stockades,
and were never captured unless overwhelming forces of the Indians attacked
them, and only then when the defensive works were inferior or not properly
constructed; and, even in cases where detachments left their stations, if
they had remained they would have successfully held them. After I took
command on the plains and issued positive orders for detachments to stay
by their posts and never leave them, not a single detachment that I
remember of was captured in its block-house or stockade. With the small
force we had it would have been impossible to maintain our mail, telegraph
and overland routes successfully, if it had not been for our system of
block-houses and stockades, dotted for thousands of miles over each of the
overland routes. It is evident from our experience in the West that our
block-house and stockade system of defending our lines of communication
was a great success, not only as against raids of cavalry, but from
attacks of infantry and artillery, and saved to us a very large force for
the field. I left on the line of the railway from Nashville to Athens
during the Atlanta campaign only two Regiments of negroes, taking with me
my entire Corps, and without the block-houses to defend the lines from
Nashville to Stevenson and Stevenson to Atlanta, it would have taken a
thousand men without block-house protection for every hundred required
with it.

GRENVILLE M. DODGE.

[Illustration: TO THE MEMORY OF SAMUEL DAVIS

Monument erected in Nashville, Tenn., to Samuel Davis, Confederate Spy
executed by order of General Dodge, at Pulaski, Tenn., in 1864.]

AN INCIDENT OF THE WAR

EXECUTION OF THE CONFEDERATE SPY, SAMUEL DAVIS
AT PULASKI, TENN., NOVEMBER, 1863

NEW YORK, June 15th, 1897.

_To the Editor of The Confederate Veteran_:

In fulfillment of my promise to give you my recollections of Sam Davis,
(who was hung as a spy in November, 1863, at Pulaski, Tenn.,) I desire to
say that in writing of matters which occurred thirty-four years ago one is
apt to make mistakes as to minor details; but the principal facts were
such that they impressed themselves upon my mind so that I can speak of
them with some certainty.

When General Grant ordered General Sherman (whose head of column was near
Eastport, on the Tennessee River) to drop everything and bring his army to
Chattanooga, my Corps (the Sixteenth) was then located at Corinth, Miss.,
and I brought up the rear.

General Grant's an