Through it all, Dodd remained serene. He spent much of his time on January 6 and 7 writing letters to relatives and friends to inform them of his misfortune. He maintained his innocence. “I feel prepared to meet my fate as a soldier and firmly rely on God’s promises to save the penitent,” he told his father and stepmother in Richmond, Kentucky. “Do not grieve for me, my dear parents, for I am leaving a world full of crime and sin for one of perfect bliss.” Dodd sent notes also to people in Knoxville who had worked on his behalf and tried to ease his suffering. Several local Masons spent two hours conferring with him on Thursday evening, and they continued to petition Federal authorities through that night. Masons among the Federal officers in Knoxville, themselves thoroughly convinced of Dodd’s innocence, sought clemency for him.

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By Friday morning, a blanket of snow covered the city. It soon became clear that Dodd’s execution would proceed on schedule. Pastor Martin left the prison with Dodd at 10:15 a.m. A detachment of the 100th Ohio and 74th Illinois Infantry greeted the two men and ushered Dodd onto a waiting wagon. The cavalcade moved “with slow and measured tread” along Gay Street, the city’s principal thoroughfare. Armed soldiers flanked the wagon, and an accompanying fife and drum detail played the “Death March.” A growing crowd joined the procession as it moved toward the gallows erected near the north end of Gay Street and the railroad tracks. Some people, including Federal soldiers, turned away from the passing wagon, teary-eyed and unable to watch. Dodd, seated on his coffin, occasionally surveyed the crowd, but, reported one witness, he “generally preserved a downward look, as if in deep meditation.” Underneath the Mexican serape he wore to ward off the cold, Dodd was dressed in Rebel gray and butternut. He also wore his sombrero with the Texas star.

With General Carter viewing the scene from across the tracks, Dodd ascended the gallows. While the condemned man’s hands were being tied behind his back and the rope was being placed around his neck, a Union officer who had visited the prison the previous night approached. Like everyone who spoke with Dodd, the officer had been deeply impressed by his apparent calmness and his continued professions of innocence. So now, in Dodd’s final moment, he looked him in the eye and asked again if he was a spy. Dodd returned his gaze and replied, “I die innocent of the charge against me.”

A tragic farce followed. At 11:00 a.m., the drop fell, Dodd plummeted, the rope snapped tight–and broke. Dodd sprawled on the ground, severely shaken but conscious. A gasp, followed by mingled murmurs of pity, horror, and disgust, ran through the crowd. “Release me quick,” Dodd groaned as soldiers rushed to assist him. Fifteen minutes passed before he was fully revived. His head bobbed in agony from the effects of an injured neck, but he had recovered sufficiently to mount, with assistance, the gallows steps once more. The hangman placed a new rope, with a double noose, around his neck. This time it held. An army surgeon pronounced Dodd dead at 11:30.

“At eleven o’clock I heard a gun fire,” House reported. “At the sound my blood seemed to freeze in my veins. A short time after I heard another.” Hearing the signal guns is how most of Knoxville learned of Dodd’s execution. A few people followed the body as it was carried to a local burying ground. At one citizen’s insistence, a head board was left to mark the grave site. Someone else retrieved Dodd’s hat and sent it to a friend at Camp Chase. A Yankee soldier had already stolen its Texas star.

Some Confederates vowed vengeance. “Oh! my God it was terrible, an innocent man to die such a death,” House anguished. “It will not bring him back to life, but the Yankees must suffer for it.” Even after six weeks had elapsed, when House read an article about the execution in a Louisville newspaper, she fumed, “They murder a man and then cry over him. It has made me feel so miserably. I try not to think of him and his cruel fate. It makes me most unhappy, but I feel perfectly fiendish. I believe I would kill a Yankee and not a muscle quiver.”

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