HARDY B. SMITH MARKER DEDICATION

Dedication of Historical Marker
Captain Hardy B. Smith House
Dublin, Georgia


On the afternoon of April 26, 2009, a historical marker was dedicated in the yard of the Captain Hardy B. Smith House on West Jackson Street in Dublin, Georgia. The two-sided embossed marker was sponsored by the Georgia Civil War Commission, The property is owned by John C. Hall, Jr., who purchased the property in October 2007 from the Capt. Hardy B. Smith House Restoration Committee, Inc., headed by its president David Moore. The western face of the marker, which features a full length likeness of Captain Smith, tells the biographical story of Laurens County's most public spirited citizens of the post Civil War era. The eastern face, which features a bust of Captain Smith, details the history of the home, which was built in the early 1870s and is Dublin's oldest home on its original site.

Among the forty people in attendance were David Moore, President of the Hardy B. Smith House Committee and the guidance force behind the saving and early restoration of the home. Also in attendance was Dublin resident, Rusty Henderson, who as a member of the Georgia Civil War Commission, aided in the acquistion of a grant to improve the historical home. Mary Jane Spivey was present to represent the U.D.C. and Scott Thompson was representing the Laurens County Historical Society.

Special guests were Lennard and Dennard Sanders, twin carpenters and World War II veterans, whose unmatchable carpentry talents contributed to the fine restoration of the old farm home. Rosa Chappell, great great granddaughter of Pvt. Bill Yopp, Co. H., 14th Georgia, was recognized for her great grandfather's outstanding contribution to the Blackshear Guards, once commanded by Captain Smith.

Steve Deal, a great great grandson of Capt. Smith, was present to represent the descendants of Captain Hardy Smith.


JOHN C. HALL, JR., OWNER OF THE HARDY
SMITH HOUSE DEDICATES THE HISTORICAL
MARKER TO THE MEMORY OF CAPT. HARDY
B. SMITH .



JOHN HALL AND RUSTY HENDERSON





WESTERN FACE OF THE MARKER




EASTERN FACE OF THE MARKER




DENNARD SANDERS, DAVID MOORE, AND
LENNARD SANDERS



JOHN HALL AND STEVE DEAL DISCUSS OLD
MEMORIES OF THE HARDY SMITH HOUSE.




JOHN HALL AND RUSTY HENDERSON
PREPARE FOR THE DEDICATION CEREMONY.




GLENN MCCORD AND JOHN HALL SALUTE
THEIR ANCESTORS IN REPLICA UNIFORMS.

GEN. JOSEPH WHEELER, C.S.A.

The Defender of Georgia

They called him "Fightin' Joe" Wheeler. Wheeler, a Georgian by birth and an Alabamian by choice, fought as hard as he could to save his native state of Georgia from General William T. Sherman's invading army in the fall of 1864. More than three decades later, General Wheeler became one of the few American generals to fight in both the Civil War and the Spanish American War. In 1912, when the State of Georgia sought names for her newest county, it chose the name of Wheeler to honor the general, most likely for the exploits of the general in the War for Southern Independence than those in that inauspicious war in the Caribbean which lasted only a few weeks.

General Wheeler was born on September 10, 1836 near Augusta, Georgia. Joseph spent his formative years with his family in New England. When he received his appointment to the United States Military Academy, he claimed that he was a Georgian. While just barely above the minimum height requirement for West Point cadets, Joe Wheeler finished near the bottom of his class in 1859. After a brief training assignment as a cavalry lieutenant, Wheeler was assigned to duty in the Territory of New Mexico.

Within seven months, Wheeler's native state seceded from the Union. Wheeler returned to Georgia to accept an appointment as a first lieutenant in a state artillery unit. After serving near Pensacola, Florida, Wheeler transferred to Alabama, where he was assigned to command the 19th Alabama Infantry. As the fighting ended during the first calendar year of the war, Lt. Wheeler was promoted to a colonel.

Wheeler's men saw action early and viciously in the pivotal Battle of Shiloh in April 1862. After Shiloh, Wheeler transferred to a cavalry unit in the Army of the Mississippi. With many of his men trained under Nathan Bedford Forrest's command, Wheeler performed admirably and in doing so, was promoted to brigadier general after the Battle of Perryville.

Wheeler's troops protected the Confederate left at the bloody Battle of Chickamauga. In the following months, Wheeler kept the Union army at bay until Sherman was able to mount his offensive in the spring of 1864.

Gen. Wheeler's cavalry was assigned by Army of the Tennessee commander, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston to protect the railroads coming into Atlanta. In July, Wheeler's men thwarted a Union attack on Macon led by Gen. George Stoneman. While Wheeler was busy chasing Union forces north of Atlanta, the city began to crumble under the relentless pressure of Sherman as he pounded the city with artillery fire. Finally the Union army cut off all access to the railroad hub in the late summer of 1864.

