Courage quality that sets heroes apart

Planned removal of the word "Confederate" from a Vanderbilt University building brought to mind an earlier kindred act: deletion of Sam Davis from the Tennessee Blue Book after his being in it for years.
Of these victims of the insatiable scythe of political correctness, excision of the "Boy Hero of the Confederacy" is the more important. The explanation should simply be that Sam was a hero. But lack of appreciation and understanding of heroes requires elaboration. Heroes are important because of what they tell us about human beings, our capabilities.

Heroes have nothing to do with politics, ideology, race, gender, religion, nationality, geography, chronology or any other form of particularism or parochialism. Heroes are generic, universal, timeless. They are distinguished by one quality only; courage.

Nor are heroes to be confused with idols. Idols are liked, admired, adored - attributes not required for heroes.

That Sam Davis fought for the Confederacy and that his family owned slaves hardly endear him to many. But these should not make him one whit less a hero even to those who condemn him on moral grounds.

(The perpetrators of the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center are not to this writer heroes, as some have called them. Far from it. My concept of heroes does not include murderers of innocents.)

The ultimate hero is one exhibiting the ultimate courage - surrendering his life when he could have preserved it by infidelity to principle.

Many Tennesseans know - all should - the Sam Davis story. He was executed as a Confederate spy in 1863. Offered his freedom in return for the name of the person giving him information about Union forces, Sam repeatedly refused even in the shadow of the noose. His desire to live with strong, especially because of the great sadness his death would bring to his mother. But there was a stronger influence operating on Sam: adherence to principle.

Sam Davis is one of a number of human beings in history making such a choice, among them Socrates, Sir Thomas More and Bishop Hugh Latimer.

Socrates was sentenced to death by an Athenian jury. Though he felt the decision unjust, he refused to avoid it, as he easily could have, and drank the fatal dose of hemlock. Avoiding death would mean making his life a lie and a denial of who he was. He had long preached the necessity of obedience to the law. To those who urged escape, the great philosopher responded, "Do you imagine that a state can subsist in which decisions of the laws can be trampled on by individuals?"

Despite feeling innocent, to avoid the application of the law to himself even when it required his life would make him somebody else, would make him two persons. To avoid one form of death would mean another form of it. Saving one Socrates would require killing another Socrates.

The other two heroes, Sir Thomas More and Bishop Latimer, were 16th-century English clergymen who refused to make religious statements demanded by their monarchs. More submitted his head to the ax and Latimer to burning at the stake rather that do so. Who is not moved by Latimer's words to shore up the steadfastness of a like victim as the flames were engulfing them: "Play the man, Ridley" - words capturing the essence of heroes.

Though these three heroes lived centuries before Sam Davis and thousands of miles from Tennessee, they were at one with him. When Sam went to the gallows, he was Socrates, More and Latimer; and they, he. Heroes are fungible.

The great courage showed by these four heroes is testimony to the words of French statesman Clemenceau, "Courage is what makes the grandeur of man," and Winston Churchill. "Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others."

These heroes teach us a lesson about ourselves as human beings: our capability of exercising discipline, control, constancy in the face of natural tendencies, impulses, desires. In a word, they demonstrate man's ability of self-restraint, which is essential for an orderly society, for civilization itself.

The acts of Sam and the others countervail the deterministic Freudian mishmash that we are not responsible for our behavior because it is foreordained by a number of irresponsible forces. This ethos asserts essentially that we are programmed like animals and have no free will, no real ability to make choices. It passes for the highest sophistication that human beings can truly fulfill themselves only by regression to animalism.

In an age that sees the dominant psychology as obsessive, self-serving egocentrism, a what's-in-it-for-me pragmatism, the acts of the four heroes are seen as stupid, irrational in the extreme. Rationality is a human attribute, of course. But our humanness is exhibited as well as irrational acts. Such behavior derives from the fact that human beings are of a higher order than animals, which basically are, in a sense, consistently rational beings because unlike man they have little or no ability to make choices.

Few of us human beings would voluntarily surrender our lives for principle when we could choose not to. The real lesson from these four heroes is not that we can be as good as they were but that we can be better that we are. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "our unattained but attainable self."

