Every attorney has been confronted with “the hopeless case.” We also know, however, that our legal system is only designed to work properly if each side, no matter how forlorn, has a devoted and skilled champion to zealously present a case and test the opponent’s case in an impartial forum. From this clash of champions (the contending lawyers) the truth is expected to arise. And, we also know that from the hurly-burly of litigation and trial, new life can sometimes be breathed into the most desperate cause, both civil and criminal. It is this need and this faith of our client that spurs us to fight on despite the odds. There is honor and worth in even the failed struggle. The effort legitimizes the process and advances the rule of law.

At the height of the American Civil War, when the courts themselves were swept away, Tennessee lawyers continued to strive to protect their clients and serve the law under the most trying circumstances. This is the story of one such lawyer and the case he lost. It is compiled from firsthand accounts of participants, testimony of witnesses and official records.[1]

It was a little past noon on a “beautiful, bright and clear”[2] Dec. 23, 1864.[3] The weather was befitting the day before Christmas Eve, but not this day’s business. A composed 21-year-old Dick Davis[4] was led from an ambulance wagon and up the steep steps of the scaffold in the courtyard of Fort Pickering in Memphis, an enclosure filled with blue clad soldiers and townspeople. He was flanked by a priest and provost guards as he proceeded up with a “bold, firm step.”[5] The physical descriptions of the boyish Davis in his gray Confederate uniform are consistent: He was tall, slender, “stood straight as an arrow”[6] and weighed only about 135 pounds. He had a wide forehead, thick auburn hair cut short, fair skin, a clean-shaven face except for long sideburns, fine features and large gray eyes.[7] More than one person who met him noted the same attributes: his “flashing” eyes;[8] how well-spoken, well-educated and well-mannered he was;[9] and, how he looked nothing like they anticipated as the fierce guerilla fighter who had so terrorized the Union army in 1864.[10]

Davis listened carefully and showed no signs of fear as the provost marshal read the charges and the sentence of death. He next talked and prayed a bit with the priest, then indicated that he was ready. The noose was placed around his neck and a hood placed over his head. The trapdoor was sprung under him. Although he fell five feet, the drop failed to break his neck as expected. Except for a slight, slow pendulum-like swinging of the body at the end of the rope, he hung there motionless for a few minutes. Then, suddenly, his shoulders went into spasm-like movements, his arms and legs quivered, and he mercifully died.

Both friend and foe commented on his bravery and dignity on the gallows. Although his trial was conducted in secret, his death was most public. Among the crowd observing the execution was the Indiana officer who presided over that trial, Brevet Gen. Thomas M. Browne.[11] Two hundred yards away, locked within a prison cell, Davis’s lawyer, John Hallum, watched the scene through a barred window.[12] Dick Davis’s death is the end of the story, a story which began two and a half years earlier with the fall of Memphis to Union forces.

Hallum Recieves a Big Retainer

Memphis fell to the Federals early in the Civil War. Many pro-Confederacy citizens fled the Union invasion in panic, usually crossing the nearby state line into Mississippi.[13] This exodus included state and local officials such as the governor and members of the recently convened Tennessee General Assembly. Because of the earlier fall of Nashville, the state capital had been officially transferred to Memphis, but now Tennessee’s government effectively passed from existence.[14] Hence, in June of 1862, a tense occupation of Memphis began. While many Confederates had left, there was a new population influx of Unionists, Federal soldiers, and refugees. By 1863, 19,000 of the city’s 35,000 residents were new arrivals.[15] Yet with time, many Confederate civilians returned to their homes and businesses out of necessity. One such returning Memphian was leading Tennessee lawyer John Hallum. He reopened his law office, but his practice was quite different, for civil and criminal cases were litigated before military commissions composed of Union officers and later in “reconstructed courts” with unelected Unionist judges appointed by the military governor in Nashville, Andrew Johnson.[16]