It would be October before Gen. Wheeler would rejoin Gen. John Bell Hood who had been forced to abandon Atlanta. When General William T. Sherman began his March to the Sea, Gen. Wheeler and Gen. Samuel Wragg Ferguson of Mississippi were assigned the tasks of harassing the Union columns and to prevent any flanking movements along the way.

Gen. Ferguson moved through Laurens County in an attempt to keep the cavalry attached to Gen. Sherman's right wing from peeling off to the southwest to rescue Union prisoners at Andersonvlle. The right wing was first threatened at Griswoldville in upper Twiggs and lower Jones County by an army of boys and old men. A few days later, prison guards, prisoners, cadets, and local militia under the command of Gen. Henry C. Wayne stalled the right wing at Oconee River Bridge, Georgia and Ball's Ferry, if only for a few hours.

On November 22, a Captain R.W.B. Ellliot forwarded Major Hall's report that the enemy had crossed the Oconee at Blackshear's Ferry. At noon on the 24th of November 1864, J.A. Brenner, of Augusta, wrote, "General Wheeler with 10,000 men now crossing the Oconee River, twenty miles below the bridge, at Blackshear's Ferry, and coming to the assistance of General Wayne. Enemy has burned long-trestle work on the other side of the bridge."

The following day, Gen. Henry Wayne reported to Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws in Savannah, "The enemy are trying to force Ball's Ferry. There is heavy firing below - apparently at Blackshear's Ferry. The movements of the enemy are definitely on Savannah."

Wheeler was unable to halt the invading hoard as it sliced through Central Georgia, Savannah, and thence northward into the Carolina. During the war, Wheeler was wounded three times and reportedly had sixteen horses shot out from under him. Wheeler was captured while attempting to aid Confederate President Jefferson Davis' attempt to escape to freedom. He was taken as a prisoner but served only two months. Many experts consider Wheeler as second only to Nathan Bedford Forrest as the South's greatest calvary commanders.

After the war, Wheeler left his native state and moved to Courtland, Alabama to farm and practice law. Wheeler was elected to the United States Congress in 1880, lost a legal challenge, only to take office after the challenger died. After declining to run again in 1882, Wheeler returned to Washington in 1884 and served until 1898.

Joseph Wheeler left the Congress in 1898 to do what he did best, fight while riding his horse. The general volunteered for duty in Cuba and was assigned by President William McKinley to command the calvary. His command included Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders. In one of the early battles while his forces were routing the Spaniards, General Wheeler reportedly exclaimed, "Let's go boys! We've got the damn Yankees on the run again!"

In Cuba (Wheeler in front, T.Roosevelt, far right).


But "Fighting Joe" wouldn't give up the fight. After many successes in Cuba, Wheeler, at the age of sixty-three, transferred to the Philippine Islands, where he fought under the command of General Arthur McArthur, father of General Douglas McArthur, for more than a year. When he retired in 1900, General Wheeler became one of only two generals in American history to serve as a general in both the armies of the Confederate States of America and the United States of America. The other was Gen. Fitzhugh Lee.

Joseph Wheeler died in New York one hundred and five years ago today. His body is one of the few Confederate general officers to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Wheeler was honored by Georgia with the naming of a high school in Marietta, a liberty ship, a major road in Augusta, and an army camp outside of Macon. Wheeler was similarly honored by his adopted state of Alabama. His statue, one of the very few depicting Confederate officers, now stands in Statutory Hall in Washington, D.C.

GEORGIA'S SECESSION DEBATED AGAIN

Dublin's Rusty Henderson, portraying Robert Toombs, leads

the procession through the Old Capital gates.

Milledgeville, GA. January 22, 2011. One hundred and fifty years ago, the greatest political minds gathered in the state capitol building in Milledgeville to subscribe their names to the Ordinance of Secession. The vote, while not close, was not indicative of the deep division between the citizens of Georgia on the issue of whether the State of Georgia should leave the Union. Unionist or Cooperationist leaders Alexander Hamilton Stephens and Herschel V. Johnson urged caution or no secession at all, while other Georgians led by Howell Cobb, T.R.R. Cobb and Robert Toombs urged immediate and unconditional secession.

This past Saturday the culmination of the divisive Secession Convention was re-enacted in a performance sponsored by the Old Capital Society in the reconstructed Georgia state capitol building in Milledgeville. The final performance was staged in the connection with the annual Sons of Confederate Veterans parade and salute to Gen. Robert E. Lee.

More than one hundred reenactors dressed in Civil War area costumes, carried Confederate and American flags, rifles, bagpipes, and other accouterments as they marched from the Old Governor's mansion to the Old State Capitol building on the campus of Georgia Military College. The procession was led through the gates of the capitol grounds by Dublin's Rusty Henderson, who portrayed United States Senator Robert Toombs, who resigned his seat two weeks after the ordinance of secession was adopted. A packed house looked on with interest as one delegate after another rose to speak in opposition to or in favor of the motion to leave the United States.

