THE BATTLE OF GRISWOLDVILLE
One Last Valiant Stand

The last days of the Confederacy were coming to an end.  General Sherman's army was poised in Atlanta ready to march east to Savannah to split the Confederacy in half.  General Grant's army was still laying siege against General Lee's army in Richmond and Petersburg.  Many men in the Southern army were coming home on winter furlough with plans not to return.  One hundred and fifty years ago on November 22, 1864 the largest battle of the Civil War in Middle Georgia took place along the Twiggs - Jones County border east of Macon near the industrial hamlet of Griswoldville.




On October 12th, when it became apparent to Confederate leaders that Sherman's army would march along the Central of Georgia Railroad bound for Savannah, Maj. Gen. Gustavas A. Smith recalled as many men as he could gather.  These men had been sent home on a harvest furlough following the loss of Jonesboro.  The men, mostly young boys, old men, and disabled soldiers, rendezvoused at Camp Lovejoy. Among those men was Sgt. Blanton Nance, Co. E, 7th Ga. Militia, who later lived in Dublin; Laurens County residents J.H. Barbour, A.M. Jessup, and Henry E. Moorman of the 5th Georgia Reserves; along with many other old men and boys from Wilkinson, Jones, and Twiggs Counties.  John A. Braswell,  who lost his father early in the war, left his home near Irwin's Cross Roads in Washington County to join the 5th Georgia Reserves just days after his 18th birthday.  Capt. John McArthur brought his company up from Montgomery County to help hold off the Union army. Companies D and H of the 2nd Regiment were brought up from Wilkinson County.

Following his defeat in Atlanta, Gen. John B. Hood took his Army of the Tennessee to Alabama, along with the cavalry of Gen. Joseph Wheeler.  More than sixty thousand Yankees were moving out of Atlanta toward Lovejoy.  A delaying skirmish was fought on the 16th of November.  Georgia governor Joe Brown sent out a call for all able-bodied men to come to the defense of the state.  The Confederates were forced to retreat to Hampton.   Nance and his men began erecting a barricade across the road leading from Atlanta.   At Hampton, Griffin, and Forsyth, the Confederates were pushed back by the vastly superior Union Army.

By the 20th of November, Sherman's right wing was bearing down on Macon.  The Central Georgia city had been the object of an failed attack in the summer past.  Macon was a key railroad and manufacturing center, but it was well defended.  Sherman wanted the city to allow his forces to liberate his fellow soldiers imprisoned in Andersonville.  He did not, however, want to commit a large portion of his forces to capture the city.    By the time the Union Army reached Macon, the Confederate Force amounted to thirty seven hundred men, with another thirty seven hundred or so cavalrymen.  The Union Army launched an attack beginning at Cross Keys in East Macon with the objective of taking the heights east of the city, which are now the site of the Ocmulgee National Monument and old Fort Hawkins.  Sherman's forces were able to get a foothold on the Dunlap Farm, which allowed them to shell parts of the city.  The resulting artillery fire led to the naming of the Macon landmark, "The Cannonball House."  The small band of Confederates was able to hold off the Federals, who retreated to the east, tearing up railroad tracks, destroying Eleazar McCall's old mill, and pillaging the countryside for anything of monetary or military value .

Just east of Macon on the Central Railroad was the hamlet of Griswoldville.  The community of five hundred citizens and one hundred slaves was located at the southern tip of Jones County.  Its founder was Samuel Griswold, a native of Connecticut who accumulated five thousand acres of land on which he erected a cotton gin, a candle factory, a soap factory, and a saw mill.  The most important industry was the pistol factory that manufactured the famed Griswold revolver.  The Confederate Army leased the gin building to manufacture pistols, which were turned out at the rate of one hundred per month.  The Griswoldville factory turned out more pistols than all other factories combined. On the morning of the 21st,  the Union Army moved into Griswoldville.  They destroyed over thirty five hundred weapons, burned anything they couldn't carry, and continued their destruction of the railroad.  That night the clouds dumped a torrential rain in advance of a cold front.  The temperature dropped over twenty four degrees in twenty four hours.


Wheeler's Cavalry moved out early on the morning of the 22nd.   The Union Army had already vacated the smoldering town and were bound for Gordon, McIntyre, and Irwinton.  The infantry followed and arrived in Griswoldville about noon.  The temperatures was 12 degrees.  It was snowing.  The rain-soaked ground was frozen. Gen. Samuel Ferguson's Mississippi Cavalry with 4000 men ran head long into the rear of the Union column just east of Griswoldville .

Gen. Oliver Wolcott's Union forces were about two miles southeast of Griswoldville on the Duncan farm, which was situated on the Jones-Twiggs County line.  Skirmishers came in contact with the Union forces,  who stopped their advance and dug in on the high ground.  Upon the report of the fire from the Duncan farm, more cavalrymen and the infantrymen who had just entered the town were drawn toward the direction of the fire.

