ALTERNATE VERSION OF THE ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS





An Alternate Version of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln







Most of us know the story of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. Or do we know the real reason that John Wilkes Booth slipped into Ford’s Theater and shot the President in the back of the head at point blank range. One Dublin man, Robert A. Beall, had his own version of Booth’s motive. The story is not a new one. It has been around for many years, but few people have heard the Beall’s family story about why John Wilkes Booth fired the shot that changed the future of America.



Robert Andrew Beall was born in Sparta, Georgia on January 31, 1836. He enlisted in Company K of the 15^th Georgia Infantry (The Hancock Confederate Guards) on July 15, 1861. He transferred to Co. A of the 48^th Georgia Infantry (The Gibson Guards). He was elected Junior Second Lieutenant on January 30, 1863. During the battle of Gettysburg, Beall led his company’s charge up the slopes of Cemetery Ridge in an attack on the Union center. The 48^th Georgia, attached to Wright’s Brigade, managed to break the northern lines late in the afternoon of the second day of the battle. The brigade suffered horrific casualties when adjoining Confederate forces failed to cover their flanks as the Union army recovered and surrounded them. Beall was shot in his leg just above the knee and taken to a field hospital, where he was later captured and imprisoned at Point Lookout, Maryland. Lt. Beall was exchanged on October 14, 1864. He surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia on April 9, 1865, just five days before the assassination. Robert Beall moved to Dublin, where he died on May 20, 1920.



Eight years before his death, Beall reminisced about his service in the Confederate army and his experiences in prison. He also related a fascinating story of the true reason that John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln. The story revolved around John Young Beall, a relative of Lt. Beall, later called Capt. Beall, because he was a captain in the local unit of the United Confederate Veterans.



John Young Beall, a 30 year old Virginian, was one of the first in his native county of Jefferson to enlist in the 2^nd Virginia Infantry, which was attached to "The Stonewall Brigade" under the command of Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. At the time of the beginning of the war, he was studying law at the University of Virginia. At the Battle of Falling Waters in October 1861, Lt. Beall was seriously wounded when he was shot in the chest during a charge on a Union position. While Beall was convalescing in a Richmond hospital, he came up with an idea to release Confederate prisoners who were being held on Johnson’s Island. Lt. Beall met with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who gave temporary approval of the plan pending the approval by S.R. Mallory, Secretary of the Confederate Navy. Secretary Mallory conceded the plan might work, but tolled its execution.

Beall transferred to the Navy and was given command of a vessel which operated in the waters of the lower Potomac River. Captain Beall led several successful raids on Union positions. Beall’s mind returned to his plan to liberate his fellow Confederate soldiers being held prisoner at Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie. On September 19, 1864, Beall and several other men boarded the Philo Parsons, a vessel out of Sandwich, Michigan. At the first stop, Beall and his comrades commandeered the boat. One Federal gunboat, the U.S.S. Michigan, guarded the prison at Johnson’s Island. Beall arranged to have the officers of the Michigan to attend a party in Sandusky, Ohio. The plan was eventually called off when the signal of the officer’s absence failed to materialize. Beall and his men returned to the safety of Canada.



Three months later in December 1864, Capt. Beall was captured while leading a raid to release Confederate prisoners being transferred to Fort Warren. Beall was tried for his actions and found guilty by a military court martial. Despite the fact he received letters of support from several influential citizens and congressmen of West Virginia and Maryland, as well as some northern congressmen, Beall was sentenced to death by the court, which was affirmed by Secretary of State William Seward. On February 24, 1865, Captain Beall was escorted to the gallows of a prison in New York City. He was calm with full faith that he would go to Heaven under the grace of Christ. He declared in a calm but firm voice that his execution was "contrary to the laws of civilized warfare."



In the decade following the death of Abraham Lincoln, a story began to circulate through the newspapers of the country of a strong personal bond between John Young Beall and John Wilkes Booth. The story goes that the two men were best friends, and that upon Beall’s capture, Booth arranged to have Beall released from prison. Booth, a southern sympathizer who spent most of the war acting in the northern states, purportedly contacted three men, including John P. Hale, a United States Senator from New Hampshire, to go to President Lincoln and plead his case for a stay of execution. The story goes on to say that Booth went with the men to the White House during the middle of the night to meet with the President. After Booth plead his case, it was said that there was not a dry eye in the house. Lincoln acceded to Booth’s request and agreed to pardon Captain Beall. Then, at the instance of Secretary Seward, who supposedly wanted to make an example out of the captain, convinced Lincoln to proceed with the execution. Incensed at Lincoln’s betrayal, Booth began his plan to kill the President.