Henderson, portraying the red-haired Toombs, was the first to speak in favor of secession. The fire eater secessionist was challenged by former Georgia governor and unsuccessful 1860 vice-presidential candidate Herschel V. Johnson, of Louisville. Johnson, who later became the Judge of the Superior Courts of Johnson and Washington counties, was portrayed by Lt. Col. David Wells of Milledgeville. Then came the political giant Alexander Hamilton Stephens, who soon became the first and only vice-president of the Confederate States of America. Stephens, a five-foot nine-inch man who weighed less than a hundred pounds and suffered from frequent disabilities, plead with his cane in the air for the delegation to resist any quick, unreasonable, and unconstitutional actions. Playing the role of Stephens was GCSU's Dr. Mark Pelton, a veteran of many fine stage performances. Rising to end the debate was John Geist, a Milledgeville actor who assumed the role of Thomas R.R. Cobb, a fiery secessionist who died in battle at Fredericksburg in December 1862. Rick Joslyn, in portraying assembly chairman George Crawford, called for the final vote. As Toombs and Cobb marched out in triumph, Johnson and Stephens, threw their pens into the fireplace as they left in disgust and sorrow.

The event is the first of many commemorating the beginning of the Civil War by Georgia's Old Capital Museum Society. For more information about the State Capitol and its programs featuring the sesquicentennial of the Civil War go to http://www.oldcapitalmuseum.org/.

Mark Pelton as Alexander Hamilton Stephens

                                                  David Wells as Gov. Herschel V. Johnson

                                                         John Geist as Thomas R.R. Cobb

Rick Joslyn as George Crawford

THE CIVIL WAR AT 150

A Look Back

"War is all Hell," said General William T. Sherman. Robert E. Lee said in observing the dead and dying bodies of some eight thousand Union soldiers below Marye's Heights in Fredericksburg, Virginia, "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." Anniversaries are usually a time for celebration. So you may ask, why we as a country are about to commemorate a war that killed and maimed more than a million men and perpetually scarred three or more entire generations of Americans? The Civil War was a time in American history like no other. The carnage that lasted for fifty months changed the way we lived and the way we continue to live in the present and for many centuries to come.

For the next four years or so, I will be writing about the events which led our state and the states of the South to secede from the Union. So many people ask, "What if the South won the war?" Many historians debate the true causes of the war or just why the South lost or why the North won. The debate has raged for the last sixteen decades and it will not end any time soon.

It has been said that not counting books on religion, the most written about subject is the Civil War. Generally the right to write the history of a war goes to the victors, but such is not the case with this war. Even the names for the war are still debated. While generally named "The Civil War," Southerners of old always referred to the conflict as "The War Between the States," which is actually a better description since wars are never civil and the root cause of the war was the division of opinion on the rights of states to determine their own destiny in matters ranging from economics to slavery. Northern historians often dubbed it "The War of the Rebellion," while their southern counterparts wrote of it as "The War for Southern Independence." Other whimsical names attached to the war include my personal favorite, "The Great Unpleasantness."

Indeed the armies bore different names. The soldiers of the United States of America were called, "the Union, the North, Blue Boys, Blue Bellies, Billy Yanks, Yanks, Yankees and even Damn Yankees. Southern soldiers were known as "the Confederacy, the South, Confederates, Rebels, Rebs. Johnny Rebs, and Grays/Greys." Gen. Robert E. Lee often refused to call his enemies by any derogatory name, opting instead to refer to his opponents as "General Meade's or General Grant's people," or simply and kindly as "our friends across the river."

The differences in names for the war and the armies themselves was carried on in naming the actual battles, especially in the early years of the war. When the killing culminated on the 17th of September 1862 and especially on the first three days of the following July, it mattered not at all that the Southern armies named the battles after the nearest town or land mass while Northern military leaders named the battles for the nearest bodies of water. That practice originated with the first major engagement of the war, dubbed "Bull Run" by the North and "Manassas" by the victorious Southerners. On September 17, 1862, the Army of Northern Virginia slammed into the Army of the Potomac, just outside of Sharpsburg, Marlyand. General Robert E. Lee forces referred to the blood bath as the "Battle of Sharpsburg," while the Union army, under the command of General George B. McLellan named the conflict for nearby Antietam Creek. Regardless of the name of the battle, it was a day when twenty three-thousand American men were killed, wounded, or captured in the bloodiest single day of battle in American history. Among the last battles to bear dual names occurred east of Vicksburg, Mississippi in May 1863. In an effort to block the Union Army as it advanced on the vital river port city of Vicksburg. Confederate General John C. Pemberton sent some of his men east to meet Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's army as they were tightening their choke hold in the beleaguered city. In a short day of fighting, there were more than 10,000 casualties, many of them suffered by local companies of the 57th Georgia Infantry in a battle the North called Baker's Creek and the South dubbed "The Battle of Champion's Hill."

Slightly more than three million soldiers and sailors took part in the war. Of that number, at least 200,000 thousand were killed in action, slightly more from the North. More than 420,000 died from their wounds or infectious diseases, with the North leading that category by more than 100,000 men. In the incalculable category of the number of wounded, the North, with 275,000, was outscored by the better marksman of the South, which suffered about 140,000 wounded men. More than a million, a full one third of the participants, were killed, wounded, died of disease or were taken as prisoners.