The Confederate forces were placed  in a precarious position.  A large open field was  between them and the Union army.  The Union forces were surrounded on three sides by Big Sandy Creek which was a natural barrier to an attack on the Federal left, front, and rear.  The Confederates began an ineffective artillery fire on the hill.  The Union artillery was also similarly ineffective.  The Confederates crossed the creek and advanced to within two hundred fifty yards of the Union lines.  The first ranks were decimated by rifle fire. There were seven thousand men firing at each other within the bounds of the 190 acre field.  The Confederates kept advancing, filling in the gaps in the lines with reserves.

By 4:30 p.m. the battle was all but over.  Near the end of the fighting, Sgt. Blanton Nance, part of Anderson's force which attacked from the railroad at the north end of the battlefield, was shot in the shoulder and the neck.  He fell to the ground.  Nance was lucky.  He was picked up by Union soldiers and taken back to a field hospital for treatment.  Many other wounded men froze to death that night.  Nance, a forty-six year old veteran of the Mexican War, survived and lived in Dublin until 1910, when he died at the age of ninety two.  The Confederates retreated to Griswoldville, returned to Macon the next day,  and  never mounted another threat to Sherman and his men.  Gen. Smith was furious that the militia engaged the Union army contrary to his instructions.

Most of the Montgomery County men survived. Addison McArthur and Groves Conner were killed, and John McArthur and Thomas Adams were wounded.  Southern casualties totaled  six hundred killed and wounded, which was about ten percent of their force.  Northern casualties were fourteen killed, seventy nine wounded and two missing in action.  The town of Griswoldville was never rebuilt.  Today several organizations are seeking to preserve a portion of the battlefield for posterity.

WILLIAM JOSHUA BUSH

The End of the Long Gray Line

William Joshua Bush was the last of his kind, or perhaps one of the last of his kind.  As a teenager, he fought for his country, the Confederate States of America.  As a centenarian, Bush was celebrated as one of the last Confederate veterans of the Civil War, or the War Between the States, which ended in 1865.  When he died, Bush was the last Georgian to have worn the gray, or butternut, uniform of the Confederacy.  

William Joshua Bush was born in Wilkinson County, Georgia on July 10, 1845 or by some accounts in1846.   That is his recorded date of birth, but the 1850 Census indicated that he was one year old and therefore was born in 1848 and not in 1845.  His father Francis Marion Bush and his mother Elizabeth Pattisaul Bush lived in the western regions of the county, possibly near Gordon.   

In July of 1861, just before the war began in reality, William enlisted in the Ramah Guards, designated as Company B of the 14th Georgia infantry.  He lied about his age. He wasn't about to turn sixteen the next day.  He was about to celebrate his first full day in the Confederate Army as a thirteen-year-old.  The 14th Georgia saw action that month in the Battle of First Manassas, or Bull Run.  When the fighting ceased for the fall and winter months, William was discharged and sent home to Wilkinson County.   

A few months after his real 16th birthday, William enlisted in the Georgia Militia in October  1864.  Only a few enrolling officers asked questions about age in those days.  The Confederacy, and Georgia in particular, needed bodies who could fire a gun.  General Sherman was in Atlanta, ready and poised to begin his climatic "March to the Sea." 

Right in the line of his march was Wilkinson County.  William's company first saw action in the area of East Macon near Cross Key's.    He may have participated in the attack on the rear of  the Union line near Griswoldville, Georgia, an attack which resulted in a devastating defeat for the militia, composed primarily of older men, wounded regulars and boys.  According to Bush, he fought in the Battle of Atlanta.  After viewing Gone With The Wind, he pronounced the depiction of Atlanta to be accurate.  When he visited the Cyclorama in Atlanta, the circular painting brought back old memories of the climactic battle.  It is said that he even pointed out the tree he hid behind, though  the painting is merely an artist's conception.   There is even a story that when he saw Union General William T. Sherman depicted on horseback, Bush, vowing "let me at him,"  had to be restrained by his wife.

         Bush remained with his company until it surrendered at Stephen's Station on the Central of Georgia Railroad in 1865.    Like many veterans, Bush loved to tell stories about his experiences in the war.  He related the often told tale about the ransacking of the family home and how it was stopped when a Union officer discovered that the owner was a Mason.  Masons, their homes and personal possessions, were considered off limits to looters and souvenir hunters.  He told one interviewer, "when I got into the war we wore overalls, and when we surrendered in 1865, I didn't even have a pair of shoes."

  After the war, Joshua, as he was most well known, married Mary Adeline Steeley.  They had six children and were married until her death in 1915.  In 1922, at the age of 54 or so, Bush married Effie T. Sharpe, a widowed mother of two small children.  