One day in October of 1864, a prominent, elegant lady by the name of Mrs. Strickland, the wife of a wealthy Collierville planter and well known for her compassion, social standing and loyalty to the Confederate cause, appeared in Hallum’s office overlooking Court Square. She handed him $500 saying: “If you want a thousand more you can have it to defend Dick Davis.” Although he had never met Davis, from what Hallum knew from the press, he replied that he “did not think it possible to save his life” and tried to hand back the cash but she refused it. “No, do the best you can for him,” she insisted and explained that she represented the Confederate ladies of Shelby County. They had collected the money and they wanted the boy saved, again demanding, “[Y]ou must keep the money and do all you can for him.” Hallum relented and accepted the significant retainer.[17]

‘With a Single Exception These Men Have Had No Trial’

Hallum first met his new client in the infamous Irving Block Prison located on Second Street at the northeast corner of Court Square. Confederates refereed to it as “the Bastille.”[18] In response, Unionist called it “the Hotel DeIrving.”[19] Originally, the Irving Block was a stylish, cast-iron framed office building with store fronts built in 1860. The Confederates used it as a military hospital. The Federals converted it to a prison that held up to 600 inmates of both sexes in inhumane conditions. During Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s raid on Memphis on Aug. 21, 1864,[20] Confederate soldiers unsuccessfully tried to batter down the doors to rescue the prisoners while Union troops fired down upon them from floors above. The effort was only abandoned when Federal reinforcements came rushing down Second Street.[20] President Lincoln would eventually order the prison closed after reading a report that stated:

[T]he prison which is used for the detention of citizens, prisoners of war on their way to the North and the United States soldiers awaiting trial and which is located in a large block of stores is represented as the filthiest place the inspector ever saw occupied by human beings. The whole management and government of the prison could not be worse! Discipline and order are unknown. Food sufficient but badly served. In a dark wet cellar I found 28 prisoners chained to a wet floor, where they had been constantly confined, many of them for several months, one since November 16, 1863, and are not for a moment released even to relieve the calls of nature.  With a single exception these men have had no trial.[21]

Davis was one of those men chained lying flat on the damp basement floor.[22] He was permitted to stand and meet with his lawyer in a hallway while draped in chains he held in one hand and with two 20-pound cannonballs shackled to his ankles. Hallum was stunned by the amount of chains heaped upon his client[23] and by his youthfulness.[24] The lawyer began the interview by honestly telling the young man that “it would be a crime to hold out any hope of saving [your] life.”[25] Davis asked Hallum to write his parents and sister in Cincinnati and ask them to come and see him.[26] Hallum agreed and requested that Davis tell him his story.[27]

The Notorious Dick Davis

Davis, who was born at Maysville, Kentucky,[28] but later relocated to Ohio,[29] revealed that he was one of the rare men who had fought in both the Union and Confederate armies in the ongoing Civil War, having first enlisted at 18 in an Ohio regiment and fought in many battles for the Union under Gen. McClellan in Northern Virginia.[30] (Gen. Thomas M. Bowne would confirm this Union service but said that before enlisting Davis had been suspected of being a scout and spy for Confederate Gen. Kirby Smith and had only joined the Union army as part of an agreement to avoid prosecution for horse theft.[31]) In any event, all agree that Davis deserted and enlisted in a Confederate infantry regiment. Soon thereafter, he obtained a transfer to Gen. John Morgan’s cavalry.[32] “[A]fter narrow escapes and thrilling adventures,”[33] and many raids in Kentucky, he determined that his former service in the Union army would prevent his promotion to the rank of officer in the regular Southern forces.[34]

So, being adventurous and ambitious[35] (Gen. Browne would say he was “reckless” but an “expert scout”[36]), Davis decided to secretly organize an “independent command” of 40 men in Kentucky, of which he was unanimously elected captain.[37] Browne described Davis’s irregulars as “all well mounted, armed with a pair of revolvers each and a carbine. His men were principally deserters, some from the rebel and some from the Union army.”[38] After collecting weapons and the best horses found in Kentucky, Davis explained as follows:

My design was to operate on the rear, front or flanks of the Federal army, and take them in detail whenever and where my own judgment dictates. The charge that I was moved by mercenary motives to plunder and spoil is as base a slander as was ever venomously hurled at a soldier’s name. The charge that I ever injured a Confederate after firing my last gun on the Chickahominy in the awful rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon is a base falsehood. Sometimes I commanded a hundred men, often less than 50. … Death I fear not. I have faced it on many a battlefield, but it is horrid to leave a blackened name to a noble mother and sister. This is the only uncompensated terror to me.[39]