Few of us truly know what we are until tested. These four great men proved to bed in deed what they had said they were, preserving to the end their integrity, their oneness through their ability to exercise the ultimate self-denial. Their example should serve as a source of strength for us to do not merely what we wish but what we should, that we have it in us to so behave, that "ought implies can."

An ancient Persian king suffered a humiliating defeat by the small Greek city state of Athens. His successor son vowed revenge, and every day for 10 years had a servant say, "Sire, remember the Athenians."

We would do well ourselves to remember the Athenian, the two Englishmen, and especially the 21-year-old Smyrna, Tenn., boy hanged in Pulaski on a November morning in 1863.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Donald Cheatham is a professor of political science at Motlow State Community College in Lynchburg.)

Sam Davis Lodge #661
Who is Sam Davis?
Sam Davis
1842-1863

Who was Sam Davis? There have been several replies made to this question over the years. Davis has been multiply labelled as "The Boy Hero Of The Confederacy," a soldier doing his duty, a living example of the Southern gentleman's code of honor, and a spy. Which is the correct answer? All of them are, to a certain degree. Simply put, Sam Davis was a young man who, in the midst of war and the many senseless deaths which accompany it, made his death meaningful - and with it, his life.

On 6 October 1842, Sam Davis was born in the Stewartsboro (now Smyrna), Tennessee farmhouse of his parents Charles Lewis Davis and Jane Simmons Davis. By all accounts, his life was that of a normal boy in a middle class rural Southern family until November 1860 - when Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. With whispers of an approaching war already on the wind, Davis' parents enrolled him in Nashville's Western Military Academy. Davis' academic career at WMA was destined to be a short one, however. Davis left the Academy in April 1861 and volunteered for the 1st Tennessee Infantry (Company I - "Rutherford's Rifles") the following month. Davis officially became a Confederate soldier in August 1861, when the 1st Tennessee was mustered into the Confederate Army.

Davis served as an infantry private under Robert E. Lee during Lee's Virginia/West Virginia campaign until December 1861, when the 1st Tennessee was transferred to Major General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson's command for the defense of the Shenandoah Valley. Davis performed with distinction, earning several commendations for valor during the First Valley Campaign of 1862. The 1st Tennessee participated in this campaign until March 1862, when the Federal capture of Fort Donelson and Fort Henry led to the transfer of the 1st Tennessee to the command of General Albert Sidney Johnson for the defense of Corinth, Mississippi. Sam Davis and the 1st Tennessee Infantry arrived in time to engage in fighting on both days of the Battle of Shiloh - one of the bloodiest clashes of the Civil War. Davis was wounded slightly, and his valor was once again noted by his regimental officers.

In June 1862, the 1st Tennessee was transferred to the command of General Braxton Bragg as part of the newly-formed Army of Tennessee, to conduct offensive operations in Tennessee and Kentucky. Davis' participation in these operations included the battles at Perryville, Murfreesboro (Stones River) and Shelbyville. For Bragg to continue his operations, however, more detailed information on Federal troop and supply movements was required. To meet these needs, a special calvary company was formed. This company was staffed with the creme-de-la-creme of the soldiers - men who had repeatedly demonstrated courage, endurance and coolness under fire. Sam Davis was one of about 30 soldiers transferred to Coleman's Scouts in July 1862, under the leadership of Captain Henry B. Shaw (working under the pseudonym "Capt. E. Coleman").

During his time with Coleman's Scouts, Davis performed his scouting duties in the middle Tennessee/northern Alabama area. During the time of the Battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga (fall 1863), Davis worked within the city limits of (federally-held) Nashville, gathering information on the city fortifications and Union troop dispositions. Davis was even able to eavesdrop on conversations between Union General Rosecrans and his officers. Eventually, the area got too "hot" for the intelligence-gathering activities to continue - Union troops were constantly on the move in the area, increasing the Scouts' chances of detection. Many scouts (Coleman's and others) had been captured or killed - so many that when Davis came into the Scouts' headquarters (located at Big Creek, TN about 20 miles south of Columbia) in mid-November with a load of Union newspapers and dispatches, there was nobody available who could relay the delivery on down the courier line. Thus it was that on 19 November 1863, Capt. Shaw happened upon Davis on the road with a large parcel of mail and packages, trying to find a crossover to Confederate territory. Shaw gave Davis a special dispatch to deliver to General Bragg (headquartered in Chattanooga) and suggested Davis try crossing into Dixie territory south of Decatur, Alabama.

