IT WAS WAR IN GEORGIA

The cheers of Fort Sumter had all but died. The tears of Fort Pulaski flowed as the ladies of Savannah cried. It was war! Fort Pulaski, which had guarded the port city of Savannah and was once planned under the supervision of General Robert E. Lee himself, was under siege, a century and a half today. With strong feelings of invincibility still flowing through their veins, few Savannahians then alive would have believed that before the end of 1864, the entire city of Savannah would be under Union control.



The attack on Fort Pulaski came as absolutely no surprise to anyone. More than a week before the artillery barrage began, newspapers across the Northeast carried a headline that a shelling of Fort Pulaski, an integral part of the attack upon Fort Jackson closer upriver to Savannah, was about to begin.



In his first tour of duty in the United States Army, Robert E. Lee, a former West Point cadet and a lieutenant in the Engineering Corps, began his first assignment - to survey and make plans for forts at the mouth of the Savannah River on Cockspur Island.



When the threat of war between the North and South became all too real, Georgia officials sent a detachment of untested militia to seize Fort Pulaski on January 3, 1861. When the state officially seceded the following month, the bastion became a critical Confederate military installation.



By November 1861, Federal attacks on Confederate forts in South Carolina and Georgia caused Lee to make a hurried trip back to Cockspur Island to formulate plans to protect Fort Pulaski from both naval and ground attacks, as well as the vital ports of Charleston and Savannah.



The mighty fortress, completed in 1847, was situated at an elbow of the meandering Savannah River channel. Planners theorized that any warship entering the area had to set a course dead ahead toward the fort. Col. Charles H. Olmstead, the fort's commander, believed that no ship could get beyond the fort. But that wasn't the plan of Pulaski's attackers.

A confident member of the garrison wrote on March 28, 1862, "We can see them all around us, but the cowards keep at a good distance from us. They prefer to hide behind some brush or hammock rather than to come square to the front."



United States Army General Thomas Sherman, commanding more than twelve thousand men, worked in cooperation with Navy Captain Samuel Dupont, who set up a small armada of gunboats to block any rear attacks. The initial plan was to directly attack the city of Savannah, by bypassing Fort Pulaski altogether.

By Valentine's Day, Federal forces began to tighten the noose around the Confederate stronghold. Five companies of men, totaling some 385 effectives, were left to defend the 7 « foot thick, brick walled fort with 48 guns at their disposal. Union artillery commanders erected nearly a dozen batteries along the northwestern shore of Tybee Island with as many as three dozen guns aimed squarely at the beleaguered bastion.

Union Lieutenant James Wilson brought over a request to the Confederate commander to surrender the fort early on the morning of April 10, 1862. Olmstead politely refused. Just after 8:00 o'clock, the artillery cannonade began. Five batteries opened fire, relentlessly pounding Pulaski and its defenders with as many to four to five rounds per minute.

At first, the rounds missed their targets. But, as forward observers called in adjustments, the rounds became decidedly devastating to the thick brick walls. One observer reported that the conical shells pierced the fort's thick brick walls with ease. One of the first casualties was the fort's flagstaff, which was broken early during the attack.

The hailstorm of iron enfiladed the fort without pause until sunset. Olmstead's gunners, mostly manning mortars outside the fort, returned fire slowly and deliberately aiming at Union batteries on Tybee Island. Throughout the day, the Confederate forces held out hope as some of their rounds struck and disabled a couple of Union ships and a few others were thought to have silenced some of the Union batteries. All through the evening, Union artillerists reminded Pulaski's defenders that the bombardment was just beginning by sending two to three rounds every half hour. No one in the fort slept that night.

The following morning, the onslaught resumed and with devastating results. The eight Parrot guns positioned at King's Landing ripped open seven, very large breaches in the fort's southern wall. All of Pulaski's barbette guns were disabled. Three Federal cannon balls pierced the fort's magazine with its 40,000 pounds of gunpowder inside.