For seventy-five years, Bush lived the normal life of an aging Confederate veteran.  Bush ran a store on the Levi Harrell place and moved from Rhine in Dodge County to Fitzgerald the early 1870s.  He received a pension check to help pay his bills.  He was a regular church goer, serving as a senior deacon in the Baptist Church.  He followed in his father's footsteps and became a member of a Masonic Lodge.   He worked as long he could, taking jobs with the railroad, turpentine companies and even a short stint as a butcher in a grocery store.  

It was in 1938 when Bush and the few surviving veterans of the war began to acquire celebrity status.  That year marked the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.  Those veterans who could, gathered in the Pennsylvania town for one final reunion to commemorate the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy."  As a souvenir of the event, Bush brought home a large rebel flag.

Joshua Bush spent his last years in Fitzgerald, which had been founded as a colony by former Union soldiers.  For many years, Bush and Henry Brunner, the last surviving Union veteran in town, would meet at the city cemetery and place flowers on the graves of their deceased comrades. When Brunner died, Bush sent a flower from "the last of the gray to the last of the blue."  As his status grew, the Judge of the Ordinary Court would personally deliver his pension check and bring the requisite amount of cash to cash the check and eliminate the need for Bush to go to the bank.    He was often given an escort home by police officers when he stayed out late.  He liked to stay out late.

Bush became somewhat of a celebrity.  Admirers addressed the one-blue eyed centenarian  (he lost an eye in a sawmill accident) as "General Bush."  The owners of 20th Century Fox presented the general with a new uniform befitting his newfound stature.  The aged rebel commented, "when I got into it we were in overalls.  In 1865, when the army surrendered, I didn't even have a pair of shoes."  In gratitude  Bush vowed to be buried in the only uniform he ever owned.    The uniform was donated to the Cyclorama Museum in Atlanta and later transferred to the Atlanta Historical Society.  The producers of I'll Climb the Highest Mountain invited him to attend the movie's premiere in Atlanta.  

As the decade of the 1950s came, the number of living veterans of the war began to dwindle rapidly.    For the first time in his life, Joshua Bush boarded an airplane for Norfolk, Virginia.   Bush joined John Sailing of Virginia and William Townsend of Louisiana for the 1951 Confederate Veteran's Reunion. (See below)   It would turn out to be the last reunion of the Long Gray Line.  By the spring of 1952,   the remaining Confederate veterans outnumbered their Union counterparts - a stark contrast to the superior Northern armies during the war. In 1952, the Sons of the Confederate Veterans held their annual meeting in Jackson, Mississippi, with only Joshua Bush and William Townsend of Louisiana in attendance.  The delegates sadly voted to end the reunions. 

On November 11, 1952, Joshua Bush, Georgia's last Confederate veteran died. His body was laid to rest in Evergreen Cemetery in Fitzgerald with Masonic and military honors.  For the last time in history, Confederate flags were flown all over the state at half mast in his honor.  It was a time that brought a great sorrow to those who still remembered the tales of their fathers and grandfathers of days of long ago.    

THE BATTLE FOR ATLANTA

Key to Victory

In the summer of 1864, the railroad hub of Atlanta was the final key to ending the bloodiest conflict in the history of United States of America, which had yet to reach the end of her first century.    With devastating losses by the Confederate army at Gettysburg and Vicksburg during the previous July, the vital rail center in Georgia was keeping the armies of the Tennessee and Northern Virginia partially equipped with arms, munitions and food.  

Union commander, General William T. Sherman, set his sights on splitting the South, and in particular Georgia,  from the mountains to the sea.  In the North, tensions were mounting.  Democratic candidates urged peace with the South, while antiwar and anti-draft proponents rioted in the streets of New York City.  Nothing short of a decisive victory in Georgia would guarantee a second term for the Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.  The beginning of the Battle of Atlanta began 150 years ago today.  

Late in April of 1864, General Sherman (left)  and his 120,000 plus man army began its "March to the Sea."  Confederate Army commander Joseph Johnston adopted a strategy of meeting the attack, striking hard and then falling back.  By the end of June, the Union army had captured the strategic Kennesaw Mountain, which could be seen along the western horizon of Atlanta.  Within  23 days, the Federals were knocking on the door of the inner outskirts of Atlanta.  

Four companies of Laurens countians, Companies A,B and H of the 57th Georgia infantry, along with Co. H of the 63rd Georgia, were stationed in Atlanta.  The units had originally been summoned from Savannah to Virginia, until  it became readily apparent that Sherman was going to mount a massive offensive against Atlanta.    Along with the 1st and 54th Georgia regiments, the local men were under the command of Brigadier General Hugh Mercer and division commander Lt. Gen. William H.T. Walker.  Mercer's brigade had seen action at Champion's Hill and Vicksburg, but primarily spent most of their time guarding Savannah and serving a brief time as guards at Andersonville prison.

Johnston's policy of fight and retreat led to his demise as commander of the Army of the Tennessee on

July 18.  General John B. Hood  (left) took over command of the army defending Atlanta.  Two days later, Hooker's XX Corps and Howard's IV Corps struck headlong into Stewart's and Hardee's Corps, who were strongly entrenched along the banks of Peachtree Creek just north of Atlanta.  Just after noon on the 20th, General Hood issued an order to attack the oncoming Union corps.  Walker's Division was established in the center of the Confederate line, about where the present day Brookwood station is now located.

