's grave.

But I lean left, so that's the direction I headed ...and promptly got lost. Then I got angry when a guy tailgated me on a two-lane road. “Get off your high horse!” I screamed, eyes fixed straight ahead, arms firmly gripping the steering wheel, and all my windows rolled up.

Sweating profusely, I zigzagged through unfamiliar territory. (By the way, I didn’t spot one Starbucks in Coffee County. Weird.) Finally, I came to a “T” and correctly made a right on French Brantley Road, slowly driving past a small general store and a pig farm.

By the side of a lonely country road — aren’t they all? — I at last found the grave of Old Isham, who died in 1884, age 23 or 24. Master Frank died two years later, age 65. What a great place for a horse to rest for eternity: a gorgeous valley, swaths of green, a mansion atop a hill in the distance, and a few cows, some eyeing me warily. It was only marred by the name of the place: Starr Trek Farm. Ugh, I hate William Shatner commercials.

Old Isham’s neatly tended grave was bordered by a modest, wood fence adorned with small Confederate flags. Probably placed there by colt followers. (Sorry.) On a fence behind the grave marker, someone placed a horseshoe, a neat touch. I shot a panorama, took the requisite selfies, and silently thanked my wife for the spur-of-the-moment idea.

A bronze statue of Roderick, the favorite horse of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

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Suitably inspired, I hoofed it over to Thompson's Station days later to check out the statue honoring Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s favorite mount, Roderick. (True story: At the H Clark Distillery in Thompson's Station, the experience manager told me that cows love their bourbon mash. “They come running for it," she said. "Then they just lay in the field, chilling.” Neigggh, you say? Hey, it's on my blog right here.)

Nathan Bedford Forrest,
the "Wizard of the Saddle."
(Library of Congress)

At the Battle of Thompson’s Station (Tenn.) on March 5, 1863, Roderick was wounded three times before he was guided to safety by the general’s 17-year-old son. Eager to return to the "Wizard of the Saddle," however, the chestnut gelding leaped over several fences, suffering a fatal bullet wound in the process. Forrest -- the notorious slave trader/cavalry genius -- supposedly wept beside the dying animal, who was buried on the battlefield.

If not for the roar of the crazy traffic on Columbia Pike (State Rt. 31), construction equipment, convenience store, and other modern development/schlock, heck, you're back in 1863 in Thompson's Station. I know that might, ahem, stirrup trouble with the pro-development crowd.

The bronze statue of Roderick stands roughly 200 yards from the circa-1820 Spencer Buford Mansion on Columbia Pike. The place has some very weird modern additions that ruined its historic integrity and forced its removal from the National Register of Historic Places. Sort of like sticking McDonald's hamburger wrappers on a work of art. 

Roderick’s remains may rest today somewhere near the statue, perhaps where an upscale development named after the horse will be built. I imagine that could provide fodder for future conversations: "Honey, the workers were digging in our flower garden, and they found this huge skull.”

"What?"

Ok, enough schtick. Let's keep history alive. 

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SOURCE: 

-- Freemantle, Arthur James Lyon, Three Months In The Southern States: April-June, 1863, Published by John Bradburn, New York, 1864.

Battle of Columbia (Tenn.) from Piggly Wiggly parking lot

                           EXPLORE PANORAMA of Columbia (Tenn.) battlefield site.
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On Nov. 26, 1864, Confederate skirmishers under General Stephen Lee formed a skirmish line here extending a mile to my left and right and then feigned a major attack on John Schofield’s boys entrenched roughly a half-mile away, at a present-day hospital near a Taco Bell. 

Whew. My high school English teacher would not be proud of that sentence.

Meanwhile, Army of Tennessee commander John Bell Hood’s attempted to sneak past Schofield with the majority of his soldiers, cutting off the Yankees’ retreat route to Nashville. They didn’t have self-checkout back in those days at Piggly Wiggly, so Lee’s boys had to go through the usual line to pay for supplies, angering their general.

Judge George Martin’s house, which stood on this site, according to the Civil War Trails marker, was so riddled with solid shot from Federal artillery that it had to be propped up with log braces. This scrap occurred on a Saturday, so Piggly Wiggly allowed beer sales — fabulous news for Confederates. Schofield’s soldiers, well-stocked with cigars, beer and wine from the Piggly Wiggly and boxes of burritos and nachos from Taco Bell, crossed the Duck River to safety. 

Let’s keep history alive. 😁👊 (Sort of.)

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Battle at Hollow Tree Gap: But did the car alarms go off?