Despite thirty hours of the horrific shelling of thousands of rounds, only four men were at first reported to be seriously wounded. Three men lost an arm and one lost a leg. Other reports counted the Confederates mortally wounded to be as many as twenty. Union dead were initially reported at seventeen. That number was later reduced to the death of a single Union artillerist.

Throughout the day, panic among the residents of Savannah crescendoed as the vibrations shook windows throughout the city. Many in the city began preparations to flee westward to inland sanctuaries.

When the devastating effect of the heavy barrage made further resistance futile, the fort's youthful commander, Col. Olmstead, reluctantly decided to surrender his command in the middle of the afternoon of the 11th of April. Olmstead was quoted as saying, "I yield my sword, but I trust I have not disgraced it."

After the unconditional surrender was signed and sealed, the Union flag was raised above the ravaged ramparts of Fort Pulaski. The defenders were taken prisoner and shipped to forts in New York. A total blockade of the port of Savannah was put in place.

In expectation of an attack on Fort Pulaski by rebel forces, six hundred Confederate prisoners, mostly officers and known as the Immortal 600, were imprisoned in Fort Pulaski to prevent a siege by Confederates.

And, it was on this day, one hundred and fifty years ago when the Civil War came to the soil of Georgia for the very first time. The relatively light conflict at Fort Pulaski would be overshadowed by the horrific battle of Chickamauga in September 1863 and the war changing Atlanta Campaign in the spring and summer of 1864. Savannah herself fell into the hands of the Union army when Gen. William T. Sherman's crippling March to the Sea in the autumn of 1864 ended on Christmas Day in 1864.

THE SEVEN DAYS BATTLE

Six battles between the Union and Confederate armies to the east of Richmond, Virginia, cost both sides 36,000 casualties out of nearly 200,000 combatants. It was an early, ominous sign that this war was not only going to be long, but more deadly than its instigators ever imagined. Union General George McLellan and his staff launched an early massive strike along the Virginia Peninsula, hoping to capture the Confederate capital and bring about a quick and necessarily deadly end to the Civil War. Newly appointed Confederate commander, Gen. Robert E. Lee, struck back viciously, sparing no ammunition or lives to protect the vital political center of the Confederacy a century and a half ago this week.

Lee's army crossed the Chickahominy River in the mid afternoon on the June 26, 1862. Two companies from Laurens County, who carried the banner of "The Blackshear Guards, 14th Georgia, and "The Laurens Volunteers", 49th Georgia, both in Anderson's brigade, Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill's division. Powell's division crossed Meadow's Bridge over Brook Run to join with Branch's advance on Mechanicsville. Field's brigade led the way with Anderson's behind him.

When Lee reached Mechanicsville, he split his army in three directions. Richard Anderson's (Left)  Brigade led Hill's march along the Old Church Road toward Beaverdam Creek. Within a few hundred yards of Mechanicsville, Hill's division came under the fire of Federal artillery. Anderson's Brigade took the extreme Confederate left near the head of Beaverdam Creek above Mechanicsville, Virginia. Their mission was to march through one mile of dense woods to capture the Federal artillery. Anderson moved up to the west rim of the valley of the creek opposite Gen. Reynolds' Federal division.

Lee and Hill were waiting on Stonewall Jackson. The iconic Jackson was supposed to have marched down from the north and attack and turn the Federal right. Hill could wait no longer. Shortly after arriving at the creek, Hill's order for a late afternoon attack came. Col. E.L. Thomas led the 35th Georgia in the initial attack on the Federal right. Col. R.W. Folsom got up from his sick bed to lead the 14th Georgia in support of Thomas. When the attack first began, Anderson's men had woods and thickets to cover their advance. Those in the open fields were pounded with sweeping artillery fire. Once they came down the steep banks toward the waist-deep, fifteen to twenty foot wide creek, they were in full view of Federal riflemen. Every assault was repulsed by the Federal forces. Only the 35th Georgia were able to cross the creek. Under heavy fire they were forced to retire at the end of the fighting.