At about 4:00 in the afternoon, Bate's division moved out.  Walker's men were the first to feel the brunt of the overwhelming Union force. Their attack was repulsed in short order.  Augustus G. Fountain (left)  of Laurens County was one of  the three members of Mercer's brigade to be killed in the fighting as the brigade moved up the eastern margin of Peachtree Road. Fifteen men were counted among the wounded. Five more were missing.   Hardee's corps retreated, dug in and waited on the counterattack, which they believed would happen forthwith.

When the attack failed to materialize on the following day, General Hood devised a daring and precarious plan to defeat Sherman's powerful army.  Hood ordered Gen. Hardee (left)  to march his entire corps on a 15-mile night march southward through Atlanta.  South of town, the long column turned left with the intent to launch a dawn strike against the  left flank and rear of General McPherson's Army of the Tennessee, which was pressing westward toward Atlanta from Decatur.

Once Hardee's men cleared Atlanta, they turned northeast along Fayetteville Road.  Cleburne and Maney's divisions turned northwest along Bouldercrest Road, while Walker and Bates took their divisions further along Fayetteville Road.  Despite warnings of treacherous ground ahead, Walker (left) took his division around the western swamps of Terry's Mill Pond.   General Walker moved to the front along Glenwood Avenue north of the pond.  He raised his spy glasses and was instantly and mortally wounded by a Union sniper.  Gen. Mercer succeeded to the command of the division.  The command of his brigade was assumed by Col. William Barkuloo of the 57th Georgia.  Lt. Col. Cinncinatus Guyton of Laurens County was elevated to the command of the 57th regiment.

Suddenly, the situation erupted  into a full scale battle.  Maj. General McPherson (above) rode out to reconnoiter the battle field.  Confederate sharpshooters retaliated for the killing of General Walker by slaying the popular young Army of the Tennessee commander as he moved through the woods.  Mercer's (Barkuloo's) brigade was assigned to reserve duty behind the brigades of Gist and Stevens.  When Barkuloo was informed of Gen. Walker's death and his appointment as brigade commander, he moved forward to front, where he found the Federals in strong numbers.  Gen. Mercer informed Gen. Barkuloo that the Yankees were retreating and ordered an attack.     It was here, near the intersection of the future routes of Memorial Drive and Clay Street where the Battle of Atlanta began just after noon.  Barkuloo's brigade moved northward through a valley south of Legget's Hill.  Finding his brigade in an open field and surrounded on three sides by the enemy, Col. Barkuloo first ordered a halt and then a withdrawal after sustaining only fifteen casualties, including Col. Olmstead of the 1st Georgia. 

Col. Barkuloo succumbed to heat and exhaustion and relinquished command to Lt. Col. Rawls of the 54th Ga.  At 5 p.m., Rawls's brigade  moved by the left flank to a point near and southwest of Fair Ground Road, about 2.5 miles east of Atlanta.  Col. Rawls was wounded in the first assault, which carried the first two Federal lines.   Col. Guyton took over command of the brigade and prepared his men for another assault on the Federals, who had only been pushed back 30 or so paces.  Confused, dazed, disorganized and just plain exhausted, the disheveled and amalgamated remnants of the brigade ground to halt. Despite his repeated commands, Col. Guyton could not encourage his men to advance any further.  Guyton attributed the failure to the lack of command structure in close combat under heavy fire.  

At 9 o'clock that night, Col. Guyton (left)  sent a request for instructions.  At three o'clock the next morning, Guyton was ordered to withdraw his brigade.  For the next two days, the brigade entrenched and waited for another battle  in the roasting heat of the July sun.  On the 24th, Col. Barkaloo resumed command of the brigade. Col. Guyton, the only colonel in the brigade to survive the battle unscathed,  returned to the command of his regiment.  In his memoirs, Lt. Edwin Davis of Company A commended Col. Guyton for his  "consummate ease and skill" in directing the brigade.

During the battle, 32 members of the brigade were killed, including William Thompson of Wilkinson County.  Samuel Fleetwood and Joseph Yarborough of Wilkinson county were among the 122 wounded men, a total which included my great-great grandfather Seaborn J. Thompson, a 36-year-old cook of Co. H, 63rd Ga., who was shot in his right hand.  Two days later, his hand was amputated in a Macon hospital.  He was sent home and died a short time later.

Atlanta fell in six weeks on September 2nd.  Just before Christmas, General Sherman accomplished his mission and delivered Savannah to President Lincoln as a much desired Christmas gift.  The Confederate Army never had a chance.  Hood's army was composed of only three corps, while  the Army of the Cumberland, the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Ohio counted among its ranks eight corps,  approximately the necessary ratio for success by an attacking army.  