From his investigation, Hallum confirmed that “no Confederate ever laid charge at his door.”[40] He concluded that Davis only took “lawful prizes of war”[41] and never traded in stolen property. Furthermore, Davis was known for giving to “the defenseless and needy”[42] and had been of “much service” to “defenseless homes” near Memphis.[43] Conversely, Gen. Browne contended that although Davis had not attacked private homes,[44] he had “frequently relieved citizens coming into and going out of the city of their money, watches, jewelry, horses and other valuables.”[45] He further asserted that “in his exploits as a highwayman, he made no distinction between loyal and disloyal, white and black, nor did he respect age, sex or condition.”[46] Browne described Davis’s tactics:

He was continually changing the rendezvous of his band, but generally kept it in the bottoms of the Nonconnah creek and Wolf river. His strategy was so admirable that he out-witted and out-generaled every scout or party sent to capture him. For months he lived, robbed and murdered with impunity, almost within the Federal lines, and within earshot of the federal army. He was enabled the more effectually to elude his pursuers, by the fact that he so managed it as to secure the silence of the citizens in the country infested by his band. …. The most desperate of his enterprises, and the most daring of his exploits, were directed against the Union army and soldiery. He would creep on a dark night through the picket lines, and steal mules and horses from under the very noses of the guards. He would ambuscade and kill patrolling parties.[47]

A similar description of the alleged guerilla activities around Memphis was provided by another Union officer: “These pests, particularly under the command of the notorious ‘Dick Davis,’ lurked about the picket posts, watching for opportunities to capture or kill the pickets, and lay in wait in ambush for scouting parties.”[48]

The accounts of the Davis band’s raids are in keeping with those of other semi-independent guerilla outfits, the most famous led by Colonel John S. Mosby in Virginia and W. C. Quantrill in Missouri and Kansas. Preeminent Civil War historian Bruce Catton provides the following narrative:

The Union troopers carried out their orders with a heavy hand, and as they did so they were plagued by the attacks of bands of Confederate guerrillas — irregular fighters who were of small account in a pitched battle, but who raided outposts, burned Yankee wagon trains, shot sentries and couriers. … The Federal soldiers considered the guerrillas no better than highwaymen, and when they captured any of them they usually hanged them. The guerrillas hanged Yankees in return, naturally enough; and from all this there was a deep scar, burned into the American memory, as the romanticized “war between brothers” took on an ugly phase.[49]

Davis, along with three of his men, had been captured on Oct. 2, 1864, at Cold Water, Miss., which is about 20 miles south of Memphis, by a detachment of Indiana cavalry,[50] a detail sent for the purpose of capturing Davis.[51] This cavalry unit was fired upon at Anderson Planation near Holly Springs. They charged and after passing through some woods and entering a clearing, a man in a gray Confederate uniform was spotted running across the field headed toward more woods while at the same time attempting to reload his carbine. Being on horseback, the captain of the cavalry easily caught up and placed a gun at his head while demanding his surrender. The Confederate calmly responded, “I guess I will have to surrender, but damn it, I thought I could load and kill you before you came up, but you was too quick for me.”[52] That man turned out to be Dick Davis.

Sprung Using the Old Cake Trick

At John Hallum’s request, Davis’s parents and sister rushed to Memphis from Cincinnati. The sister, Alice, greatly impressed Hallum as a well-educated, 20-year-old, blonde beauty. The mother was a “sedate matron” who was polite but said little.[53] The father (or step-father by the name of Richard Davis, according to Gen. Browne[54]) was a stern Unionist who was eager to hear his son’s explanation for his predicament that had brought such embarrassment back home. After detecting the father’s intense rage, Hallum made him promise not to say anything hurtful to the boy.[55]