Davis' route took him to Giles County, Tennessee and the city of Pulaski - then home to the headquarters of the Union Army's 16th Corps. On the morning of 20 November 1683, while riding down Lamb's Ferry Road about 15 miles south of Pulaski, he encountered two soldiers in Confederate uniform who said they were conscripting for the Confederate Army. Over his Confederate uniform Davis was wearing a coat given him by his mother on his last trip home - a Union coat (taken from a deserter) and dyed brown with walnut hulls. Davis stated that he was already a member of the Confederate Army and presented his pass for verification, whereupon he was arrested. The two men in Confederate uniform were actually Union soldiers of the 7th Kansas Calvary.

The two soldiers took Davis to their commanding officer. A search of Davis' effects revealed (hidden in his saddle and the soles of his boots) detailed documentation on Nashville's fortifications, 16th Corps troop positions and movements, and a hand-written record of the entire wartime activities of Coleman's Scouts - addressed to General Bragg and signed "Capt. Coleman." Union General Grenville Dodge, commander of the 16th Corps, immediately took personal charge of Davis' interrogation. The letter to Bragg conclusively identified Davis as a member of Coleman's Scouts, and Dodge wanted Coleman; also, the information on the 16th Corps was so detailed, Dodge was certain Davis had been in communication with an informer in the ranks of Dodge's own officers. Davis was subjected to incessant interrogation for several days, with his inquisitors pushing hard both for the identity of his source for information on the 16th Corps and the true identity of Capt. Coleman. Davis was repeatedly promised leniency (a promise which was escalated to freedom during the interrogation) if he would divulge the names, or death by hanging as a spy if he would not. Little were they aware that Davis not only knew Capt. Coleman's true identity of Henry B. Shaw, he also knew Shaw's location - in the next cell. Shaw had been arrested under his own name as a Confederate soldier on furlough, but the Union troops had no clue that he was their elusive "Capt. Coleman". Throughout all interrogations, Davis revealed nothing to his captors. By all accounts, the Union soldiers (including Gen. Dodge) grew very fond of the young man's courage and his strong sense of personal honor. Many of them wanted Davis to talk so his life would be spared - but the young man remained silent.

On 25 November, a court-martial found Davis guilty of spying, despite the testimony of both arresting soldiers and their commanding officer (Capt. L. H. "Chickasaw" Naron) that Davis was wearing his Confederate uniform when arrested. Davis was sentenced to hang on 27 November 1863. As the gallows on which Davis was to be hung was constructed in full view of Davis' jail cell, the Union officers continued to interrogate Davis. At this point, they were virtually begging Davis to reveal the requested names, so execution of the sentence could be deterred. Davis was ridden from the jail to the gallows in a wagon, sitting on his own coffin. The last soldier to appeal to Davis did so as Davis stood on the execution gallows. Capt. Naron promised Davis his horse, his sidearms, and an escort to Confederate lines if Sam would reveal who gave him the papers he was carrying. Davis' reply is still remembered today, as it echoes the sentiments of Nathan Hale in an earlier war:

"I am but a private soldier in the Confederate Army. The man who gave me this information is worth ten thousand more to the Confederate cause than I, and I would sooner die a thousand deaths before I would betray a friend or be false to duty."

According to some reports, the Union Captain overseeing the execution broke down at the last minute and was unable to pronounce execution of the sentence. Sam Davis' last words before the hood was placed and the trapdoor sprung were directed at the hangman - "Soldier. Do your duty."

Sam Davis was not a Mason - at the time of his execution, he was just seven weeks past his 21st birthday. Davis' display of personal honor and integrity in refusing to betray the confidence bestowed upon him, however, illustrate to the utmost degree the virtues Freemasonry tries to instill in its members. Sam Davis Lodge #661 resides within a mile of the Sam Davis Home (the farm where he lived as a child); however, this Lodge bears Sam Davis' name because of the man, not the location.

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