The resulting deaths and wounds resulted in changing the course of the history of the country, and the world for that matter, for the rest of time. For me, the war is responsible for me being here to write these words. My great great-grandmother, Elmina Smith Brantley Braswell, lost her first husband, Pvt. Benjamin Brantley, during the Battle of Sharpsburg. Another great great- grandmother, Nancy Key Douglas Woods, lost her first husband, Pvt. David Douglas, at Gettysburg. I won't even mention the changes in lives and relationships of our ancestors which led to us being born a century or so later.

Although, the Civil War or the War Between the States, would not officially begin until April of 1861 following the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, the first major step came in Montgomery, Alabama one hundred and fifty years ago this week. Delegates from Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana gathered in the first Confederate capital to form a Constitution for the Confederate States of America. Alexander Hamilton Stephens, a former United States congressman who represented Laurens County in Congress, and the first and only vice-president of the Confederacy joined Eugenius A. Nisbet, of Macon, as Georgia's representatives on the Committee of Twelve, which organized the six original states into a new government in five days. Two weeks later, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, was elected as the president of the new country.  Other southern states, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky and Arkansas ratified the new constitution and seceded from the United States. Interestingly, one of the Alabama delegates signing the Confederate constitution was John G. Shorter, nephew of former Dublin attorney, Eli Shorter.

Make no mistake, it is not my intention to celebrate the events of that horrible war. I will salute the gallantry of its participants, who fought and died for what they thought was right. I will address the nobilities, as well as the horrors. But, I will not, under any circumstances, celebrate death and dying, and I will not champion any cause for the war.

But, in summation of how I personally feel about my people in those dark days, I will leave you with a statement made by a very distant kinsman, Pvt. David L. Thompson of the 9th New York Volunteers, who said while looking at hundreds of Confederate dead at the Battle of Sharpsburg, "Before the sunlight faded, I walked over the narrow field. All around lay the Confederate dead...clad in `butternut'...As I looked down on the poor pinched faces...all enmity died out. There was no `secession' in those rigid forms nor in those fixed eyes staring at the sky. Clearly it was not their war."

THE FIRE EATERS HOWL

"Hoorah! Hoorah!"

Charlestonians were licking their fire-eating lips as they salivated at the thought of devouring the Union Army. A 128-man Federal garrison was hunkering in the heart of Charleston Harbor like a school of fish trapped inside a barrel of stones and brick. Named Fort Sumter in honor of one the Palmetto State's greatest heroes in the country's first civil war in 1776, the island fortress became the main entree for the fire-eating secessionists of South Carolina. For four months, the Carolinians had been tightening their grip on the Federal forts at the mouth of the Ashley, Cooper and Wando rivers. The time bomb was ticking, ticking ever so close to exploding into the most devastating war our country has ever suffered.

The election of Abraham Lincoln ignited the fuse, but not before more than two decades of bickering between the northern and southern states had primed it to the point of spontaneous combustion. It was going to be a war started by men and fought by boys. Some experts have calculated that half of the 2.5 million-man Union army was composed of soldiers 18 years of age and under, with nearly a quarter of those sixteen and under. The percentages of Southern soldiers were likely about the same.

Two days after Christmas in 1860 and one day after Maj. Robert Anderson, USA, (Left)  abandoned Fort Moultrie and retreated to the safety of Fort Sumter, Col. James J. Pettigrew sent a company of 150 men to take Castle Pinckney, a small fort located a mile from the Charleston's Battery Park on Shute's Folly Island. In the first overt act of the then undeclared war, the invaders expected a considerable fight. Instead they found only Lt. Meade, Sgt. Skillen and his family occupying the fortress. Meade refused to accept Pettigrew's authority to seize the fort. No one remembered to bring a flag, so to show their trivial triumph, Pettigrew commandeered a red flag with a single white star from his ship, the Nina.

With its artillery batteries encircling Fort Sumter, South Carolina's military forces began fortifying for war. On the 9th day of January, Maj. P.F. Stevens, commanding some forty cadets from The Citadel military school, began preparations for an attack. As the USS Star of The West headed into the harbor on it's formerly secret resupply cargo mission, Stevens gave the order to his artillerists to commence firing. Cadet E.G. Haynesworth pulled the lanyard. The first true shot of the war was fired. Other batteries fired, doing little damage to the Federal ship. The beleaguered ship turned and steamed out of range. Anderson's batteries on Sumter were readied, but remained oddly silent.

The seizing of Federal military installations was not within the sole purview of the secessionist Carolinians. Alabamians seized Ft. Morgan and Ft. Gaines in Mobile on January 5. The U.S. Arsenal in Augusta was seized on the 24th of January, eight days after the Georgia legislature voted to secede from the Union. Ft. Jackson and the Oglethorpe Barracks in Savannah were abandoned two days later.

Five weeks after the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln, the inevitability of the war was no longer in doubt. When, where, and how the war would begin was not definite, but all eyes were on the Cerberi as they guarded the Gates of Hades in Charleston Harbor. Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee were clinging to hopes that they could remain in the Union.