Hallum led the family to the prison and they waited in a second-floor office. “Clank, clank went the chains and thump, thump as the prisoner ascended the steps of two flights of stairs from the damp dungeon below.”[56] The sound made Alice turn white and the mother’s face showed both “horror and despair.”[57] The father was like stone. When Davis appeared in the doorway, the sister and the mother hugged and kissed him and cried. The father said and did nothing. Then, all of a sudden, the father broke his promise and launched into a verbal assault. He said “words more cruel than the knife of the executioner,” according to Hallum.[58] Dick Davis froze and the weeping Alice covered her face as the berating continued, which did not slow even after the mother fainted and had to be carried away. Hallum grabbed the “heartless father” and shook him violently until he stopped and ordered the guard to remove him. Once outside, Hallum demanded that the father immediately leave Memphis, and he did so on the next boat north. The mother stayed another two weeks, and the sister stayed longer and daily searched the city for items to bring her brother such as treats and pipe tobacco.[59]

As the weeks passed, Alice went from deep depression to giddy cheerfulness. The change and coy remarks about a bright future were such that Hallum became suspicious that she was involved in a conspiracy to free her brother.[60] When he raised the issue, her response was to toss her head and say, “All’s well that ends well.”[61] Hence, his suspicion grew, and he pressed her further, saying that as her brother’s lawyer, he might be viewed as the instigator of the plot. She would say nothing “but bade me rest quiet and lend energies in some other direction.” She then went on to comment, “I would attest your innocence. … And let me add to that, if I could save my unfortunate brother by the jeopardy of many such lives as mine, I would have no hesitation in doing it, but would gladly embrace it.”[62] She would say nothing more. A few days later, an astonished Hallum read the headline of the newspaper: “THE ESCAPE OF DICK DAVIS, THE NOTORIOUS GUERILLA.”[63]

The same morning, Alice Davis came skipping into Hallum’s law office ready to tell all before heading home to Ohio, exclaiming, “With my heart overflowing with thanks to God.”[64] She went on to explain that she had smuggled into the prison certain essential hardware inside a cake and Dick had sawed off his shackles. She also managed to bring him a suit of civilian clothes, $50, and a pass through the Union lines out of Memphis. That night Hallum escorted Alice to a steamer heading for Cincinnati and never saw her again.[65] Union authorities learned nothing of her involvement and concluded that a guard had helped him escape. According to Gen. Browne, the freed Davis “rejoined his fellow marauders and resumed his old occupation of highwayman.”[66]

A Secret Trial

Three weeks later Davis was recaptured, however.[67] Some said that Davis, after an early morning scout of the Federal picket lines along Nonconnah Creek looking for “opportunities,” stopped for breakfast at the home of wealthy planter Rush Williams. The Williams Mansion, three miles south of the creek, was also possibly used as a headquarters by Davis. When he realized the house was surrounded by a squad of Federal cavalry, he ran upstairs and jumped into a bed, pretending to be a sleeping resident. The Union troops searching the home noticed that he had his boots on under the covers. They overpowered him, pulled off his boots, and beat him with them before returning him to the Irving Block.[68]

On Oct. 11, 1864, the trial was convened by Gen. Browne,[69] which proceeded in secrecy purportedly from of fear of a rescue attempt.[70] The day before, Davis was brought before the commission for preliminary matters. Browne clearly remembered many years later the sound of the rattling chains as Davis approached the courtroom carrying the two cannonballs linked to his ankles. “I have in my time, seen many in irons, but never before had I seen one so thoroughly manacled,”[71] he recalled. Davis appeared surprisingly neat and wore his gray jacket, brown pants, a plain hat and boots. During trial, the general found him attentive, helpful to his counsel and respectful of all. He also noticed that he had a very fine handwriting.[72] Faced with a relentless prosecution and the belief that the defendant was being “railroaded through,”[73] the desperate defense resorted to delaying tactics and managed to drag the proceedings out for over two months,[74] certain that each day of delay won another day of life for the accused. Not content to await his fate, Dick Davis, once again, decided to take matters into his own hands.