                    EXPLORE THE PANORAMA of Hollow Tree Gap (Tenn.) battlefield site.
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On Dec. 17, 1864, the retreating Army of Tennessee — battered the day before at Nashville — dashed past these apartments, scattered managers in the leasing office, knocked two kids off their scooters, and wrecked several parked cars during a stand against Yankee cavalrymen, who had earlier quenched their thirst with 10 12-packs of Bud purchased across the road at a convenience store. Federal losses: 22 killed and wounded and more than 60 captured. Confederate losses: Roughly 250 captured and unknown number killed and wounded.

Thankfully, the Civil War Trails sign was not damaged in this hour-long brawl. 

John Bell Hood’s boys continued their retreat southward after this fight, also known as the Battle of Holly Tree Gap or The Duel at the Apartments. 

Let’s keep history alive. (Sort of. ) 😏

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Small wonder: Where they hanged 'Boy Hero of Confederacy'

The Sam Davis Memorial Museum on Sam Davis Avenue in a residential area of Pulaski, Tenn.
(CLICK ON ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

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NOTE: The museum closed in 2023. Its collection was transferred to the Giles County Public Library in Pulaski, Tenn..

In Pulaski — the “Wild Turkey Capital” of Tennessee and original home of the KKK — they honor Confederate spy Sam Davis in the state’s smallest museum on the very grounds where the U.S. Army hanged him in 1863.

A copy of this image, purportedly
of Davis, is displayed in the Sam Davis
Memorial Museum.

“The gallows were right here,” says my guide, 76-year-old Sam Collins, as we stand near the middle of the 15 x 22-foot Sam Davis Memorial Museum, dedicated in 1950. (Eerie? Yup, but this tale gets more twisted. Stick with me.)

Soon after we meet, I know I’m going to enjoy the visit with Collins, a gruff, no-B.S. Pulaski lifer who serves as the local historical society VP. The 76-year-old Vietnam vet wears bib overalls and clenches a toothpick between his teeth. 

Collins enjoys telling stories and life’s simple pleasures — he still uses a flip phone, doesn’t own a credit card and drives a yellow 1984 Silverado pickup truck that I want. His father served a manager at Milky Way Farm, the local estate once owned by candy magnate Franklin Mars. The place produced the 1940 Kentucky Derby champ and enough stories for Collins to fill a book.

Pulaski’s mini-museum must have peaked in popularity decades ago. Visitation over the past few years has averaged roughly 200 people annually, Collins tells me, even fewer since the COVID pandemic hit in March 2020. 

“Every one of the locals,” he explains, “has already seen it.”

A close-up of the front of the museum.

In Pulaski, Tenn., they salute the humble wild turkey.

The son of slave-owning parents from Smyrna, Tenn., Sam Davis served with “Coleman’s Scouts,” a cavalry/intel unit attached to the Army of Tennessee. On Nov. 20, 1863, U.S. soldiers captured the 21-year-old Davis at Minor Hill — a few miles from the Alabama border — with intelligence regarding the Union Army in Middle Tennessee. Vigilance may not have been embedded in his DNA — according to local lore, the soldiers found Davis asleep under a plum tree.

Union General Grenville Dodge
 interrogated Sam Davis,
 Confederate spy. (Library of Congress)

Jailed by the U.S. Army in nearby Pulaski as a suspected spy, Davis endured interrogation by the provost marshal and General Grenville M. Dodge, the local commander.

Reveal your sidekicks or else, Dodge demanded of Davis. 

“He very quietly, but firmly, refused to do it,” the general wrote decades later in The National Tribune, a newspaper for Civil War veterans. “I therefore let him be tried and suffer the consequences.”

Found guilty of espionage by a court-martial appointed to try him, Davis received a sentence of death by hanging. On the morning of Nov. 27 — on a “pretty eminence, northeast of Pulaski, overlooking the town” — U.S. soldiers led Davis to the gallows. Hundreds of them, many of whom admired Davis’ bravery as he faced his demise, witnessed the execution.

Dodge, meanwhile, angrily dismissed protests by local citizens.

“I want him hung where all of you can see him,” the general said. “There are more of you guilty of his crime – I know it – and if I ever get my hands upon you, d—d you, I’ll hang you upon the same gallows.”

Offered another chance to reveal his informants, Davis again refused. The executioner sprung the trap door of the gallows, and Davis writhed in agony for several minutes.

A bronze plaque mounted on the front
of the museum.

“I remember that when he reached the platform his head struck the noose and that he stood and looked at it for an instant,” an Iowa veteran who witnessed the grim event recalled decades later. “Then the rope was adjusted, a lever was touched, the drop fell, and we marched back to our quarters conscious that we had seen a hero die.”

“All nature seems to be in mourning,” wrote a Cincinnati newspaper reporter who attended the execution, “and many warm hearts, loyal and true, but more that were not, melted into sympathy.”