Lt. Hardy Smith, (left)  then leading the company after the wounding of Capt. Thomas M. Yopp at Seven Pines, led the Blackshear Guards as they charged Union positions. Elkinia Faulk and William L. Jones were killed on the field. Amos L. Moore suffered a severe wound to the head and died nine days later. George Jenkins, Daniel G. Pope, and Emory Smith were wounded during the brutal fighting. Lt. Smith was shot in the right arm. His wound was so severe that his arm was later amputated. Although the Laurens Volunteers were not as heavily engaged, Thomas J. Parsons John C. Bracewell and Benjamin F. Dixon were wounded in the fighting at Mechanicsville.

Col. A.J. Lane, commanding the 49th Georgia, received a severe wound in the arm during the fighting. Brigade commander Gen. Joseph Anderson, who was wounded in the fighting, was succeeded by Gen. Edward L. Thomas. Union General Porter remembered the moans of the dying and wounded penetrating the night following the battle. The Confederates lost one-fifth of their men, while the Union losses were relatively light. Even though the Federals claimed victory, McLellan moved his men to the southeast in an effort to better his position.

"The Rebels came on, from the woods, out of the swamps, down the roads, along the entire front, with shriek and yell," a Pennsylvania soldier recalled.

The Guards and Volunteers continued their march the next morning along Old Church Road turning toward New Cold Harbor. The armies squared off a mile to the southeast of Gaines' Mill. At 2 :00 on the afternoon of the 27th, A.P. Hill's Division, the largest in the army, made the first attack on the Union center and left. J.T. Faulk and John R. McDaniel of the Guards were wounded.

When Anderson's brigade formed a line, three quarters of a mile long at the edge of the woods, the Federals commenced a brisk attack. A deep ravine separated the Rebels from the Federal fire on the hill. Anderson halted his men under heavy fire before ordering a double-quick charge followed by a third charge. The embattled Confederates found that crossing the ravine was impractical and fell back and held their original position.

After Anderson's brigade made three unsuccessful charges, everybody kept wondering "Where is Jackson?" After two hours of battle, the uncoordinated Confederate attack fell apart. The Confederates attacked again and pushed the Federals back. The 14th spent the next day resting along Powhite Creek south of Gaines Mill. On the 29th, Hill and Longstreet marched west toward Richmond before turning back toward the Federals on the Darbytown Road and moving in the direction of Malvern Hill on the James River.

Hill and Longstreet attacked the Federals at Frayser's Farm near Glendale on the 30th. At the beginning of the battle, Anderson's brigade was left in the extreme rear. After the battle raged for hours, A.P. Hill was forced to use Anderson's Brigade, the last of the army's reserves. At sunset, Anderson marched his men along Long Bridge Road with orders to cheer and make as much noise as possible. The 14th Ga. and 3rd La. took the left with the 35th, 45th, and 49th Ga. regiments making up the right wing. Confederate President Jefferson Davis came out from his headquarters and galloped along the column. A chorus of cheers rang out.

Anderson marched a half mile toward the Federals lying on the left of the road. Orders were given to withhold musket fire until the division joined with the Confederate front. As the division moved to within 200 feet of the Federals, cries rang out "For God's sake, don't fire on us, we are friends!" Anderson ordered a bayonet charge. The approaching forces yelled "Fire!" giving Anderson no doubt that they were the enemy. Gen. Anderson was again wounded and E.L. Thomas assumed command of the Brigade. Within a few minutes the fighting ceased. The battle was a draw. McLellan pulled back to a more strategic position at Malvern Hill. Only John W. Cross of the Laurens Volunteers was wounded in the fighting of the last battle.

The climax of the Seven Days Battles came on July 1, 1862 with a Confederate attack on Malvern Hill. Hill and Longstreet remained at Frayser's Farm and did not participate in the action. Thomas's Brigade was positioned at the fork in the road behind the main Confederate force. Anderson's Division suffered 364 casualties during the Battles of the Seven Days. Lee's men suffered more casualties during the campaign, but managed to push McLellan away from Richmond.

After the Battles of the Seven Days, Hill's Light Division was assigned to the Corps of Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Jackson led Lee's move northward. Jackson arrived at Cedar Mountain on August 9, 1862, where the killing resumed and accelerated.