Even though chained flat to the basement floor at the Irving Block when not in trial, Davis planned another escape with the help of a defense witness and his rumored intended bride, a “Miss Anna T.” of Collierville, the daughter of a plantation owner. She was described as an enchanting and beautiful 20-year-old who visited the prison often and willingly offered her aid in freeing her love. Davis wrote detailed instructions on how she should proceed. First, she was to befriend a prison guard to the point that “he would gladly do her every bidding.”[75] Second, she was to obtain two small saws made from watch-spring steel and two saw bows, and she was to purchase a small mirror and an overcoat. The saws and bows were to be hidden under the glass of the mirror and the mirror then placed in a pocket of the coat. The “beauty-smitten guard” was to deliver the coat to Davis. She was to also lace a bottle of whisky with laudanum to be given to the guards to make “their slumbers more profound.” Anna duly had the items made or purchased and she forged a friendship with a guard, but the plot was discovered and Anna was herself imprisoned. With this setback, Davis seemed resigned to his destiny.[76]

The trial before the commission continued unabated. The principal specifications against Davis were that he, while “pretending to be in the service of the so-called Confederate States of America, did levy irregular and unauthorized warfare”… “upon loyal citizens, and against Untied States soldiers, and did go about the country armed, and commit divers acts of crime and violence” such as “firing upon unarmed citizens and upon railroad trains” and “did violently and willfully murder soldiers of the United States, after they had surrendered as prisoners of war.”[77]

Evidence was first presented that Davis took particular joy in he and his men firing at passing trains loaded with Union soldiers and “scampering speedily away” to the Nonconnah bottoms before they could be intercepted. It was alleged that in one such ambush on a train traveling between Germantown and Collierville in the summer of 1864 three Union soldiers were killed and 10 wounded.[78]

The most damming charge, however, was the murder of prisoners of war on June 13, 1864. In the aftermath of a Union defeat to the cavalry of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest at Brice’s Cross-Road, Miss., on June 10, various disorganized and exhausted groups of Federal soldiers retreated toward Memphis. It was alleged that after a trek of 100 miles, one such unarmed and starving group of seven Illinois soldiers, including a Captain Somers, had made its way to the Memphis and Charleston Railroad two miles west of Collierville when Davis’s men opened fire, but none were wounded. Davis’s band of around 25 then charged and the Federals surrendered.[79]

Testimony was presented that the captives were taken into the woods, robbed of their valuables and coats and marched two miles south. When told to halt, Captain Somers lay on the ground on some leaves while the other six sat side by side on a log. Leaving two men to guard the prisoners, Davis held a conference with the rest of his men. When Davis returned, he directed Captain Somers to take a seat on the log beside the others and said, “Boys, you must all go overboard.”[80] Although they begged for their lives, and an elder member of Davis’s band pleaded on their behalf, the order to “fire” was given and 10 of Davis’s men unleashed a volley at three paces.[81] Although hit with two bullets and eventually losing an arm because of it, a Private Parks flung himself backwards over the log and escaped. A private Guernes just jumped up and ran. The two were chased and shot at, but they outdistanced their pursuers and made their way back to Memphis. Parks was sent for by the commission and gave his devastating account.[82] Further evidence was offed that a detachment of cavalry was dispatched to investigate and found “five Union soldiers, stripped, putrid  and unburied.”[83] The cavalry unit interred the bodies near the railroad in one grave under a small oak tree.[84]

There was also evidence that Davis and his men ambushed a Union scouting party of 14 at Pigeon Rooste Crossing in Shelby County on April 29, 1864, but no Federals were killed although two were wounded. Three were captured, but no harm was done them. Miss Belle Edmondson of Whitehaven, a Tennessee community of grand planters’ mansions just south of the Nonconnah Creek picket line, wrote in her diary of this ambush at the time that “[the Federals] are very much exasperated — the lines have been closed since.” She exclaimed: “[H]urrah! for the Dick Davis and his band — I hope they may break into this thieving band of Yanks roving over the country.”[85] And, contrary to the contention that Davis had no connection to the Confederate army, there was the fact that he and his band, in clear conjunction with regular Confederate cavalry and thereby making a combined force of 400, attacked Union forces at White Station in late 1864, killing three, wounding eight and capturing 20.[86]

The secret trial of Dick Davis, which was termed “[t]he most important case tried before the Commission,”[87] finally ended on Dec. 15, 1864.[88] One Union officer observed that “he was ably defended by counsel, who did their utmost to secure the acquittal of their notorious client. But all their arts were turned to confusion, by the watchful, able and sagacious president of the court.”[89] Davis was found guilty of all the charges except “firing upon unarmed civilians and railroad trains.” The commission also found that there was insufficient evidence of guerilla activities before June 1864.[90] The condemned heard the sentence of death without emotion.[91]

General Napoleon J. T. Dana, Commander of the Department of West Tennessee, approved the sentence on Dec. 19 and ordered the execution on the 23rd,[92] thus precluding any meaningful opportunity to appeal.

