David Owen Dodd

Who was David Owen Dodd?

David Owen Dodd was an American 17-year-old who was tried, convicted and hanged as a Confederate spy in the American Civil War.

In December 1863, Dodd carried some letters to business associates of his father in Union-held Little Rock, Arkansas. While traveling to rejoin his family at Camden, Arkansas, he mistakenly re-entered Union territory. Found to be without a pass, Union soldiers questioned him and discovered that he was carrying a notebook with the locations of Union troops in the area. He was arrested and tried by a military tribunal, with little defense offered for his actions. The tribunal found him guilty of spying and he was hanged for his crime on January 8, 1864. Though Dodd did not reveal the source of the information, a 15-year-old girl named Mary Dodge and her father were summarily escorted back to their home in Vermont. These events have led to David Owen Dodd being called the "Boy Martyr of the Confederacy".