For all intents and purposes the war was nearly over.   It was just a matter of time.  Hood's army fought on in Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas.   Many members of the Confederate army went home sick during the following winter.  Many never returned.  On April 26th, 19 days after Gen. Lee's surrender at Appomattox and 12 days after Lincoln's assassination in Washington, the Army of the Tennessee surrendered at Greensboro, North Carolina, ending four years of fighting and four years of dying.

THE BATTLE OF THE CRATER

A Brilliant Bloody Blunder

In a war often filled with blunders, it may have been the biggest blunder of all.  It began as an ingenious plan to dissolve the stalemate along the outer defensive lines east of Petersburg, Virginia in the summer of 1864, 150 years ago this week.   The scheme was inordinately brilliant.  The result, nonetheless, was a totally unforeseen, immeasurably regrettable brilliant bloody blunder. 

For most of six weeks, Gen. U.S. Grant's vastly superior forces laid siege upon the Confederate fortresses of Richmond and Petersburg.   Someone had to give.  Local units of the 48th Georgia Infantry Regiment from Emanuel, Twiggs and Johnson counties, the latter composed of some Laurens Countians, were under the command of Gen. A.R. Wright.  Wright's brigade had suffered dreadfully at Gettysburg and fared scarcely better during  Grant's advance toward Richmond in the spring of 1864.  In late June, while guarding Gen. R.E. Lee's supply lines along the Weldon Railroad, the 48th was engaged in a horrific fight with moderate, but acceptable,  losses.  

Col. Henry Pleasants of the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry proposed a bold plan to break the Confederate lines in early July.  His regiment consisted of numerous talented coal miners.  Pleasants convinced his superiors to allow his men to dig a tunnel more than 500 feet long under a Confederate battery.   Gen. Grant, in an attempt to disguise his true intentions,  took the better part of his army in a feint against Richmond, leaving Gen. Burnside in command of a 165,000 men superfluous force in front of Petersburg, a score of miles to the south.  

The Union plan was to explode  eight thousand pounds of dynamite at the end of the tunnel and create a un-repairable rupture in the impregnable Confederate entrenchments.  Following the break in the Confederate line, Meade was authorized to send as many men as he could  through the breach and wheel around to the right to capture Petersburg and cut off Richmond from the south.  

It was a typically balmy night early in the morning of July 30, 1864. There had been talk of some sort of mine being constructed, but most of Petersburg guardians dismissed it as just that,  talk.   At 4:35 a.m., just as the nautical twilight was illuminating the combatants, some still asleep in their trenches, Elliot's Salient erupted in a massive explosion.   Pegram's Battery  and its supporting South Carolina troops were killed instantly. The remnants of their corpses, those which were not scattered into oblivion,  were buried in a coagulation of dirt, rubble and accouterments.  

The explosion resulted in a gap in the Confederate lines of up to 800 yards, wide enough to situate three or four brigades.   Along the core of the explosion, dirt and rocks were blown away leaving a crater, twenty-five feet deep, one-hundred-fifty feet long and fifty feet wide. After a brief falter,  Gen. Ledlie ushered a Federal division into the crater.  He was supported by Gen. Ferrero's Colored division.   Confederate eyewitnesses recounted that ten to fifteen thousand troops swarmed into the void of the crater in ranks of five men deep.  Most of Burnside's entire 9th Corps, supported by divisions of the 1st and 2nd Corps, was engaged in the charge.   

Gen. William Mahone, charged with holding his shattered  line at all costs, ordered his old Virginia brigade and Wright's Georgians,  jointly totaling  only eight hundred effectives,  to move from Blandford Cemetery  in a zigzag line, through a ravine hidden from Union view. Their sole mission was  to stave off the overwhelming Union offensive.  Gen. Mahone  couldn't wait on Wright's men to come up to the right.  He ordered a charge directly into the oncoming onslaught of Colored troops, who by some accounts stated that they were forced into the fray as fodder for Confederate infantrymen. 

Virginia General Weisiger led the rush to the rim of the crater.  The 6th Virginia lost ninety percent of its men.  Company F was completely obliterated.  A total slaughter ensued.  Union troops were heaped in stacks as many as eight bodies deep in the crater.  Some troops pretended to be dead, while others were trapped under the accumulation of the dead and dying.  The Union forces, temporarily paralyzed and understandably demoralized at the horror emanating before them, failed to advance as they had been directed to do.  Those trapped in the chasm could neither charge toward their objective nor could they extract themselves in retreat either.  All the while, profoundly deafening and decisively deadly artillery rounds enfiladed the melee from all points of the compass. 

Confederates, incensed at the deployment of former slaves as soldiers against them, took out their frustrations and slaughtered the succumbing Negro soldiers with bullets. Some mortally beat them with the butts of their rifles.  One soldier reported that useless Union rifles with bayonets attached were heaved into the mounds of the dead and wounded to impale any survivors in their flight path.  

