France Cemetery

Champ Ferguson, born in Kentucky in 1821 as the oldest of ten children, moved to White County, Tennessee, in the 1850s and during the Civil War became one of the most notorious Confederate guerrillas in the Upper Cumberland, driven by passionate loyalty to the Southern cause, extreme hatred for the Union, and alleged motives ranging from longstanding grudges with local Unionists to revenge for violence against his family. He was most infamous for the Saltville Massacre at Saltville, Virginia, in 1864, where he supposedly directed the murders of several wounded and captured U.S. Colored Troops. After the war, federal officials arrested him, convicted him of 53 counts of murder, and sentenced him to death by hanging, though he claimed to have killed more than 100 Union soldiers as a military duty. Before his execution in 1865, he asked to be buried in White County, Tennessee, in “good Rebel soil,” and he is interred in France Cemetery, where other Confederate veterans are also buried, including four Carmichael brothers who all died during the war: Sgt. Solomon Carmichael and Pvt. Thomas Carmichael of the 25th Tennessee Infantry, Pvt. Hance Carmichael of the 28th Tennessee Infantry, and Pvt. William L. Carmichael of the 8th Tennessee Cavalry.

Tennessee · United States