Roger A. Pryor, (LEFT) a journalist-politician from Virginia, was an early advocate of his state leaving the Union. Pryor traveled to Charleston to stir the flames of secession, which had been smoldering for three months. From his balcony pulpit, Pryor preached an imploring sermon of secession and liberty from the villainous northern states and the Federal government which he maintained were strangling the economic well being of South Carolina and threatening to destroy their very existence as they knew it.

On the evening of April 11, Gen. P.T.G. Beauregard, commanding the Confederate forces in Charleston sent a trio of his most trusted aides to deliver an ultimatum from Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Capt. Stephen D. Lee, Col. James Chestnut, and Col. A.R. Chisolm piloted a small boat under a flag of a truce toward Sumter. There they met face to face with Sumter's commander, Major Robert Anderson, a Kentuckian and former war hero, who was well known and admired by his opposing officers.

The message read, "If you will state the time which you will evacuate Fort Sumter, and agree in the meantime that you will not use your guns against us unless ours shall be employed against Fort Sumter, we will abstain from opening fire upon you." Anderson conferred with his staff officers. The Major responded that he would evacuate Sumter by April 15 at high noon, unless he received orders to the contrary. Only Anderson knew that his men had only two days of rations on hand. Col. Chesnut deemed the response as unacceptable. He replied with a note which he handed to Anderson and which read, "Sir: by authority of Brigadier General Beauregard, (LEFT) commanding the Provisional Forces of the Confederate States, we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his batteries on Fort Sumter in one hour from this time." Anderson politely escorted the officers to their boat, exchanged hand shakes and said "If we never meet in this world again, God grant that we may meet in the next."

At approximately 4:30 a.m. on the morning of April 12, 1861, Capt. George S. James offered the distinguished honor of firing the first official shot of the war to Congressman Pryor. Pryor deferred to James by saying, "I could not fire the first gun of the war. Lt. Henry Farley, or a member of his crew, pulled the lanyard that launched the first shot, a signal shell which exploded into a brilliant flare over Sumter to begin the aerial assault. Edmund Ruffin, the most voracious fire-eater of them all, made a point of being present to see the attack on Fort Sumter. Although he did not fire the actual first shot, Ruffin (LEFT) did fire a subsequent round directed at Sumter. Again, Anderson withheld his fire. Just before dawn, Capt. Abner Doubleday, the purported inventor of the game of baseball, fired a shot at the rebel battery at Cumming's Point.

The firing continued constantly until dusk. A gentle rain extinguished the fires inside the fort. All during the night, Confederate artillerists continued firing four rounds per hour, just to keep the inhabitants of the fort from a peaceful sleep, as if a peaceful sleep was actually possible.

On the morning of the 13th, the Confederate batteries once again opened up with "hot shot" designed to burn the wooden structures inside the fort. Anderson ordered his troops to throw their remaining supply of gunpowder into the sea to prevent an explosion within the fort. After absorbing nearly 3000 rounds without a single loss of life, Major Robert Anderson agreed to a truce at two o'clock in the afternoon.

Twenty four hours later and less than a day before he promised to evacuate Fort Sumter, Anderson's men abandoned their post to the booming thunder of their own 100-gun salute - a condition of Anderson's surrender terms. One Union soldier was killed during the ceremony and another was mortally wounded when a canon backfired.

The conflict between the North and the South had reached their inevitable point of no return. It was war. It was the feast the fire-eaters craved. Men cheered. Women sobbed. And, the country was set on an irreversible course toward a lamentable conflagration of death and suffering. One quarter of the South's men of military age would die, six hundred thousand or so on both sides in all. Millions of others, maimed and broken, would live in misery for the remainder of their lives. That was the final tab for the voracious appetite of the fire-eaters. And, it all began 150 years ago today.

THE CLASH OF THE IRONCLADS

Greek Versus Greek

Two metallic behemoths clashed in the water of Hampton Roads, Virginia, one hundred and fifty years ago this week. One Wilkinson County man was there. What followed was the first naval engagement between two ironclad warships, the U.S.S. Monitor and C.S.S. Virginia, a converted frigate formerly dubbed the Merrimac by its Northern builders.

Ellsberry Valentine White was born in Wilkinson County, Georgia in 1839. By adulthood, he had moved to Macon and later to Columbus, Georgia. At the outbreak of the Civil War, White was working as a store clerk in Columbus and living in his mother's boarding house.

On April 20, 1861, some ten days after the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, White joined the City Light Guards, designated as Co. A, 2nd Battalion, Georgia Volunteer Infantry. The members of the company elected him as 2nd Sergeant. Sgt. White would transfer to the Confederate Navy near the end of November.

White's regiment was stationed near Portsmouth, Virginia. He expressed an interest in working on the refitting of the U.S.S. Merrimac and was accepted into the naval service on January 18, 1862 and commissioned as the Jr 3rd Engineer in charge of the speaking tube and the gong on the deck of the ship. It was White's job to convey orders from the officers in charge back to the engine room.