The story seems to have originated in a weekly newspaper "Pomeroy’s Democrat." There is extant evidence to prove that Booth began his plan to kill Lincoln and Seward even before Captain Beall led the failed raid on Johnson’s Island. No evidence has ever been found to indicate the longtime friendship between Beall and Booth. A week after the assassination, Booth wrote in his diary that he "knew of no private wrong. I struck for my country and that alone."



The story of John Young Beall and his connection to John Wilkes Booth is an interesting one, but it also indicates that not all articles written in newspapers, especially old ones, are always true. Sometimes the stories are based on speculation or out of a desire to make a political point. In this case, the story is alleged to have come from an attempt to sensationalize the death of Lincoln and of course sell newspapers in the process. In a way, it may have only been a story comparable to those found in "The National Enquirer" and other tabloids of that ilk.



Nevertheless, the heroism and dedication of Captain Robert A. Beall, should not go disappear into oblivion. This man survived the horrors of war and imprisonment and returned to rebuild his state, a task made even more difficult by the senseless execution of Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theater, one hundred and thirty eight years ago.

APPOMATTOX AFTERMATH

The Question Remains Why

　

The Civil War is a part of our lives. It will always be a part of our lives. What we must do is keep asking ourselves, "why?"

As a historian, I am often asked my opinion on the Civil War. People ask me "Was the war fought about slavery or about state rights, or both?" On this eve of the 150th anniversary of the effective end of the American Civil War, I will not answer that or any other questions. In fact, I will ask you the questions and all of those questions begin or end with "why?"

If you want to start a spirited discussion, you can talk about religion, politics or you can ask what was the main cause of the Civil War. For some Americans, there is a desire to relive that horrible war - its battles, its causes, its results, and its combatants. There are some who say that slavery had absolutely nothing to do with the war while there are others who boldly proclaim that the cruel bondage of human beings had all and everything to do with the war. I do expect you to be spirited and confident in your thoughts, but I do hope you can be civil in your discussions. Remember that's what started that terrible, most uncivil war.

Other than religion, more books have been written about the American Civil War. We can't seem to agree even what to call it: "The War Between The States," "The Civil War," "The War of Northern Aggression," "The War for Southern Independence." Officially the four-year war was named "The War of the Rebellion," by the victors, our Federal government.

In many of the battles between the Army of the Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac, there was a disagreement as to the name of the battles. The Union armies named their battles after the nearest water feature (Antietam, Bull Run) while the Confederates named their fights after the nearest town (Sharpsburg, Manassas.)

"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we may grow too fond of it," remarked General Robert E. Lee as he surveyed the 8000 or so dead and dying Union soldiers lying at the base of Marye's Heights after the Battle of Fredericksburg.

For a century and one half since the surrender of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865 and Gen. Joseph Johnston's Army of the Tennessee in Greensboro, N.C. on April 26, 1865, generation after generation has figuratively fought the war over and over again. There are those who speculate, "What would have happened at Gettysburg had Stonewall Jackson been Lee's right arm during the climatic battle?" "What would have happened if England had entered the war on the side of the South? What would have happened if the Union Forces didn't run from Bull Run? What would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had never been elected?

As a journalist, it is my mission to seek out the facts and write about the who, what, where, when and why. Well, we know who fought and died, what were the results of the battles, where the battles were fought and when the firing began and when it ceased. What we can't seem to answer and as a people agree on is why?

Why did the racist blacksmith from New York City fire artillery shells randomly into Fredericksburg, with no idea of where his cannister may have landed? Just to free slave? Why did the preacher from North Alabama fire his rifle into the face of a young father of three from Michigan? Just so his wealthy neighbor could keep getting wealthier?

On this 150th anniversary of the General Lee's surrender at Appomattox, we should no longer celebrate the war, but commemorate it and study it, for the Civil War (with the American Revolution and World War II coming in right behind) is the most defining event in American History.