Back at the prison, Davis wrote friends with instructions on the disposal of his personal property. His horse, which he brought from Kentucky and he claimed to be a racehorse, was left to the jailed Miss Anna T. He also directed the payment of his debts. Finally, he sent the members of his band a kind farewell and asked them not to take revenge for his death “by retaliating upon innocent men.”[93] These letters were sent across the lines by the Federals.[94] Not only was the sentence swiftly meted out, so was Union retribution to his defenders. John Hallum was imprisoned before the execution for, as he put it, “resisting military oppression.”[95] Mrs. Strickland, the lady who had hired Hallum to represent Davis, was also arrested and jailed on a charge of refusing to divulge information about the location of Confederate soldiers. Hallum was eventually released, and, as her lawyer, he eventually won Strickland’s freedom after an incarceration of many weeks in deplorable conditions in Alton Prison.[96]

Villian or Hero?

The rest of the story is unsubstantiated. Legend has it that when Dick’s brother, Bill Davis, learned of the execution, he gathered some men and hurried to the Memphis area from Kentucky. This band encircled and captured a small detachment of Union soldiers on the Nonconnah Creek picket line. Reminiscent of his brother’s alleged dark sense of humor, all the captives were ordered to walk across a log stretched over the stream. As each soldier reached the midpoint of the log, Bill shot them and they fell dead into the muddy creek below. He fired so many times that as his gun became too hot to handle, another was handed to him. This new Davis band allegedly moved on to harass Sherman’s army in other parts of the South. Local folklore also contends that a bootless Dick Davis’s ghost still haunts the Nonconnah Creek bottoms in search of Union pickets.[97] Despite the tales, the basic facts of young Dick Davis’s life and death are fairly clear. Yet, unlike Sam Davis (no relation), the “Boy Hero of the Confederacy” from Rutherford County, who was also executed by the Union army in Tennessee at the same age of 21, it was debated whether Dick Davis was a hero or villain. There is no doubt, however, that he was brave, charismatic and resourceful. And there is no doubt he received a valiant defense but a denial of justice, for justice must not only be measured by the outcome but also by the process.

Gen. Browne’s account of the Davis affair was published in 1876.[98] In 1895, more than 30 years after the events, John Hallum published his memoirs with a central feature being the defense of Dick Davis. He “affectionately dedicated” his book to the Tennessee Bar Association.[99]

