"Genl. O.F. Strahl commanding a brigade of Tennesseans, Cheatham’s Division, Army of Tennessee of the Confederate States presented me with a pair of spurs the day preceding the battle of Franklin, Tenn. The donor special friend of mine and he was killed at the head of his brigade at the battle above named. I wore the spurs at Franklin, at the Battle of Nashville and at the Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina and now present them to my grandson Jas. Porter Bibb."

-Jas. D. Porter Paris, Tennessee July 26th 1880

"This Confederate Button was taken from a uniform Coat worn by me at the Battle of Franklin & Nash."

 Confederate STAFF OFFICER'S COAT BUTON MADE BY HAMMOND, TURNER & BATES OF MANCHESTER ENGLAND. ACCOMPANIED BY HISTORY CARD IN PORTER'S OWN HAND THAT READS "This Confederate Button was taken from a Uniform Coat worn by me at the battle of Franklin & Nashville. Jas. D. Porter". The Newspaper clipping is a notice telling of Porter being appointed as Assistant Secretary of State of the United States under President Grover Cleveland.

 Lt Colonel Shoulder Insignia worn by James D. Porter while on the Staff of Confederate Major General Benjamin Franklin Cheatham. The Southern Cross of Honor is the High Grade with the engraved top bar that reads "JAS. D. PORTER ADJUTANT GEN'L CHEATHAM'S DIVISION * 1861-65*"

From Generals In Gray by Ezra J. Warner 1988 printing page #296.

At the bitter, hand to hand struggle of Franklin, on November 30th 1864, General Strahl was one of six Confederate generals who were mortally wounded. Standing in the ditch outside the Federal works, he was handing up guns to his riflemen posted to fire down on the enemy on the inside when he was struck. His last words, in answer to a question of one of his men, were “Keep on firing!”

General Otho French Strahl, one of the choicest spirits that embraced the cause of the South, and finally offered all upon her altar, was a native of Ohio, who had settled in Tennessee and was practicing law at Dyersburg when the great war of States began. Although of Northern birth, both of his grandmothers were Southern women, and perhaps had much to do with moulding their sentiments which made him such an ardent sympathizer with the South. When Tennessee was making ready to cast in her lot with the Southern Confederacy, the young lawyer entered the Fourth Tennessee regiment as a captain (May, 1861). Early in 1862 he became lieutenant colonel of the regiment. As such he shared in the hardships of the regiment.

 As such he shared in the hardships and glories of the campaigns of Shiloh, Bentonville, and Murfreesboro, in which he so conducted himself as to be promoted to colonel early in 1863, and then to the rank of brigadier-general, July 28, 1863. In the hundred days' campaign from Dalton to Atlanta in 1864, he and his men added to their already magnificent record. Mr. S. A. Cunningham, who was a boy soldier in his brigade at Franklin, November 30, 1864, has given in his magazine a graphic account of the conduct and death of his commander that fateful day. Mr. Cunningham being that day right guide to the brigade, was near Strahl in the fatal advance, and was pained at the extreme sadness in his face. he was surprised, too, that his general went into battle on foot. The account of Mr. Cunningham continues: "I was near General Strahl, who stood in the ditch and handed up guns to those posted to fire them. I had passed to him my short Enfield (noted in the regiment) about the sixth time. The man who had been firing, cocked it and was taking deliberate aim when he was shot, and tumbled down dead into the ditch upon those killed before him. When the men so exposed were shot down, their places were supplied by volunteers until these were exhausted, and it was necessary for General Strahl to call for others. He turned to me, and though I was several feet back from the ditch, I rose up immediately, and walking over the wounded and dead took position, with one foot upon the pile of bodies of my dead fellows and the other upon the embankment, and fired guns which the general himself handed up to me, until he, too, was shot down." The general was not instantly killed, but soon after received a second shot and then a third which finished the fearful work. "General Strahl was a model character, and it was said of him that in all the war he was never known to use language unsuited to the presence of ladies." While the army was camped at Dalton on the 20th of April, 1864, services were held in the Methodist church by Bishop Charles Todd Quintard, of the Episcopal church. On this occasion Bishop Quintard baptized General Strahl and presented him to Bishop Stephen Elliott for confirmation, with three other generals of the Confederate army--Lieutenant General Hardee and Brigadier-Generals Shoup and Govan.

Source: Evans, Clement, ed. Confederate Military History, Vol. VIII, Confederate Publishing Company, Atlanta, GA, 1899

JAMES DAVIS PORTER
1828-1912

Governor and President of Peabody Normal School James D. Porter was born in Paris, Tennessee, on December 7, 1828. An 1846 graduate of the University of Nashville, Porter was admitted to the bar in 1851 and elected to the state legislature in 1859. After Tennessee seceded, he helped organize troops for the Provisional Army of Tennessee. With the transfer of these forces to the Confederacy, Porter was appointed to the staff of Benjamin F. Cheatham, a post he held throughout the war.

After the war Porter resumed his law practice and reentered public life in 1870 as a delegate to the state constitutional convention. Shortly afterwards, he won election as a circuit judge but resigned from the bench in 1874 to seek the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He handily defeated Republican opponent Horace Maynard in the election and won a second term in 1876. Porter served as president of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad from 1880 to 1884. He was assistant secretary of state under President Grover Cleveland in 1885, and during the second Cleveland administration, he was appointed minister to Chile in 1892. He later served as president of the Tennessee Historical Society.

During Porter's first gubernatorial term, he secured use of the University of Nashville campus for a normal school funded through the largesse of financier and philanthropist George Peabody. In 1901 he was appointed chancellor of his alma mater and the next year as president of the Peabody Normal College. Early in his tenure, he began efforts to turn over assets of the University of Nashville to trustees of the Peabody Fund, a transfer which occurred in 1907. Porter's Herculean efforts in securing funds from local and state sources proved indispensable when the Peabody Education Fund liquidated its assets and granted a million-dollar bequest for the creation of George Peabody College for Teachers. Porter felt embittered and betrayed when fellow Peabody Fund trustees decided to abandon the University of Nashville site and locate the teachers college near Vanderbilt University. He resigned in 1909 and retired the next year to Paris, where he died May 18, 1912.