Emory and Henry College Hospital - The Killing

The Killing

Orange Sells testified at the trial of Champ Ferguson after the war that, "The night before the killing, we heard a rustling on the stairway and immediately three men came into the room. One had a lighted candle and the other two had revolvers. They looked into each of our faces and after they got around, one of them remarked, ‘There are none of them here,’ and went out. They had hardly got out—had not been gone more than half a minute—until we heard firing in the next room to us. Some six shots were fired, and immediately afterward a Negro soldier was carried, dead, out of that room. Another Negro soldier ran into our room wrapped in a sheet." Two different sources sited the death of at least two Negroes at the hospital, but neither listed their names.

On October 8, 1864, Champ Ferguson entered the Emory and Henry College General Hospital with twelve to fifteen men almost unnoticed. Ferguson and another man then entered the room of Harry Shocker. Upon entering, a man with Champ recognized Shocker from the previous battle and said, "There was a wounded boy out of the 11th Michigan Cavalry lying in a bunk nearby. There is that boy now. I saved his life. He was lying among negroes at the time." Champ then said, "If I’d seen you lying among the Negroes, it would have been all day with you." The man with Champ then asked a boy in the room if he had any money, the boy replied no, and the man pulled out a $10 Confederate note and told him that would keep him in tobacco. Champ then asked Shocker, "Do you know Lieutenant Smith?" and Shocker replied no. Champ then said to Shocker, "Yes you do you damned Yankee, you know him well enough, but you don’t want to know him now. Where is he, then?" Shocker did not reply to Ferguson, and Ferguson got up to leave and told Shocker, "I have a begrudge against Smith; we’ll find him."

The Smith that Ferguson was referring to was Lieutenant Elza C. Smith of the 13th Kentucky Cavalry. The twenty-nine-year-old Smith was a relative of Ferguson's first wife. Smith had joined the 13th in Clinton County, Kentucky, in 1863, and spent much of his service chasing down terrorists such as Ferguson. Ferguson was a confederate sympathizer in an area that was predominantly Union. Ferguson saw it as his duty to form a guerrilla party to attack Union sympathizers. According to Thurman Sensing, Ferguson's biographer, Smith's death was the culmination of eleven murders. Ferguson allegedly suffered at the hands of his pro-Union neighbors during the war. Dr. J. B. Murfree stated that Smith made Ferguson's wife undress and march around before him along a public road. Sensing then concludes that with the death of Smith, his family honor was restored.

Ferguson then attempted to ascend one of the stairways in the hospital to gain access to the third floor. The guard that was placed by Dr. Murfree and the quartermaster to keep the federal soldiers on the third floor stopped Ferguson and the men with him. The band of raiders advanced on the guard swearing that they would get up the steps in spite of the guard. Undaunted, the guard raised his gun and leveled it at Ferguson and told him that he would shoot him if he approached another step. Angrily, Ferguson and the men left that guard to find another way up the stairs.

Ferguson, unable to secure the first guard, found it much easier to pass the second. After ascending to the second floor, Ferguson left his own guard at the steps to stop anyone who might come looking for him. Three Confederate soldiers came into the room of Orange Sells, Lieutenant Smith, and Captain Dagenfeld, of the 12th Ohio Cavalry. Ferguson, flanked by one unknown man, and Hildreth, (rank unknown), walked into the room without saying a word, pulled out his musket and stopped directly in front of Sells's bed. Lieutenant Smith recognized Ferguson as he reached the middle of the floor and moaned, "Champ, is that you?" Ferguson made no reply, but jerked his gun up to point at Smith and hit the breech with his right hand. He then looked at Smith and asked, "Smith, do you see this?" Smith then begged Ferguson not to shoot saying, "Champ, for God's sake, don’t shoot me here." Ferguson then put the gun to Smith's head and shot three times before the gun went off. The ball hit Smith in the side of the forehead and went through the other ear. Five witnesses in the hospital testified at the trial of Champ Ferguson that they heard or saw Ferguson shoot Smith. Even the Rebel quartermaster's sergeant, A.J. Watkins, testified that he saw Smith dead in his bed promptly after hearing a shot.

No one said anything after Smith begged Ferguson not to shoot. Ferguson's partner in crime at the hospital, Hildreth, had been watching the event with a carbine in one hand and a pistol in the other guarding the Federal wounded in the room. After the shot, Hildreth turned to Ferguson and said, "Champ, be sure your work is well done." After examining the body, Ferguson concluded, "He is damned dead." Dr. Murfree was at the office of the hospital when a nurse came in saying a lot of soldiers had killed a man in the hospital. Dr. Murfree and Major Stringfield, an officer in the Army of Virginia, took off to the hospital. Upon reaching the hospital, the pair was confronted by one of Ferguson's men that was guarding the steps with drawn revolvers. Dr. Murfree told the man to go downstairs, but the man replied that Captain Ferguson had ordered him to no let anyone pass. Dr. Murfree pushed past the guard while Major Stringfield remained behind to contend with the guard.

Dr. Murfree met Ferguson on the next set of steps flanked by his armed guard. Ferguson was yelling loudly that he intended to kill all the Federal officers in Smith's room. This included Colonel Hanson of the 37th Kentucky Volunteers, and Captain Degenfeld of the 12th Ohio Cavalry. Dr. Murfree exclaimed, "Gentlemen, you must go down from here; this is a place for the sick and wounded, and you must not disturb them," to which Ferguson retorted, "I will shoot you." Dr. Murfree repeated his sentiment, stating that he was in charge of the hospital before Champ Ferguson advanced to within three feet of Dr. Murfree and said, "I don’t care who you are, damn you, I will kill you." Abruptly, Lieutenant Philpot, of Ferguson's company stepped in between the pair and motioned that they should leave. The group then mounted their horses and rode off shouting, "We have killed the man that killed Hamilton."

The most interesting point that Dr. Murfree makes is that the group ran off yelling that they had avenged Hamilton. One other witness made reference to Captain Hamilton in the trial of Champ Ferguson. This circumstance refutes Sensing's conclusions that he was murdered due to his heinous acts.