had never heard of Sam Davis. When an early subscriber to the magazine submitted a school oration about Davis for publication, Cunningham rejected it, "feeling that there were so many equally worthy heroes it would hardly be fair to print this special eulogy." But at a Blue-Gray veterans reunion in April 1895, on the battlefield at Shiloh, Cunningham again heard about the story of Davis's execution – and this time from two federal veterans, witnesses to the execution, who claimed, as Cunningham phrased it, that "the Federal Army was in grief over it." These accounts struck a chord and convinced Cunningham of the merits of publicizing the story. The Union veterans' story of an ordinary soldier's heroic death, couched in the language of reconciliation, fit perfectly with the spirit of the times and the viewpoint of the Confederate Veteran. "I resolved to print the story," Cunningham recalled in 1899, "and [to] reprint it until that typical hero should have as full credit as the Veteran could give him." As Cunningham assumed stewardship of the Sam Davis story he transformed oral memories into a broad collective memory through a series of promotions. First, he solicited written versions of the federal eyewitness accounts of Davis's execution that he had heard at the Shiloh reunion and then published them in the Veteran.'' Next, Cunningham called for Tennesseans to come forward with "such data as may be recalled by all who know anything of the event." Sensing an opportunity to galvanize interest in his fledgling publication, Cunningham threw his energies into sponsorship of the Sam Davis story. In a series of editorials published in the summer of 1895, Cunningham packaged Davis's sacrifice in Christian terms, insisting that the story recalled "the sacrifice of the Galilean whose hands and feet were nailed to a cross." By summer's end, Cunningham launched a fundraising drive for a monument to Davis's memory to be erected on the Tennessee State Capitol grounds in Nashville. Before being popularized by Cunningham, editor J. B. Killebrew in 1871 wrote a tribute to Davis entitled "Every Inch a Hero," that was widely printed. The article presented Davis as a scout carrying letters, rather than a spy, and because of this his execution was a miscarriage of justice]. Legacy Since the late 1890s, Davis has towered above any other Tennessean in the pantheon of Confederate Civil War heroes. Today, representations of the life and