The Virginia's builders covered the Merrimac's hull with 20-inch thick heart pine boards, overlaid with four- inch-thick oak planks. Two-inch-thick by seven-inch-wide metal strips were alternately laid horizontally and vertically were place on the exterior of the wooden hull. Her builders and crew believed she would be invincible and that with her dominance of the water ways leading inland from the Virginia coast up the James River, Richmond would be impervious to bombardment by Union naval ships.

Engineer White recalled, "Finally the great ship was reported ready for duty, and well do I remember the words that fell from the lips of our commander, Commodore Buchanan. He told us not to mistrust him; that he intended to do his duty, and expected the same from one and all on board." On midday of a calm, clear, bright Saturday on March 7, 1862, with a gentle breeze coming out the north-north-west and a slight ebb tide on the Elizabeth River, the CSS Virginia cast off from her moorings at the Navy yard on her maiden voyage.

C.S.S. Virginia (Merrimac)

The ship headed for Newport News, where she found the U.S. S. Cumberland and U. S. Congress lay at anchor, blockading the James River. The Union ships opened fire first and then every Federal gun within range of the Virginia joined in the enfilading of the ironclad, which reserved her heavy guns until the last moment to take maximum effect on the wooden warships.

"The Virginia's bow rifle was used with terrible effect; and, as he been frequently stated, opened a hole in the Cumberland large enough for a horse and cart to drive through. We made directly for the later vessel. When at probably fifty yards distance, with slackened speed, but with determined purpose, we moved on toward the gallant ship, and struck her the deadly blow," White wrote in his 1906 account of the battle.

"With probably one hundred guns firing upon us from various points, we came within two hundred yards of the now grounded Congress, upon which we opened fire. After we had delivered several well-directed shots that sent disaster to that ship, and many souls to their eternal home, she (the Congress) hoisted the white flag, and all firing ceased. Arrangements were then commenced for receiving the surrender and removing the dead and wounded from both the enemy's ship and our own," White continued.

"Before we had grounded, the Monitor was discovered coming out from where the Minnesota lay aground, appearing to us, as she has been called, "a cheese-box," or a "tin can on a shingle," White recalled. Lookouts soon recognized the Ericsson Monitor and the Virginia's guns opened fire. "Straight on she came toward us, and when in good position let loose her heavy guns, giving us a good shaking up. Thus she continued circling around us, and every now and then throwing the heavy missiles against out sides. We, in response, as she passed around, brought every gun aboard our ship to bear upon her. It was now "Greek meeting Greek, iron against iron," Engineer White proclaimed.

"Never before had ships met carrying such heavy guns. From both vessels the firing was executed with great rapidity and with equal skill, with but little effect on either side. However, our weak points seemed to be known to the commander of the Monitor, and so well did we attack these, that soon on the starboard midship, she so bent in our plating that the massive oak timbers were cracked," White wrote in his harrowing account of the battle.

Battle of the Iron Clads

"Then, with a settled determination to run the Monitor down, as a last resort, seeing that our shots were ineffective, I was directed to convey to the engine room orders for every man to be at his post. We caught and did run into the Monitor, and came near running her under the water with our starboard bow, drove against her with a determination of sending her to the bottom, and so near did we come to accomplishing our object that from the ramming, White recollected." The victorious crew waited for the return of her beleaguered adversary. The crew of the victorious Virginia acknowledged the thundering saluting shouts of those who witnessed the tremendous triumph from the shores.

By late afternoon, the Virginia was back at the Navy Yard. "The grand old ship was a picture to behold. You could hardly put your hand on a spot on the sides, or smokestack, that had not been battered by the shot of our enemy," White remembered. After making badly needed major repairs, the Virginia was once again ready for action. With the fall of Yorktown and other Confederate fortifications along the lower James River, Flag Officer Josiah Tattnall, of Georgia, saw that the Virginia would not be able to travel upriver to safer positions toward Richmond. The ship was run aground above Craney Island.

"We had but two boats to land our large crew safely on shore; consequently we had to leave all our personal effects on board the steamer. I was one of ten selected to destroy the ship, and held the candle for Mr. Oliver, the gunner, to uncap the powder in the magazine to insure a quick explosion, and, necessarily, was among the last to leave her decks," the Confederate engineer sadly looked back.

"A more beautiful sight I never beheld than that great ship on fire, flames issuing from the port holes, through the gratings and smokestack-the conflagration was a sight ever to be remembered. Thus closed the life, on Saturday night, May 12, 1862, of our gallant ship," White lamented.

White resigned his commission later that summer and was transferred to duty aboard the C.S.S. Baltic in Mobile Bay. Nearer the end of the war, White rejoined the Infantry and participated in the battles in the defense of Atlanta.

Captain Ellsberry V. White returned to Portsmouth after the war where he worked in the hardware business for the rest of his life, which ended on February 28, 1919.