All of us look back at the war through the scope of what were taught about the war when we were young and what impact the war had on our family. My scope is filtered by the thought that if David Douglas, of Emanuel County, Georgia, and Benjamin H. Brantley, of Washington County, Georgia, had not been mortally wounded at Gettysburg and Sharpsburg respectively, their widows would have never remarried two of my great-great grandfathers. Why did they die so that I and all of those in my family, so dear to me, could live?

Why would my gigantic 14-year-old great grandfather, William A. Scott, Jr., masquerade as an adult and ride with Col. John S. Mosby, "The Gray Ghost," as he stole and pillaged northern farms and storehouses and then abruptly leave Virginia Military Institute as a 16-year-old to return home to fight the armies of George Armstrong Custer and Phillip Sheridan as they attacked his homeland? Why, especially would this kid be willing to die in defense of his home when after the war, his thoughts turned totally against the war as one of God's most Christian of soldiers? Why?

I ask myself why did my nineteen-year- old great-great uncle James Powell Scott have to die at the crossroads of Five Forks, Virginia on April Fool's day, some eight days before the end of the war? Why did a Union soldier pick up the prayer book of this young lieutenant, just a boy, and deliver it to my great-great grandmother on his route home? I ask myself why? Why were his two oldest brothers spared after they were sentenced to death by firing squad?

Why would my great, great grandfather John A. Braswell, a nineteen-year-old whose father died in the war, leave the Confederate army and steal a horse to go back home? The answer was simply that he was sick, scared and tired - sick of washing horse manure to retrieve undigested grains of corn just to find something to eat, scared of dying with his whole life in front of him and tired of running away from General Sherman's vastly superior army.

Depending on whose figures you believe, approximately 600,000 men were killed during the war. Laying the corpses of these men head to toe, the line would stretch nearly 650 miles, the distance between Dublin and Washington, D.C. Ask yourselves, why were nearly two-thirds of a million men killed in four years? Why did they die? Why were they willing to die?

Why was General Ulysses S. Grant, known to his own men as "The Butcher," so magnanimous in the terms of his surrender demands at Appomattox? Why was General William T. Sherman, considered by several generations of Georgians as the Devil himself, even more generous when he simply allowed the Confederate Army of the Tennessee to simply go home?

Why were so many highly ranking Confederate officers like James Longstreet, Joseph Johnston, Joseph Wheeler, and John S. Mosby asked to serve in Federal government positions by those very same men whom they fought against? Why was the bond between Free and Accepted Masons stronger than the missions of war? Why a slave like Bill Yopp of Laurens County, not cross the picket lines and stay with his white comrades until he surrendered at Appomattox?

Why did the end of the war and resulting constitutional amendments not bring about equality of the races? Why did Southerners object to the abolition of slavery in new western territories when it would have given the South the decided economic advantage? Why did the men of Montgomery County, Georgia, who were almost unanimously against secession and war, suffer ninety-percent casualties during the war?

I will ask you one final question. Will you please not forget the war? To forget it would make you forget the evil and ignore the good which happened during and after the war. Ignoring the question of slavery versus state rights versus sectional economic domination may doom us to another war in the not too distant future. For all of us, of all races, the war changed the destiny of the entire world, so you must always keeping asking yourself why? To the millions of us who lost family members, we askw hy? Ask yourselves did all of these men die to secure the freedom of slaves or keep them in eternal bondage? Or, was it something more? The question remains, why?

THE BATTLE OF THE LIGHTWOOD KNOT BRIDGE

DR. JAMES BARNES DUGGAN

In the grand lore of Laurens County, no legend has been more celebrated than the acts of a young Confederate Surgeon and his valiant effort to protect the resources of Chappell's  Mill during General William T. Sherman's cataclysmic "March to the Sea" near the end of the Civil War.  Despite reports to the contrary that his efforts were unsuccessful, Duggan and his lone aide did accomplish their objective, protecting the mill.  In his private life, Dr. James Barnes Duggan was a guiding force behind the establishment of one of  the county's oldest and most important institutions, the Laurens County Library.  