THE SECOND MANASSAS

THE SECOND MANASSAS  
The Return to Bull Run

The end of the summer of 1862 saw General Robert E. Lee's forces return to the scene of the first Confederate victory at Bull Run or Manassas, as it was called by people in the South.  Lee hoped to continue his successes of the Seven Days Battles. Southern generals Stonewall Jackson and A.P. Hill reached Brandy Station on the south side of the Rappahannock River on August 24.  Three days later,
Jackson marched 54 miles northwest completely around Pope toward Manassas Gap.  On the 28th of August, Hill moved from Centreville to join Ewell at Blackburn's Ford, where they crossed Bull Run and moved south toward Manassas Junction. Hill took his men back across Bull Run and moved them up the northeast side of the creek toward the Warrentown Turnpike, where he turned to the southwest and crossed Bull Run for a third time.  Participating in that battle were the Blackshear Guards and Laurens Volunteers of Laurens County and the Johnson Grays and Battleground Guards of Johnson County, along with a host of other local companies from east-central Georgia.

Gen. Jackson assigned Hill to protect the mill and ford at Sudley Springs.  On the morning of the 29th, E.L. Thomas formed his brigade, including the Blackshear Guards, Laurens Volunteers and Johnson Grays, along the western margin of an unfinished railroad (left)  east of the Grovetown to Sudley Road.  Union general Pope had hoped to use his superior forces to crush Hill before the rest of Lee's army joined the fight.  Thomas discovered that the ground was a little higher to the west and moved back toward the road.  Thomas also found impediments in placing his artillery in the woods.  By noon, Union skirmishers, mainly composed of German regiments, began firing on Gregg's Brigade on Thomas's left.  The Federal forces moved back after a brief skirmish.  Thomas moved his men back to the railroad shifting his line to his right and  leaving  a 125-yard gap along a break in the railroad bed where it passed through a swamp.

Grover moved his Federal Division in front of the gap between Gregg and Thomas, who knew nothing of Grover's approach. Thomas’ men escaped the battle that morning. But  Grover's men closed to within a few yards of the railroad before they spotted the Confederate line.  Thomas's men stood up and fired.  Grover launched a hand to hand combat attack through the gap and overran the 49th Georgia on Thomas's left.  Thomas retreated back toward the Grovetown Road with many casualties. The move was described by onlookers as "like opening swinging doors."   Grover lost one in six of his men during the first attack.  Thomas  moved to his left and rallied the 49th Georgia.  The fighting was fierce with a crossfire of less than ten yards.  Thomas's left was strengthened by the 14th S.C. and Pender's Brigade.  Grover retreated in 30 minutes after losing another sixth of his men.

Federal forces under Gen. Kearney launched another attack at five o'clock running into Gregg and Thomas's skirmishers.  Once again, Thomas was nearly surrounded by Federals.  This time Thomas's Brigade stood firm.  Gregg was nearly out of ammunition.  Gen. Jubal Early came to the rescue, saving Thomas and Gregg, who had moved back to Stoney Ridge.  Early, with his twenty five-hundred fresh men, crushed the Federals, who hastily retired to end the day’s fighting.  The battle shifted to the southwest on the 30th with Thomas on the extreme Confederate left.  Thomas lost 155 men, killed or wounded, during the battle.   Corp. James C. Lee, who was killed in action, was the only casualty of the Blackshear Guards.  Capt. James T. Chappell and privates John M. Burch, Uriah S. Fuller and William H. Wright,  all of the Laurens Volunteers,  were wounded in the first day of the battle.  John D. Wolfe of the Volunteers was killed.  William G. Pearson was wounded on the second day.

Johnson Grays Francis J. Flanders, Williamson T. Flanders, Jonathan B. Smith and John Walker were wounded during the first day's fighting.  Future Laurens Countians Sgt. G.W. Belcher (Co. C. 20th), William Cranford (Co. E, 26th) and Lt. James Mincey (Co. D, 61st) were wounded during the two-day battle.