Notes

1. Where accounts conflict on a minor point of fact, I have adopted the contention of the one in the best position to know or present both positions to the reader. For example, a direct contemporarily recorded quote would be favored over a recollection of hearsay heard decades before.
2. Gen. Thomas M. Browne “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 201 (1876).
3. Id. at 196.
4. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 293 (1895). General Browne incorrectly concluded that Davis was around 26. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 196 (1876).
5. Gen. Thomas M. Browne “Dick Davis, The Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 201 (1876).
6. Id.
7. Id.; John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 293 (1895).
8. Id.; John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 293 (1895).
9. Id. at 197.
10. Id. at 196.
11. Id. at 201.
12. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 300 (1895).
13. See Id. at 281.
14. Thomas L. Connelly, Civil War Tennessee, Battles and Leaders 30 (1979).
15. Robert E. Corlew, Tennessee, a Short History 325 (2d ed. 1981).
16. See Russell Fowler, “Chancellor William Macon Smith and Judicial Reconstruction: A Study of Tyranny and Integrity,” The West Tennessee Historical Society Papers vol. XLVIII (1994).
17. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 296 (1895).
18. Id. at 297.
19. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 194 (1876).
20. Joanne Cullom Moore, “Forrest’s Raid on Memphis,” Confederate Veteran vol. 72, no. 4 (July/Aug. 2014).
21. U.S. Inspector General Report on the Conditions at the Irving Block Prison, Memphis, Tenn. (1984).
22. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 194 (1876).
23. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 295 (1895).
24. Id. at 296.
25. Id.
26. Id.
27. Id. at 293.
28. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 189 (1876).
29. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 293 (1895).
30. Id.
31. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 190-91 (1876).
32. Id. at 190; John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 293 (1895).
33. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 294 (1895).
34. Id.
35. Id. at 295.
36. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 190 (1876).
37. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 294 (1895).
38. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 192 (1876).
39. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 294 (1895).
40. Id. at 295.
41. Id.
42. Id.
43. Id. at 296.
44. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 192 (1876). See also Alex Baggett, Homegrown Yankees: Tennessee’s Union Cavalry in the Civil War 171 (2009).
45. Id.
46. Id.
47. Id. at 191.
48. Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 10 (1876).
49. Bruce Canton, The American Heritage Short History of the Civil War 224 (1960).
50. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 193 (1876).
51. “John M. Lennon,” in Magazine of Western History, vol. 9, no. 3, 424 (1888).
52. Gen. Thomas M. Browne “Dick Davis, The Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 193 (1876).
53. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 296 (1895).
54. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 198 (1876). Gen. Browne also reported that Dick Davis’s birth name was John B. Bollinger.
55. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 297 (1895).
56. Id.
57. Id.
58. Id.
59. Id. at 297­ – 98.
60. Id. at 299.
61. Id. at 298.
62. Id. at 299.
63. Id.
64. Id.
65. Id. at 299 ­– 300.
66. Gen. Thomas M. Browne “Dick Davis, The Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 191 (1876).
67. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 300 (1895).
68. See George Morris Jr., The Memphis Commercial Appeal, Nov. 21, 1962; Alethea Sayers, The Ghost of the Nonconnah Bottoms: A Nation Divided, eHistory Archive.
69. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 197 (1876).
70. W. S. Blackman, The Boy of Battle Ford and the Man 100 (2012).
71. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 195 (1876).
72. Id. at 197.
73. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 300 (1895).
74. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 196 (1876).
75. Id. at 195.
76. Id.
77. General Court-Martial Orders No. 1, Head-Quarters Department of Mississippi, Memphis, Tenn., Dec. 19, 1864.
78. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 193 (1876). See also Alex Baggett, Homegrown Yankees: Tennessee’s Union Cavalry in the Civil War 171 (2009).
79. Id. at 197 – 98.
80. Id. at 199.
81. Id.
82. The most reliable firsthand evidence is that Private Parks and not Private Guernes was the soldier shot in the arm. See direct contemporary quotes from an interview of Parks in W. S. Blackman, The Boy of Battle Ford and the Man 97 (2012).
83. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 200 (1876).
84. Id.
85. Diary of Belle Edmondson, April 30, 1864.
86. William Forse Scott, The Story of a Cavalry Regiment: The Career of the Fourth Iowa Veteran Volunteers from Kansas to Georgia, 1861-1865, 569-70 (2010).
87. Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 37 (1876).
88. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 200 (1876).
89. Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 37 (1876).
90. General Court-Martial Orders No. 1, Head-Quarters Department of Mississippi, Memphis, Tenn., Dec. 19, 1864.
91. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 200 (1876).
92. Id.
93. Id.
94. Id.
95. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain 300 (1895).
96. Id. at 335-36.
97. See George Morris Jr., The Memphis Commercial Appeal, Nov. 21, 1962; Alethea Sayers, The Ghost of the Nonconnah Bottoms: A Nation Divided, eHistory Archive.
98. Gen. Thomas M. Browne, “Dick Davis, the Guerrilla,” in Thomas S. Cogley, History of the Seventh Indian Cavalry Volunteers 201 (1876).
99. John Hallum, The Diary of an Old Lawyer or Scenes Behind the Curtain (1895).

RUSSELL FOWLER, a 10th generation Tennessean, is associate director of Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET) and has managed legal aid offices in Chattanooga since 1997. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history and political science and his law degree at the University of Memphis. He also has often served as special chancellor in the Chancery Court of Shelby County. Fowler has written for more than 40 publications on law and legal history. Since 1999, Fowler has been an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he teaches judicial process, constitutional law and civil liberties. Fowler has created and taught many CLE courses across Tennessee on subjects such as legal history and chancery practice.