Ephraim Dodd, Rebel Martyr
Knoxville, Tennessee
The official Confederate tombstone of Ephraim Shelby Dodd stands in the front entrance flower bed of Bleak House, a plantation home on the outskirts of Knoxville. Dodd was captured by Union troops in Knoxville on New Year's Day, 1864, and quickly sentenced to hang. The Yankees said he was a Confederate spy; Southerners said he was just a scout who kept an innocent diary and wore some Union blue clothes to keep warm.
Dodd's last words on the gallows, engraved as his epitaph, were, "I die innocent of the charge against me." The rope broke on the first attempt and Dodd fell to the ground, but he was not spared; Union soldiers simply dragged him back up and hanged him again. Some versions of the story claim that Todd's legs were broken in the fall, and that the Yankees used two nooses the second time. The Rebels had previously hanged several Union supporters and left their bodies dangling in Knoxville, which usually goes unmentioned in most Southern tellings of Dodd's martyrdom.
Despite appearances, Dodd is not buried under his tombstone, which probably didn't arrive until after 1959, when Bleak House was purchased by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. No one knows for sure where his body ended up, but it may rest in the local potter's field.