James Barnes Duggan, a s son of Archelaus and Elizabeth Walker Duggan was born in Washington County on November 1, 1833.  One of five brothers, Duggan graduated from the University Medical College in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Duggan began his practice in Wilkinson County and supplemented his income through large farming interests.  Duggan was married three times.  His first wife Nancy Jackson bore him four sons; Isaac Jackson, William Lee, James Henry and Paul Franklin.  His last two wives were a Miss Brown and Emma Bass, sister-in-law of Dr. Benjamin Franklin Stanley, a Confederate surgeon whose family operated Chappell's Mill, then called Stanley's Mill.

On March 4, 1862, during a massive organization of military companies of the Georgia Volunteer Infantry, James B.  Duggan was elected First Lieutenant of Company A,  "The Wilkinson Rifles," of the 49th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment.   His company first saw action during the Battles of the Seven Days on the Virginia Peninsula in late June and early July of 1862.  Following the battles of Cedar Mountain and the Second Manassas  Lt. Duggan replaced Captain Samuel T. Player, who was elevated to Major of the Regiment.  A soldier in Duggan's regiment, was given credit for killing the highest ranking Union officer killed during the war,  General Phillip Kearney, at the Battle of Chantilly.   Capt. Duggan led the company while guarding prisoners at Harper's Ferry during the horrific Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam).  Duggan led his company to victory at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. His company was held in reserve in the climatic battle of Gettysburg.  The Wilkinson Rifles participated in the bloody retreating battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Courthouse before retreating to a defensive position around Richmond and Petersburg.    On June 11, 1864, Capt.  Duggan was elected as Major of the 49th Georgia replacing Major John A. Durham, who died from wounds that he suffered at Jerico Ford.

After the long hot summer of 1864, Grant's overpowering forces were poised in a strangle hold against the embattled defenders of the Confederate capital at Richmond and its neighbor to the south, the strategic city of Petersburg.  During the late fall and winter,  when the armies basically took off from the war, Dr. Duggan was granted a leave to return back to his home.

The date was November 25, 1864.  The advance elements of the Union Calvary already reached Ball's Ferry on the Oconee River in Wilkinson County.  Ball's Ferry is located about 1/4 mile north of the present Georgia Highway No. 57 bridge over the river.  The cavalry unit was dispatched to the ferry to secure it for passage by the 15th and 17th Army Corps.  These two corps, composed of nearly sixty thousand men, were the Right Wing of Gen. William T. Sherman's army.

     As the Right Wing approached the ferry on the 25th, patrols were sent down major roads to reconnoiter the area for signs of Gen. Joseph Wheeler's Confederate cavalry.  General Osterhaus ordered the First Division under Gen. Charles Woods to march toward the Lightwood Knot Bridges on Big Sandy Creek.  The 29th Missouri (mounted) was dispatched to destroy the bridges and to guard all crossings along the road to Dublin.  General Wheeler and nearly four thousand cavalry men had just crossed the Oconee at Blackshear's Ferry the day before.

Major Duggan was acutely aware that grist mills were prime targets of Gen. Sherman's men.  The local mill, then known as Stanley's Mill and now known as Chappell's Mill, was also serving as a cotton warehouse with a few hundred bales in storage.  He became aware of the fact that "Yaller Jim," a mulatto servant belonging to the family which owned the mill, had run off to join the Yankees.  Upon hearing of the approach of the Union Cavalry, Dr. Duggan mounted his horse and dashed off toward the Toomsboro Road.  He arrived at the Lightwood Knot Bridges over a swollen Big Sandy Creek.  Legend has it that the bridges were named because the Indians, who once populated the area, bridged the creek by piling a long row of "fat lightered" stumps in the creek.

     Dr. Duggan fell back toward a house where he found an elderly black woman washing clothes in a boiling pot.  Dr. Duggan formulated a plan to deter the cavalry.  He briefed the lady about his plan.  She agreed to help if the good doctor would insure the safety of her home.  The Major and the lady then set fire to the bridge and its trestles.

