Ephraim Shelby Dodd sat in his Knoxville jail cell and scribbled a note to a local volunteer who was taking care of him and some other Rebel prisoners. He made a modest request–’a piece of soap, towel, needles, thread’–a curious order for a convicted spy awaiting execution. Later that day Ellen House packed up the items and had them delivered the next morning. She wrote in her diary: ‘I was very much afraid he would be gone before I sent them.’

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Civil War Times magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

A native Kentuckian, Dodd moved to Texas in 1857, at age 18, and started a new life brimming with enthusiasm fueled by the lofty dreams and untainted optimism of youth. Then came the Civil War. Dodd, like his family back in Kentucky, opposed secession, but when his adopted Texas joined the Confederacy, he followed.

He enlisted in the 8th Texas Cavalry, a regiment raised in August and September 1861 by Kentucky-born sugar planter Benjamin Franklin Terry and South Carolina-born merchant Thomas S. Lubbock. The unit, nicknamed Terry’s Texas Rangers, quickly gained a reputation as a crack mounted regiment. Whether, as one general thought, they were ‘the equal of the Old Guard of Napoleon,’ or, as another maintained, they constituted ‘a damned armed mob’ (they were probably a bit of each), Terry’s Rangers became one of the most storied units in the Confederate army.

Leaving Houston, where the regiment was mustered in, the Rangers joined General Albert Sidney Johnston’s command at Bowling Green, Kentucky. Johnston, himself a naturalized Texan, knew and respected Terry. So he made the Rangers an offer they could not pass up: come to Kentucky and receive the best mounts in the state and answer to no one but him.

Bound for Virginia, Terry’s men changed plans and headed to Kentucky in October. There they saw their first real action in mid-December, when in their maiden charge their beloved namesake colonel was killed. They went on to serve valiantly at Shiloh a few months later, but when Johnston died on the first day of fighting, the Rangers lost their brief career as an independent command. The unit was combined with the 4th Tennessee Cavalry and the 1st and 2d Georgia Cavalry in July 1862 to form a new brigade under the command of Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Dodd witnessed all of it, and in December 1862, he began keeping a diary of events and adventures–a diary that even today reveals a literate, observant, and devout young man. He apparently spurned liquor and gambling, favorite pastimes for many rowdy cavalrymen. On one occasion, while part of a procurement detail in Lewisburg, Tennessee, Dodd visited a prayer meeting, attended a worship service, and purchased four religious books: Mormon’s at Home, Pilgrim’s Progress, Bayard Taylor’s Travels, and The Bible Union Dictionary.

He did, however, have an eye for the ladies. ‘Came out on a reconnoitering expedition,’ he recorded on January 11, 1863. ‘I stopped on return and saw Misses Mollie and Alice.’ In Lewisburg, Dodd met several young ladies, among them Lou Hill, whom ‘I prize highest,’ he said. When he was about to leave town, he spied ‘a couple of young lady equestrians’ riding along. ‘I jumped on E. Emnoff’s horse and overtook them, rode out a mile with them and turned off pike,’ he wrote. ‘If I should ever get back to L[ewisburg] I intend seeking them and make their acquaintance.’ When the regiment moved to Rome, Georgia, in July 1863, Dodd sparked some Georgia girls. ‘I made the acquaintance of Miss Maggie Ezzell, Miss Mattie Sommers, Miss Fannie Summers, and Miss Mollie Roberts and enjoyed myself with them finely,’ he reported.

When the time for military action came, no one responded more swiftly than Dodd. ‘Met the Yankees and skirmished with them all day, falling back gradually,’ he recorded near the end of December 1862. ‘Their cavalry charged us once but paid dear for it.’ On March 21, 1863, he noted, ‘Brigade went out on scout. Our Company supported battery, drove the Yanks back to their main camp and returned.’ Ten days later, he saw action again: ‘Went on a scout out to Eaglesville. Met a Yankee scout just this side of E. We charged them and run them one and a half miles, capturing six and wounding several.’

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to