At 10:30, Wright's Brigade was ready to commence the attack following on Weisiger's right.  Wright's line veered to the left colliding with Weisiger's men. Unaware that the Rebels were running out of ammunition and believing that any further attempts to penetrate the enemy line would be futile, Gen. Meade ordered a withdrawal.   Union losses amounted to between 4500 and 5000 casualties.   Confederate losses were about 1,500, but in light of the amount of men fit for fighting, the success in holding the line was no fortuitous victory.  Gen. Mahone counted eleven hundred prisoners and was given permanent command of his division for his actions during the affair.

As the morning of the Sabbath dawned, more than three thousand perished Union souls were still lying where they fell.    Both sides, recognizing the trepidation  which had transpired, consummated negotiations for a truce.    Union details arrived at the scene and began the arduous task of burying the then putrefying corpses.    A long trench was excavated, and the thousands of fatalities were buried crosswise, several layers deep.  

This minor battle, which was virtually over in thirty minutes,  was one of the costliest moments during the war.  Several of Johnson County's Battleground Guards were in the vicinity of the explosion.  Alfred Price was killed in the explosion.  Samuel Price and Francis Tapley were killed in the fighting and may have also been annihilated by the blast.  Wiley Riner was wounded during the fighting.  Private James C.H. Horton was said to have been "blown up" at Petersburg.  

"While the Earth rocked with a swaying motion like that which precedes the earthquake, a huge black mass suddenly shot up two hundred feet in the air from the left of Elliott's salient.  Seams of fire were glistening from its dark side, flashes of light rose above it on the sky, and the whole mass of earth, broken timbers, military equipment, and human bodies hung so like a huge monster over our heads."  A New York artilleryman, at "The Crater," July 30,1864.

THE BATTLE OF KENNESAW MOUNTAIN

Synopsis of a Fiasco

Dateline: June 27, 1864, Kennesaw Mountain, west of Atlanta, 9:00 a.m.

The participants:    The United States Army, composed of the Army of the Tennessee, The Army of the Cumberland and The Army of the Ohio, 100,000 effectives; Gen. William T. Sherman, Commanding.  The Confederate States Army, The Army of Tennessee, Gen. Joseph J. Johnston Commanding, 50,000 effectives  including Laurens County companies: Company B, Company C, 57th Georgia Infantry, and portions of Co. H, 63rd Georgia Infantry.

Foreword:  In order to bring a quicker end to the Civil War, which had ravaged our nation for more than three years, the Union Army believed that a force of nearly a quarter of a million soldiers from the hills of North Georgia to the seaport of Savannah would split the South in half and hasten the end of the bitter epic struggle.   General Sherman's forces had moved with relative through Resaca, Adairsville, New Hope Church, Pickett's Mill, Dallas and Kolb's Farm with relative ease, primarily because of their overwhelming force but equally because of General Johnston's willingness to put up a half-hearted fight, fall back and  allow the Union armies to flank around his positions, only to fight again with the same results.  But at Kennesaw Mountain, the Confederates held a distinct advantage.  Torrential rains had slowed the advance of Union infantrymen giving Confederate scouts ample opportunities to view their movements.  Meanwhile, Confederate forces positioned themselves in heavily fortified entrenchments along the crest of the mountain and strategic points along the slopes.  

The Attack:    The 57th and 63rd Georgia regiments, under the command of Brigadier General Hugh Mercer, were placed along the steep southwestern slopes of Pigeon Hill just south of Burnt Hickory Road.  From this commanding viewpoint, the brigade had an unimpeded view of a rolling meadow below them.  General Sherman ordered the primary attack on General Cleburne's and General Cheatam's brigades.  The secondary attack was to be directed along Burnt Hickory Road and squarely at the 57th and 63rd regiments.  General Mercer assigned the companies of the 63rd to act as pickets, or advance guards.  The men entrenched themselves along the projected line of the Union advance about a quarter of a mile in front the main Confederate line.  

Union batteries opened up with a heavy volley of artillery fire directed toward the Confederate entrenchments. The Army of the Cumberland, under Gen. George H. Thomas, conducted the main attack against the Confederate Center.  The Army of the Tennessee, under Gen. James B. McPherson, attacked Little Kennesaw Mountain.  Held in reserve was the Army of the Ohio, commanded by Gen. John Schofield, whose mission it was to guard against flank assaults by Gen.  John B. Hood's Corps, which was positioned at the southern end of the mountain.

Union General Andrew Lightburn directed his troops to the right of the road toward the anxiously awaiting Confederate pickets.  The "blue boys" charged from the edge of the woods and easily overran the green older men and young boys of the 63rd.  There were two choices for the embattled sentinels, retreat and face friendly fire, or remain and face certain death.  As Union and Confederate artillery joined in enfilading the meadow, the "Johnny Rebs" chose the former course of action and fled toward the hills.  