     Just then four cavalrymen with "Yaller Jim" on a mule approached from the northeast.  They dismounted and attempted to put out the fire.  Major Duggan and the lady began to open fire on the perplexed cavalrymen, who managed to get off a few return shots.  Through the smoke they saw Major Duggan waving his arms appearing to be ordering his men into action.  The cavalry, fearing they had found that Gen. Wheeler's Cavalry had  double backed and returned to Ball's Ferry, reported to their superiors that they had completed a successful mission by destroying the bridges.  "Yaller Jim" lost his mule and ran into the woods - never to be seen or heard from again.  Dr. Duggan dashed off to his home and found it safely intact.  He returned back toward the bridges and put out the fires.  He graciously  rewarded  the woman who had helped him save Stanley's Mill from destruction by Sherman's "Bummers."

     Dr. Duggan returned to his regiment and surrendered with the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Courthouse.  Duggan served in the Georgia Legislature from 1875 to 1876. Dr. Duggan later moved to Laurens County and built a home known as "Elmwood."  A community bearing that name is centered around the intersection of Ga. Highway 338 and Claxton Dairy/Mt. Olive Road.   He died on September 29, 1915 and is buried in the Stanley Family Cemetery, affectionately known as "The Ditch," which lies only a short distance from Chappell's Mill.

In 1903, Duggan's initial pledge of $100.00 led to the building of Laurens County's first public library.  His portrait now hangs in the Heritage Center of the Laurens County Library as a reminder of his most enduring contribution to our community.

THE BATTLE OF BALL'S FERRY

THE BATTLE OF BALL'S FERRY, GEORGIA

   They were coming!  Sixty thousand Yankees in columns as far as you could see were marching to the sea.  Nothing in their reach was safe from the foraging parties.  Rails were twisted, livestock slaughtered, factories and mills were burned, and homes were ransacked for anything of military value.

  One hundred and fifty years ago today, The Battle of Ball's Ferry, Georgia took place on the Oconee River.

     On the afternoon of November 21, 1864, General Henry C. Wayne, C.S.A. realized that the defense of Gordon was futile and ordered his men to withdraw to the eastern banks of the Oconee River.  Their mission was to defend the Central of Georgia Railroad bridge near the small village of Oconee.  The Confederates built a fort with a commanding view of the bridge and the opposite bank of the river.  The area approaching the bridge on the west side of the river was nearly impassable.  Jackson's Ferry had been abandoned and the trestles along the western bank of the river were demolished by Wayne's men.

     The right wing of General William T. Sherman's Army, composed of the 15th and 17th Corps, were moving into Gordon on the 22nd - days after a difficult skirmish at Griswoldville with Confederate Cavalry.  Gen. Oliver Howard, U.S.A. was in command of the Right Wing.  The 15th Corps, with Gen.  Peter J. Osterhaus commanding,  arrived in Gordon on the 22nd hoping for a few days rest.  Generals  John E. Smith, John M. Corse, William B. Hazen and Charles R. Woods were in command of the 15th's four divisions.  Gen. Francis P. Blair, U.S.A. commanding the 17th Division moved his men forward from Gordon through McIntyre and eventually to Toombsboro - destroying tracks and depots along the way.  Generals Gustavas A. Smith and Mortimer D. Leggett were in command  of the 17th's two divisions.  The 17th Corps were instructed to move to Jackson's Ferry to secure the Oconee Bridge.  The 15th Corps moved to the right to secure the county seat of Irwinton and to follow the 17th Corps to the River.

     Gen. Gustavas Smith arrived at the Oconee Bridge on the 23rd.  He found that there was no Jackson's Ferry and certainly no approaches to the supposed site.  He found  Gen. Wayne's forces fully entrenched on the morning of the 23rd at Station 14 Central Railroad (Oconee) with six guns in place.  The guns were strategically placed with a commanding view of the opposite bank.  When the advance elements of the 17th Corps reached the western bank,  they found all roads impassable with no bridge in place.  They reported back that a crossing would be costly.  Little did they know that the opposing forces included a mixture of Georgia Military Institute Cadets, state prisoners, and local guards.  Gen. Wayne repeatedly begged Gen. McLaws for more men, ammunition, and rations.  Gen. McLaws sent eighty-five enlisted men, one hundred forty five cadets, and two hundred militia.  The cavalry and artillery horses arrived on the 22nd.