The 48th Georgia was a part of Gen. Ransom Wright's Brigade of General R.H. Anderson's Division.  The Division was attached to the Right Wing of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of General James Longstreet.  During a grueling march, Quincey L. Black, A.J. Foskey, and Wilson Riner had to fall out of line.  Ransom Wright, a Louisville-born attorney, commanded a Georgia Brigade composed of the 3rd, 22nd, 44th, and 48th Georgia Regiments.

At 4:50 p.m. on the afternoon of August 30, the 48th Georgia moved out from its resting place on the Brawner Farm.  Anderson's Division crossed to the south of the Warrenton Turnpike and set out on a two-mile march toward Henry Hill. During the march, the Confederates were subjected to  artillery fire from Dogan's Ridge.  Three thousand Georgians opened the assault by pressing the Federal lines along the Sudley Road.

At the height of the fighting, the 48th Georgia moved to Jones' right.  Wright brought his brigade to the far right in support of Gen. G.T. Anderson's brigade,  who were being fired on before their lines could be formed.  Mahone's brigade fell in on Wright's right flank and  extended the Confederate right far beyond the Union left flank.  The Federal lines were caught in a bad position.  Many elements of the Confederate forces were crossing the road.  The Confederates failed to press the attack and allowed the Union army to regroup.  The 15th and 17th Georgia regiments fell back. Anderson's Division and the 48th held their position.  James Neal, of the Battleground Guards, was killed in the fighting.   James W. Rowland suffered a wound.   Though Anderson failed to discern that an attack would have cut the Federal lines, his default did not end the assault on the Federal lines.

Wright and Anderson's brigades continued to pressure the Union lines at slow place until an hour after dark.  Wright's fatigued men were replaced by Wilcox's and Drayton's brigade.  Longstreet's Corps continued the attack forcing Pope's Yankees into a retreat. At the end of the battle Lee's forces were in position to launch an attack deep into the North.  Gen. Lee hoped his success at the Second Manassas would lead his army to victories in Maryland and beyond.  Little did General Lee realize the devastating carnage that would follow in the succeeding battles of Antietam/Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.

In summarizing the battle, a Federal survivor of the attack on Hill’s line said, "The slope was swept by a hurricane of death, and each minute seemed twenty hours long." An artilleryman in Hill’s division, put it this way, "When the Sun went down, their dead were heaped in front of that incomplete railway, and we sighed with relief, for Longstreet could be seen coming into position on our right.  The crisis was over ..., but the sun went down so slowly."

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. 

THE BATTLE FOR FREDERICKSBURG

It is Well That War Is So Terrible

It was warm Saturday morning, the 13th of December and a very unlucky day.  Fog blanketed the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia on the banks of the Rappahannock  River.  At times, the fog was so thick that the infantrymen could not see their commanders.   Just three months after the Battle of Antietam, the deadliest single- day battle of the war, the dying was about to begin again. It was supposed to be a glorious day or so many of the combatants believed.  Before the slaughter ceased, 17,500 men would be dead or wounded.

The brigade of Brigadier General Edward L. Thomas, C.S.A., assigned to the command of Major General Ambrose Powell Hill's Division, Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's corps,  was composed of the 14th, 35th, 45th and 49th Georgia regiments.   The 14th Georgia was composed of ten companies, three from Middle Georgia: the Blackshear Guards, the Johnson Greys and the Ramah Guards of Wilkinson County.  The Laurens Volunteers, the Wilkinson Invincibles, the Cold Steel Guards of Washington County and  the Washington Guards were among the ten companies assigned to the 49th Georgia Infantry.

General E.L. Thomas moved his brigade from its camp at John Alsop's house to a point between the Military Road and the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad.

Just after noon, Hill's Confederates moved eastward to assault Gibbon's Federal brigade.  Division Commander George Meade, who would later command the Union army at Gettysburg,  launched a Union counterattack on the Confederate center, forcing a fatal gap between Pender's and Lane's brigades in the Confederate line. 

