Champ Ferguson, a legendary Confederate partisan ranger and guerilla fighter, was easily the most notorious among the many such men who fought to control the Upper Cumberland Plateau region along the Tennessee and Kentucky borders. Nominally holding the rank of Captain in the Confederate Army, Ferguson led his own company of independent cavalry. When not making the most of every opportunity to harass and intimidate Unionists in the area, Ferguson acted as a scout for Genl. John Hunt Morgan, and was for a time attached to the command of Genl. Joseph Wheeler. His company was under Wheeler's command when they took part in the Battle of Saltville (Virginia).
At war's end, Ferguson and his men returned to their homes and, on 23 May, 1865, they were induced by promise of the same parole given to the officers and men of Lee's and Johnston's Confederate Armies to surrender themselves to federal military authorities. All except Ferguson were indeed released on Oath. Champ Ferguson himself was summarily arrested, and charged with over 50 counts of murder. Some of his purported victims remained nameless, and many of the other charges were wholly unsupported by either witnesses or documentation.
In a trial at Nashville, lasting from 11 July through 26 September, 1865, a military tribunal called witness after unreliable witness against Ferguson, all the while denying his counsel every opportunity to present a competent case in his defense. On 10 October, General Orders affirming his conviction and sentencing him to death by hanging were issued. On Friday, 20 October, 1865, the Order of Execution was carried out while Ferguson's wife Martha and sixteen year old daughter Ann watched. Thus it came to be that Champ Ferguson joined Henry Wirz, Commandant of the Confederate prison at Camp Sumter (Andersonville) as the only two former Confederate's of any rank or position to be executed for supposed "war crimes."
The following text is from an "Afterword" to the Ferguson biography mentioned below, and was writen by the son of the author:
"I thought I'd found Champ back in 1941 when my father and I went looking for him in that old graveyard on the Calfkiller River. Maybe I was wrong. According to a story I read in the Cookeville Herald-Citizen, there was a conspiracy between Champ and the military. The theory is that the military felt that Champ should not be hanged because many others as guilty as he had been paroled. The story is that the military enclosed the undersection of the scaffold and that a ring of soldiers completely encircled it. When the hangman cut the rope and Champ dropped through the trap door, they quickly untied the loose knot and placed Champ in the casket alive. The casket was then placed on a waiting wagon which Champ's wife and daughter drove out of town. When they were out of Nashville, Champ climbed out of the casket and the three rode all the way to Indian Territory in Oklahoma, where they took new names and took up farming and ranching for a living."
"It's an interesting story. But if it's true, who is buried in the grave I found marked "Capt. C. Furguson"? Are we to assume that his wife Martha didn't know how to spell his name? Or that someone else in on the conspiracy misspelled it and put up a stab of limestone at a fake grave so that everybody would think Champ had really been hanged? What did Colonel Shafter whisper to Champ in a low undertone that made Champ's face light up noticeably? Did he tell him about the conspiracy and that he would be saved by the military?"
We'll never know, and the legend lives on...
At war's end, Ferguson and his men returned to their homes and, on 23 May, 1865, they were induced by promise of the same parole given to the officers and men of Lee's and Johnston's Confederate Armies to surrender themselves to federal military authorities. All except Ferguson were indeed released on Oath. Champ Ferguson himself was summarily arrested, and charged with over 50 counts of murder. Some of his purported victims remained nameless, and many of the other charges were wholly unsupported by either witnesses or documentation.
In a trial at Nashville, lasting from 11 July through 26 September, 1865, a military tribunal called witness after unreliable witness against Ferguson, all the while denying his counsel every opportunity to present a competent case in his defense. On 10 October, General Orders affirming his conviction and sentencing him to death by hanging were issued. On Friday, 20 October, 1865, the Order of Execution was carried out while Ferguson's wife Martha and sixteen year old daughter Ann watched. Thus it came to be that Champ Ferguson joined Henry Wirz, Commandant of the Confederate prison at Camp Sumter (Andersonville) as the only two former Confederate's of any rank or position to be executed for supposed "war crimes."
The following text is from an "Afterword" to the Ferguson biography mentioned below, and was writen by the son of the author:
"I thought I'd found Champ back in 1941 when my father and I went looking for him in that old graveyard on the Calfkiller River. Maybe I was wrong. According to a story I read in the Cookeville Herald-Citizen, there was a conspiracy between Champ and the military. The theory is that the military felt that Champ should not be hanged because many others as guilty as he had been paroled. The story is that the military enclosed the undersection of the scaffold and that a ring of soldiers completely encircled it. When the hangman cut the rope and Champ dropped through the trap door, they quickly untied the loose knot and placed Champ in the casket alive. The casket was then placed on a waiting wagon which Champ's wife and daughter drove out of town. When they were out of Nashville, Champ climbed out of the casket and the three rode all the way to Indian Territory in Oklahoma, where they took new names and took up farming and ranching for a living."
"It's an interesting story. But if it's true, who is buried in the grave I found marked "Capt. C. Furguson"? Are we to assume that his wife Martha didn't know how to spell his name? Or that someone else in on the conspiracy misspelled it and put up a stab of limestone at a fake grave so that everybody would think Champ had really been hanged? What did Colonel Shafter whisper to Champ in a low undertone that made Champ's face light up noticeably? Did he tell him about the conspiracy and that he would be saved by the military?"
We'll never know, and the legend lives on...
Bringing the