Sam Davis

The Davis family owned fifty-one enslaved people in 1860, and as a boy Sam was given one of them, Coleman Davis. In November 1863 Federal soldiers caught him in Giles County with a letter and papers from Captain Henry Shaw of Coleman's Scouts. He pleaded not guilty to spying and guilty to carrying mail to men in arms. A court-martial under General Dodge sentenced him to hang, and he died at Pulaski a week later. His refusal to name his source became a touchstone of Lost Cause mythology, and the family farm opened as a shrine in the 1920s.

What the plaque says

Sam Davis In the house 1/2 mile northeast lived "The Boy Hero of the Confederacy." A trooper in Coleman's Scouts, CSA, he was captured by the Federals with secret papers of great value to the Confederacy. Threatened with the death unless he gave the source of his information, he steadfastly refused. He was hanged at Pulaski, TN, November 27, 1863.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stones River National Battlefield — 8.8 mi
  The Murfreesboro battlefield of December 1862, with a national cemetery built by Black soldiers, a Trail of Tears route and the story of the freedmen's settlement called Cemetery.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 17 mi
  Andrew Jackson's cotton plantation east of Nashville, where visitors can walk to the quarters, Alfred's Cabin and the Enslaved Cemetery as well as the mansion.
• Fort Negley — 18 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• National Museum of African American Music — 19 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Smyrna Railroad Depot — steps away
• Sewart Air Force Base — 1.4 mi
• Wheeler's Raid around Rosecrans, December 30, 1862 — 1.7 mi
• Old Jefferson — 1.7 mi