The Confederates counterattacked.  A second larger counterattack was cut short, when the Federals  flooded the front lines with artillery fire.  Gen. A.P. Hill reported,  "Gen. Thomas, responding to the call of General Lane, rapidly threw forward his brigade of Georgians by the flank, and deploying by successive formations, squarely met the enemy, charged them, and joined by the Seventh and part of the Eighteenth North Carolina, drove them back, with tremendous losses, to their original position." 

Hill would later say, "At the close of the battle, my brigades were still their original positions, except Thomas's Brigade, which was not recalled from the position it had so gallantly won in the front line."  Thomas moved back to the railroad when he saw he had no support on his flanks. 

General Thomas reported, "About midday of December 13, orders were received from Major General Hill to render assistance and support to any part of the front line requiring it."  Soon after, an officer of General Lane's staff brought information that his brigade was hard pressed by overwhelming numbers.  Thomas immediately advanced his brigade down the road, being unable, on account of the density of the undergrowth, to advance in line any further.

The brigade moved by the flank until near the scene of action, when the regiments were thrown into line of battle and advanced toward the enemy, who at this time had advanced into the woods. 

Their advance was checked.  After a stubborn resistance, this brigade charged them, driving them through the field and completely routing them. 

"We pursued for some distance across the railroad, when, seeing no support either on the right or left, and my ammunition being reported to be well-nigh exhausted, I concluded to fall back to the railroad. Forming at this place the front line, I determined to hold the position, at the same time sending word to Colonel  Edmund Pendleton, commanding a brigade, that I was deficient in ammunition, and requesting him to be in supporting distance," wrote Thomas.

That night, the brigade bivouacked in the edge of the woods, throwing out pickets on the railroad. They were relieved early the next morning by Col. E. T. H. Warren's brigade, and were placed in reserve.

At the bloody siege of Fredericksburg, Captain Thomas M. Yopp, commanding the Blackshear Guards,  fell when a shell burst over him.  His friend Bill Yopp rushed to his aid.  Yopp, would later gain fame and recognition as one of the few true African American infantryman and the only African American Confederate to buried in the all white Confederate Cemetery in Marietta, Georgia.

Hill's Division suffered one half of the Confederate's total casualties and forty percent of Lee's Army's deaths. 

"The Fourteenth Georgia under its gallant commander took an early conspicuous part.  Unprotected by breastworks, it repulsed three heavy lines of battle.  The losses of the regiment in the battle were twenty-four killed and eighty-eight wounded.  After battle the regiment moved 10 miles south to Fort Gregg for the winter," wrote James Madison Folsom of Wilkinson County. 

Laurens Countians killed in the fighting were:  Carswell Davis, Uriah S. Fuller, Jonathan G. Hall,   Among the wounded local men was:  Charles Fulford, Henry Gay, Isaac Hall, Joel Hall, J.H. Herrington, Ebenezer Hilliard, James L. Jones, James W. Maddox, John McCant, R.H.C. McLendon,  A.M. Nash, Aaron G. Odom, Terrell Perry, Elijah Register, Jethro Scarborough, Elijah Shepard, Martin Smith and James W. Stanley.  Most of the casualties occurred among the Blackshear Guards of the 14th Georgia. 

Hardy Bellflower was wounded and died from his wounds in a Richmond Hospital on Christmas Eve. It was duly noted that Hillary Wright, a native of Laurens County and a member of a Montgomery County regiment, had "part of his cheek bone gone."

The 49th Georgia regiment, which had a  reputation for dash and gallantry, suffered the loss of 12 killed and 47 wounded.

The heaviest action, in the only battle of the war ever fought in the month of December,  was to the north at the foot of Marye's Heights, where the Federals lost 6300 men in the one day struggle.  Lee had won another decisive victory losing only one man for every two Federals. 

After the Battle of Fredericksburg the Aurora Borealis  could be seen from the battlefield that night. The Confederate army observing the ultra rare phenomena in the Virginia sky,  took it as a sign that God was on their side during the battle, one hundred and fifty years ago this week.

The ghastly sight of so many thousands of dead and dying enemy soldiers prompted General Lee, from his observation point  at the crest of Marye's Heights,  to profoundly and somewhat sadly proclaim, "It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it."