21 Facts About Sam Davis

Sam Davis was a Confederate soldier executed by Union forces in Pulaski, Tennessee as a spy, during the American Civil War.

Sam Davis is popularly known as the Boy Hero of the Confederacy, although he was 21 when he died.

Sam Davis became a celebrated instance of Confederate memorialization in the late 1890s and early 1900s, eulogized by Middle Tennesseeans for his valor and sacrifice.

Sam Davis was recruited by Confederate scout forces early in the Civil War.

Sam Davis signed up as a private in the 1st Tennessee Infantry Regiment on May 10,1861 and his regiment first fought in the Battle of Cheat Mountain; then in the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862; then in the Battle of Shiloh; and finally the Battle of Perryville.

Sam Davis suffered minor injuries at Shiloh, and suffered a more severe wound at Perryville.

Sam Davis was captured by Union forces near Minor Hill, Tennessee, on November 20,1863, having been detailed for special, hazardous duty within the Union lines of occupation around Nashville.

At the time of his arrest by Union secret service agents, Sam Davis had in his possession a miscellany of newspapers and intelligence sources, which included detailed drawings of Union fortifications at Nashville and other towns in Middle Tennessee.

Sam Davis was charged with spying and carrying messages to Confederate leaders.

Sam Davis maintained his innocence regarding espionage but accepted responsibility for the papers he carried.

Sam Davis was hanged by Union forces in Pulaski, Tennessee, on November 27,1863.

Accounts of Sam Davis' death appeared in writings by Union soldiers, who witnessed the execution, and by a journalist from the Cincinnati Daily Commercial.

Sam Davis suffered a fate shared by many intelligence gatherers operating around Nashville.

For nearly thirty years after the war, the story of Sam Davis's execution was not widely remembered.

In 1866 Sam Davis's father erected the first monument to his son, a twenty-five foot shaft of Italian marble, at the back of the family's plantation home outside Smyrna.

The Sam Davis story became part of a broader social memory only in the mid-1890s and chiefly through the efforts of Andrew Cunningham, the founding editor of Confederate Veteran magazine.

Sam Davis left this position shortly after launching the Nashville-based Confederate Veteran in January 1893.

Since the late 1890s, Sam Davis has towered above any other Tennessean in the pantheon of Confederate Civil War heroes.

In 1928 the 175-foot-tall, 200-room Sam Davis Hotel opened in downtown Nashville.

Sam Davis was named "Historical Personality of the Year" in 1992 by the Tennessee Historical Commission.

In recent years the Sam Davis Home has run educational programs focused on the material culture of the mid-nineteenth century, Civil War medicine, the music of enslaved people, and the lives of soldiers and civilians during the Civil War.