Hoping to be able to hide their advance on the coat tails of the Confederate retreat, Union artillery unites opened severe volleys against the entrenched rebels on Pigeon Hill, a mile south of the summit of Big Kennesaw Mountain.  Most of the casualties of the 57th Georgia that day were likely a result of artillery barrages and possibly lucky shots by the advance elements of Gen. Lightburn's brigade.

In just a matter of minutes, the Union advance collapsed.  Mercer's brigade occupied the high ground and any further attacks would be fruitless and fatal.    Lightburn ordered a retreat to the cover of the wood line, leaving his dead, dying and wounded on the green meadow, stained with the blood of hundreds of fine young men.   

The main attack was quashed by Confederate sharpshooters and artillerymen firing from the commanding heights. The heaviest fighting occurred at a place the southern boys called "Dead Angle."  In one dogged wave after another the attackers were slaughtered as the climbed the side of the mountain.  

Approximately 1 percent of the Confederate casualties were Laurens Countians.  Nathan Maddox (Co. C, 57th Ga.), Blackshear Smith (Co. B, 57th Ga.)  and John Mimbs (Co. H, 63rd, Ga.)  were killed during the fighting.  Cinncinatus Alligood (Co. C, 57th, Ga.), Dudley Keen (Co. B, 57th, Ga.), James Arthur Smith (Co. B, 57th Ga.), Wesley W. Smith (Co. B, 57th, Ga.), Thomas Warren White (Co. B, 57th Ga.) and Kinson Wright (Co. A, 66th Ga.) suffered wounds ranging from moderate to severe. 

The Result:   Though he could have easily flanked around the mountain, General William Tecumseh Sherman obstinately pressed the a futile frontal attack.  Bad weather, terrible terrain and superior defensive positions foiled his plans.  After losing nearly three thousand men, Sherman retreated back down the mountain, reassessed his positions and moved around the flank, as he should have done in the beginning.  Johnston ordered his forces, which suffered a thousand casualties,  to abandon their positions five days after their victory and move back to block the advancing hoard.  

The Aftermath:   The Union behemoth advanced toward their main objective of Atlanta.  Thousands more were killed and wounded along the way.  The Battle for Atlanta erupted on July 22, 1864.  The 57th Georgia, under the command of Lt. Col. Cinncinatus Saxon Guyton of Laurens County, took part in the forefront of the initial skirmishes of the opponents south of the city.  After a five-week siege, the city of Atlanta was abandoned and left to the ravenous desires of soldiers, looters, and assorted scores of miscreants.   From Atlanta, General Sherman launched his devastating "March to the Sea," which ended in Savannah just before Christmas.  After having its underbelly mortally sliced open, it was only a matter of time before the bedraggled Confederates would succumb to the vastly equipped and manned Union army.  For Mary Maddox and Nancy Mimbs, the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain was a perpetual nightmare.  As for Mahala, Reuben and Martha Mimbs, they would never see their daddy again.  

THE VORTEX OF DESTINY

The Impact of the Civil War on the 21st Century

On May 2, 1862, my life changed forever.  Yes, I said May 2, 1862, not 1962.  It was  a rather quiet day around Yorktown, Virginia, where just eight decades before the Revolutionary War was about to spiral to its climax.  Confederate forces were fanning outward from Richmond in a series of defensive positions across the peninsula of Virginia.  Union forces were engaging in their final troop movements to make what was believed to be the first, and hoped by Union generals to be the  last, offensive action of the Civil War.

Just how did that day change my life?  First let me point out that my story is personal, the subject of my story was my third great-grandfather.   His importance beyond his local community and family was of no consequence to the greater world.  I tell this story to illustrate  that during the Civil War, our lives and the lives of all generations to come were forever altered during the fifteen hundred day war in which more Americans were killed than in any other war in the history of our nation.

I first saw his name written in my grandmother Thompson’s tablet.    She had carried her pencil with her when she visited the grave of her great-grandfather.  It simply read, Asa Gordon Braswell, born January 13, 1827, died May 2, 1862.  Carefully written along the notations of the span of his life were the words, “Remember me as you pass by.  As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, soon you will be.  Prepare for death, and follow me."   I was still a young teenager, far from the time I would become enveloped into the quest for determining where I came from.  His name fascinated me.  Who was this man?  What did he look like?  What happened in the mere thirty-five years that he was alive.  My grandmother’s notes didn’t reveal who his parents were.  I only knew that his son John Arthur Braswell came to the area around Kea’s Church east of Adrian sometime after the war.  Through the genes of his son, his namesake grandson Asa Gordon Braswell, II, great granddaughter Claudie B. Thompson and great-great grandson H. Dale Thompson, I am here now writing what you are reading.

More than a quarter of a century ago I set out to discover the lives of the Braswell family, a name which I carry along with two other surnames of my heritage.  Asa was born in Washington County to Arthur and Patience Pearce Braswell.  The Braswells weren’t particularly wealthy, though they did have a moderately sized farm adjoining Piney Mount Methodist Church below Tennille along the Old Savannah Road.