THE LAURENS COUNTY CONFEDERATE MONUMENT

The veiled monument was placed just in time for its dedication on Memorial Day, 1909. A major obstacle blocked the unveiling of the monument. There was not enough money to pay the contractor. For three years the monument to the glorious feats of the Sons of the South stood beneath a veil and became an embarrassment to the entire county. Donations were slow because they were limited to one dollar per person.

The unveiling was delayed until June 3 in celebration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis' birthday. The committee hoped to place it between a pyramid of stacked cannon balls and a fountain. But the monument was still not ready to be dedicated.

Mrs. Adeline Baum, Mrs. E.J. Blackshear, Mrs. J.S. Almand, Mrs. J.D. Prince, and Mrs. J.A. Thomas led a year-long campaign to pay off the debt. The ladies of the community were able to raise $2,000 in the last year to reach their goal. After reaching a settlement with the contractor the dedication was set for April 26, 1912.

Col. C.A. Weddington presided over the Confederate Memorial Day services which were held in the Methodist Church. Dr. A.M. Williams gave the opening prayer, followed by a patriotic song. Col. Thomas, who was there during the last dark days of the war, spoke just before a solo song by Mrs. E. Fred Brown. Capt. L.Q. Stubbs eloquently spoke of the causes leading up to the war and brought the capacity crowd to tears when he spoke of the Confederate generals who fought on the southern side and held them up as worthy examples of the youth of the day.

Dedication - April 26, 2012

The Dublin Band, the Dublin Guards, the Veterans, the Daughters, Sons, and Children of the Confederacy, and the Boy Scouts paraded down Monroe Street to the monument.

"To the heroes of the sixties, I do unveil this monument," said Miss Adeline Baum. Miss Baum was assisted by nine children: Marie New, Rose Arnau, James Moore, Baum Dreyer, Jeanette Stubbs, Evelyn Prince, Evelyn Camp, Nina Peyton Smith, and Sarah Beall in unveiling the monument to G.B. Fout's choir's heart stirring rendition of "Dixie." Miss Baum, who would lead the founding of a chapter of the United Children of the Confederacy the following year, was given the honor of unveiling the monument for "her hard work and great love for the cause that have characterized their efforts all along."

C.A. Weddington, on behalf of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, presented the monument to Mayor E.R. Orr, who accepted it on behalf of the city. A dinner for the veterans at the pavilion at Stubbs Park concluded the ceremonies for the day.

The Confederate Monument stands as a lasting tribute not to the abominable institution of slavery, but to men of nobility. It represents the bravery of young boys who never owned a slave but took up arms in defense of their homeland, against what, in their time they saw as an eminent danger to their way of lives. Perhaps what we should endeavor to do is inscribed on the monument's eastern face: "Your sons and daughters will forever guard the memory of your brave deeds," not just the brave deeds of the children who bore the brunt of the Civil War, but to all the young men and women who fight wars started by men.

 

 

CLEARLY IT WAS NOT THEIR WAR

CLEARLY IT WAS NOT THEIR WAR

"Before the sunlight faded, I walked over the narrow field. All around lay the Confederate dead, clad in butternut. As I looked down on the poor pinched faces,  all enmity died out. There was no secession  in those rigid forms nor in those fixed eyes staring at the sky. Clearly it was not their war," So recalled Pvt. David L. Thompson, Company G, 9th New York Volunteer Zouaves, at Antietam Creek, Sharpsburg, Maryland, September 17, 1862. 

That day, that single, sickeningly horrific day, was the deadliest day in the history of the United States.  When Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia slammed into George B. McLellan’s Army of the Potomac, the resulting carnage amounted to the deaths of nearly 3700 men (CSA-1546, USA-2108), coupled with 17,300 men wounded (CSA-7752, USA-9540) and nearly 2000 missing or captured (CSA-1018, USA-753.) In all, 23,000 of the 113,000 effectives became casualties in a single day.  Imagine if you can, the entire populations of all  the incorporated towns and cities of Laurens County being wiped out in a single day. It was the day when the hilly grounds of Maryland turned red. 

Although the battle was a tactical draw, President Abraham Lincoln claimed victory and began to accelerate his plans to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.  For General Lee, the battle proved that an invasion of the North and the capture of Washington, D.C. was within his war-ending grasp.

But, back in East Central Georgia, the words of Private David Thompson had a deeper, more personal meaning.  To understand what Private Thompson meant, you must turn back the clock a dozen years to the year 1850.   

As the issue of slavery came to the national forefront in the 1850s, a division arose among those in the South over the issue of secession or remaining in the Union.  The vast majority of the residents of East Central Georgia, where the  slave population was in the 30 percent range in the smaller counties, were not opposed to the institution of slavery, but were somewhat  against secession.  In Montgomery County, in the popular vote on the issue of secession, white male voters voted for the Unionist position by a landslide margin of nearly  nine to one.   Even after Georgia narrowly approved secession from the Union, Montgomery County’s two delegates to the General Assembly consistently voted no on all issues dealing with the Confederacy.  

