[1][4] Henry Marshall Ashby enlisted in the Confederate States Army on July 6, 1861, at Knoxville, Tennessee, organized a company of cavalry and was elected captain.

[6] Under the overall command of Major General Joseph Wheeler, Ashby's regiment was heavily engaged in the Battle of Brown's Mill near Newnan, Georgia, on July 30, 1864.

[7] In June 1864, Ashby was assigned to command a brigade of four Tennessee cavalry regiments in Brigadier General William Y.C.

[2][6] Major General Wheeler later wrote that he had been told unofficially by Confederate War Department officials that brigadier general commissions had been issued for Ashby, James Hagan and Moses Wright Hannon near the end of the war, no such commissions ever were delivered.

Camp, a former Union Army major, local lawyer and future coal industry tycoon, having quarreled with Ashby previously and having accused him of mistreating Union prisoners during the war, shot Ashby to death on Main Street in Knoxville.

Shortly after the war, Camp became embroiled in a quarrel with Colonel Henry Ashby, a native Virginian who had fought for the Confederacy.

[10] After Camp was arrested for murder, his bail was posted by several former Unionists, among them future Knoxville Journal editor William Rule.

The county's acting district attorney eventually issued a nolle prosequi, and Camp was never prosecuted for the killing.