Like many boys of his day he worked on the farm.  At the age of sixteen, he married Jane Ellen Bridges.   Many of the families in this area had migrated along a trek from eastern North Carolina to Georgia during the early 1800s.   Asa and Jane were founding members of Piney Mount Church when it was established in 1847.    When he was about to come of age, the Braswells and many other families in the community set out to go to Texas, where the lands were said to have been fertile and jack rabbits were as big as dogs.    After an arduous journey of several months, the caravan reached the Mississippi River.  Asa’s mother had become seriously ill.  She could go no further.  A few days later, she died and was buried.  The family, without the guidance and care of the mother, moved on. Asa and Jane’s two-year-old son George died as well.  The family made it to Texas, only to find it wasn’t the paradise they had been led to believe.  With the heart of their family  stolen away by the angel of death, Arthur and Asa decided to return home to Washington County.

     In the 1850's Asa began to serve his community.  Because of the lack of court records there is no direct evidence to prove that Asa was a lawyer.  His children always said that he did practice law.  In the days before certification by the state, a man could practice law by studying the law, apprenticing under a lawyer or judge, and appearing before three lawyers to prove his ability to practice law.     During the years 1853 through 1855 and possibly before that time, Asa G. Braswell operated a general store near his home.  He sold all types of dry goods and merchandise to Mary Peacock, Guardian of the minor children of Asa P. Peacock.  The goods were clothing, candles, postage stamps, eggs, fish hooks, hardware, pencils, cake, and pills.  Some of the more unusual items furnished for minor children were whiskey, tobacco, cigars, and snuff.  In 1856 his brother, William M. Braswell, took over the operation of the store.

     In 1855 Asa G. Braswell was elected Tax Commissioner of Washington County.  The following year Asa was elected to represent the people of Washington County in the Georgia Legislature and  was appointed to the House Committees on Public Education, the State Penitentiary and the Committee on New Counties.  He also served as a trustee of Indian Hill School which  was located on the hill at the intersection of Highway 15 and Indian Hill Road and Road Commissioner of Washington County.

     Asa and Jane Braswell lived on a 600-acre farm , a fourth of which was cultivated,  place on the Old Savannah Road.  The farm implements and equipment were worth $200.00.  Asa's livestock, valued at $600.00, consisted of 15 cows, two horses, six mules, two milk cows, and 50 hogs.  During the 1859-60 crop year Asa produced 40 bushels of wheat, 500 bushels of corn, 4800 pounds of ginned cotton, 10 bushels of peas and beans, 100 bushels of sweet potatoes, 50 pounds of butter, and 2 tons of hay.  To help him work his farm, Asa used a 48-year-old male slave, a 24-year male and a woman, who was probably his wife.  A ten-year-old boy was the family’s only other slave.   His father employed a young slave couple and their child.   The low number of slaves was common among most farmers, who primarily used slaves to farm on a small scale and to help with household chores.

All of our lives began to change on April 12, 1861 with the bombardment of Fort Sumter, S.C..  Though Washington Countians had favored remaining in the Union and seeking cooperation on the issue of slavery in the western states, the county produced more volunteers per capita than any other county in Georgia.   On April 29, 1861, Asa was appointed ensign of the Irwin Volunteers of the Georgia Militia, which was formed in defense of the state and named for  of Gov. Jared Irwin of Washington County. The Company prepared for battle  at their muster grounds at Langmade's Mill one mile south of Sandersville on July 17, 1861. They also trained at Camp Stephens near Griffin before going on to Richmond, Virginia.

 

    2nd Lt. Asa Braswell served as the Recruiting Officer and Assistant Quarter Master.  Asa Gordon Braswell died of disease in a military hospital on May 2, 1862 in the vicinity of Yorktown.  More of the deaths in Confederate ranks in the first year of the war came as a result of disease and not battlefield wounds.   Unlike many who died during the war, Asa’s body was returned by train and interred in the Peacock Cemetery near Peacock’s Cross Roads with full military and Masonic honors.   My family would never be the same again.  John Arthur was held out of service by his mother until he reached eighteen.  He joined the reserves and saw action in the defense of Macon.  He accompanied the retreating Confederate army after Gen. Sherman’s 60,000 man right wing marched ravaged through the heart of his homeland.  He stole a horse in South Carolina and returned home when he became sick of washing undigested grains of corns out of horse manure just to get something to eat.

What would have happened had Asa Gordon Braswell lived?  Who knows?  No one ever will.  Though slightly different, whether you were a descendant of a soldier, a noncombatant or a slave, the story of 2nd Lt. Asa Gordon Braswell, C.S.A. and your stories are all the same.  They are all inextricably linked to those times more than fourteen decades ago when the deaths of more than a half million others and well as the lives and fates of tens of millions of other Americans were forever altered as they were funneled through the vortex of the Civil War.