Montgomery County, which today  also includes parts of Treutlen, Wheeler, and Toombs County, was primarily settled in the early 1800s by Scots from the Carolinas.  The Wiregrass region of Georgia along the lower regions of the Oconee and Ocmulgee Rivers at the point where they form the Great Altamaha River was covered with wild natural grasses and pine tree meadows, ideal for the grazing of cattle.  

The Scots were a hardy lot, believing in the power of the individual and a strong work ethic.   In 1860, there were 977 slaves in Montgomery County  representing 32.6% of the total population and owned by 119 slave owners.  Nearly 53 percent of those Montgomery County slave owners owned five slaves or less.  Seventy two percent owned less than 10 slaves.  

Despite their aversion to seceding from the Union, several hundred Montgomery men enlisted in the various infantry, reserves, and militia units of the Confederate Army.  The main company, the Montgomery Sharpshooters, was first organized in Montgomery County in the summer of 1861.  In May 1862, the Sharpshooters were designated as Company E of the 61st Georgia Infantry Regiment.  About two dozen men enlisted in other companies in the regiment. 

The regiment traveled to Virginia just in time to be engaged in the Battles of the Seven Days on the Virginia Peninsula in June 1862.  The Sharpshooters, attached to the Army of Northern Virginia, moved north with General Lee, stopping to fight at Cedar Mountain and Second Manassas.  

Then came that day, that vicious September day in western Maryland, 150 years ago this week.  

One man, Henry C. Mozo, was killed that day.  Twelve Sharpshooters were wounded, including flag bearer F.G. Williams. 

        The dying continued.  Three months later at Fredericksburg, Virginia and just two weeks before Christmas, four were killed, one was captured and fifteen were wounded. R.D. Wooten was listed as missing in action.  It was duly noted that Hillary Wright, a native of Laurens County, had “part of his cheek bone gone.”  The Sharpshooters were with Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville, but suffered no casualties.  They were with John B. Gordon at Gettysburg and carried the Southern flag further north than anyone.  Nine men were wounded and four more died in the killing fields at High Tide of the Confederacy.

Regimental Commander Col. Charles McArthur, a former captain of the Sharpshooters, was killed when a random shell exploded while his regiment was on reserve duty at Spotsylvania.  Before the dying day ended, one man was killed, one man was wounded and eight infantrymen were captured.  

The hardy, independent Montomery Scots, most of whom were determined to remain in the Union,  put up a valiant fight for Georgia.  After the slaughters of Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse when a lull in the fighting came during Grant’s siege of Petersburg, the 61st saw more fighting in the valley of Virginia in the autumn of 1864.  

When the 6lst first arrived in Petersburg, VA on June 22, 1862, they numbered 1,000 men strong. When they left the trenches of Petersburg on April 2, 1865, they tallied only eighty-one men, with only one officer in command, Captain Thomas M. McRae of Montgomery County, who was killed shortly afterwards.  Only 49 were able to stand or kneel when General Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox.

When the remnants of the Sharpshooters limped,  crawled, or simply collapsed onto the rolling countryside surrounding Appomattox Courthouse on April 8, 1865,   thirteen lucky survivors, at least four of whom had survived severe wounds, answered present.  

Brothers Hector and John McSwain  cousins Lucius and J.S. Nash and former Laurens County kinsmen, L.L. Clark and  John Franklin Clark, made it home.  So did Private James O’Connor, who was wounded at Second Manassas, Sharpsburg and Gettysburg.  In command of the Sharpshooters at Appomattox was 2nd Sgt. Daniel M. McRae, a tall fair- complected, blue-eyed, thirty-two-year old Scotsman who survived his wounds at Sharpsburg.  He was the company’s  only surviving non-commissioned officer.  

Of the 133 Montgomery County men who went off to war with the 61st, an unlucky 13 percent or 17 men were killed.  Twenty one, or nearly one in six, were wounded.  The leading cause of death, as it would be with the entire Southern army, was death from disease.  Forty one men, almost  a third of the force, died from communicable diseases or unsanitary conditions.   Roughly one fifth of the men were captured and spent utterly miserable, starving, sickly  months  in Union prison camps equally abhorrent to the supremely  atrocious Confederate  camp at Andersonville.  Eight men were sent home because of their disabilities.  Two officers, somewhat unfit, unable or unwilling for command, resigned their commissions and went home.  In the end, 112 of the 133, or 84 percent, were casualties.  Sixty percent of the men died or were wounded.   Malcolm Peterson lost his chance at becoming a casualty when he was discharged for killing a comrade early in the war. 

 Only one in ten made it to the so, so sad, indeed pitiful and most merciful end. They fought for liberty, with treasure, blood and toil, suffering and dying for  a cause. Turns out it was  a lost cause.  Alas, there was no secession in their Bonnie Blue  eyes.   Clearly, it was not their war. 

In memory of Pvt. Benjamin H. Brantley, Pvt. 28th Georgia, and  my great, great grandmother Braswell’s first husband, who was  wounded in Miller’s Cornfield near the Sunken Road and died three weeks later.  Had he survived, you would have never read what you just read.