"It was a heart-rending, sickening sight to me," a 7th Iowa veteran recalled, "and every heart went out to [Davis] in sympathy and sorrow."

“[O]ne of the fates of war,” Dodge called the hanging.

Three decades after his death, Davis The Spy became a Lost Cause martyr, propped up mostly by the publisher of the Confederate Veteran, Sumner Cunningham. In 1906, Pulaski dedicated a monument to Davis on its public square. Three years later, nearly 4,000 people attended the dedication of a Davis monument outside the Tennessee State Capitol building in Nashville. (Dodge and other Union soldiers donated money for the monument.)

“In all the glorious gifts or treasure and honor and courage and life and heroic devotion the South had to give, and did give freely,” the Nashville Tennessean wrote about the dedication, “it gave nothing more sublimely noble and heroic than Sam Davis.”

A monument at the site of Davis' capture in Minor Hill, Tenn., near the Alabama border.

In 1926, at the site of his capture, nearly 2,500 people attended the dedication of another Davis monument. “I would rather die a thousand deaths than betray a friend or be false to a duty,” read words attributed to Davis inscribed on the gray-granite stone.

Even more than a half-century after his execution, the mythologizing remained at full blast.

The monument to Sam Davis in front of
 the county courthouse in Pulaski, Tenn.
"The prettiest county courthouse in the 
state," says my museum guide, Sam Collins.

“Highways are being built all over the state,” the Tennessean wrote in 1926. “What highway could be more sacred than a national highway to Sam Davis, perpetuating the memory of his bravery and teaching the younger generation how to live and how to die?”

Davis has streets and least one park in Tennessee named after him. His boyhood home in Smyrna, roughly 20 miles from Nashville, became a virtual shrine and a state landmark. Davis' story tugged at the heartstrings of generations. 

"Sam Davis' death a great American epic," read a headline over a lengthy story about the spy in The Rutherford (Tenn.) Courier in 1942.

At a pageant at the Davis family plantation in 1951, the woman who played the soldier’s mother wept — for real — during a scene. A woman in the audience “fainted and others had to go the back yard to get a grip on themselves” when the actor portraying a dead Davis appeared during the play. 

In 1999, 137 years after his death, a bronze statue of Davis was installed at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville. Davis attended Western Military Institute, a predecessor of the academy. (The statue was removed in 2020.) The "Boy Hero of the Confederacy” eventually had a Tennessee highway named after him, too.

In 1950, the State of Tennessee appropriated $15,000 to build the Pulaski museum/memorial on the very site where Davis was hanged.

 “[The museum] provides space for numerous historical articles of the Confederate era that were formerly housed in the brick building on West Madison street [in Pulaski] where the Ku Klux Klan was organized,” the Nashville Banner wrote the day of the dedication.

   GOOGLE STREET VIEW: The Sam Davis Museum at 134 Sam Davis Avenue in Pulaski.

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Museum artifacts, including the shackles (left) used to restrain Davis on his execution day.

The museum today stands in a residential area on Sam Davis Avenue. In a display case, iron shackles used to restrain Davis at the execution catch my eye.

“That’s about as cool as it gets,” says Collins, a retired science teacher/former school superintendent. Almost as cool is a large inscribed stone against the far wall – it once marked Davis’ execution site.

Other artifacts and memorabilia in the museum are more mundane: books about the boy “hero,” a trunk used by Davis while he was a student at Western Military Institute, two pieces of rock from the chimney of a house the spy used as a hideout, a photo of Davis’ elderly sister, a 20th-century painting of the hanging, group images of Confederate veterans and a few Civil War-era weapons. There simply isn’t room for much more.

A large, inscribed stone that once marked
the Sam Davis execution site.

The State of Tennessee once asked Collins for an emergency preparedness plan for the museum, among the smallest in the U.S. (A museum inside an elevator shaft in New York City is the teeniest. Or is it the one in a converted shed in Arizona?)

“If something happens, you go out the door,” Collins says with a smile about his “plan.” Then he eyes the only exit, five steps or so away.

Before we depart, Collins tells a final story. 

He points to a depression about 15 yards from a bed of irises in front of the museum. A fire destroyed the  house that once stood there, killing the woman who lived inside. She was a victim of an arsonist, as it turned out, her son. The courts convicted him of murder and he received a life sentence.

What a place.

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SOURCES 

• Cincinnati Commercial, Dec. 8, 1863
• The (Nashville) Tennessean, April 30, 1909, May 2, 1926, Sept. 28, 1952
• Nashville Banner, Nov. 27, 1950
• Smith, Henry I., History of the Seventh Iowa Veteran Volunteer Infantry During the Civil War, Mason City, Iowa, E. Hitchcock Printer, 1903
• The National Tribune, Sept. 15, 1904, July 4, 1907