     General Smith found that the only way out of the swamp was to return to Toombsboro. He decided to move further south to join the 15th Corps at Ball's Ferry - sixteen miles through Toombsboro but only a couple down the river.  Before moving, the Union artillery shelled the Confederate Fort across the river inflicting as much damage as possible. Gen. Smith dispatched Col. Spencer and the 1st Alabama Union Cavalry to Ball's Ferry early on the 24th of November.  Their mission was to secure the ferry for passage by the Right Wing.  The cavalrymen found the ferry boat on the opposite side of the river.  A patrol was sent up the river crossing on makeshift rafts.  The patrol moved down to the east bank of the ferry and dislodged the Confederate pickets.

     Gen. Wayne dispatched Major A.L. Hartridge with two cavalry companies, eighty infantry soldiers, and two cannons to Ball's Ferry.  Major Hartridge arrived at 3 p.m., just in time to prevent the Alabama Cavalry from securing the ferry.  The Union cavalry suffered nearly a dozen casualties.  Major Hartridge set up positions along the east bank of the ferry.  That evening he returned to Oconee with part of his command.

     Lt. Colonel Andrew Young commanding the 30th Georgia Battalion arrived in Oconee on the 24th.  Gen. Joseph Wheeler led his four thousand cavalrymen along the right flank of the right wing.  They left Macon and swam across the Oconee River at Blackshear's Ferry. Lt. Col.  Gaines and his Alabama Cavalry were sent to Ball's Ferry. They strengthened the fortifications, preparing for the larger force which would soon come.  The remainder of Wheeler's force moved to Tennille.  On the night of the 25th the head of the 15th corps was camped in Irwinton with its rear in Gordon.  The head of the 17th corps was still camped near the Oconee River Bridge with its rear along the railroad back through Toombsboro.


     On the morning of the 25th,  the two corps began their march toward Ball's Ferry.  The 17th corps returned to Toombsboro on their way.  General Hazen's Division, 15th Corps led the way.  General Woods' Division was to move next detouring south toward the Lightwood Knot Bridges.   General Woods' mission was to protect the flank against an attack by Wheeler's Cavalry.  He sent the 29th Missouri (mounted) to destroy the bridges.  The cavalrymen reported resistance at the bridges.  They never knew the extent of the resistance.  The force that turned them away was a Confederate surgeon and an elderly slave woman.  The Confederate force set the bridges on fire and began screaming and firing weapons.  The cavalry,  satisfied that the bridges were destroyed, returned to the division, that is according to the local view of the incident.

     General Hazen arrived first around 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon.  He found the Confederates entrenched on the opposite bank with skirmishers up and down the stream.  As soon as the 12th Wisconsin Battery was set in place, the Confederate forces on east bank were besieged by artillery fire.  The 19th Illinois and the 97th Indiana were placed on picket duty along the river.  The 17th Corps arrived about dusk.  The 17th sent infantrymen to cross the river upstream and work their way down to the right flank of the Confederates.   Smith's and Corse's Divisions of the 15th Corps and the pontoon trains of the 1st Michigan Engineers arrived during the night.

     Col. Gaines realized the magnitude of the opposing force around midnight.  General Wayne's main force at Oconee had been outflanked. With no hopes of reinforcements, Wayne ordered a retreat to Tennille.  Commanding Gen. William J. Hardee ordered the army to move to a defensive position on the Ogeechee River.

     On the morning of the 26th, two pontoon bridges were laid across the river.  Generals Corse and Woods crossed first, moving to Irwin's Crossroads to camp for the night.  General Hazen moved ahead of General Smith, who remained behind to remove the pontoon bridges.  After the crossing was completed, Hazen and Smith moved to Irwin's Cross Roads.  After crossing the river, Blair's 17th Corps moved north toward Oconee to continue the destruction of the railroad.  The 17th Corps Headquarters was established at the intersection of the Oconee and Irwin's roads.  As the two corps rendezvoused near Irwin's,  elements of both continued the destruction of the railroad.  The right and left wings of Sherman's army came together at Sandersville and Tennille.  On the 28th Sherman's army entered the last four weeks of its March to the Sea.  By Christmas,  Savannah was controlled by General Sherman's forces.  

KILLER KILDEE

KILLER KILDEE
Or Just Another Tall Tale Teller

John West could tell a tale or two. He claimed he was the Confederacy's best rifleman having killed generals and scores of officers and privates as well. Is the story of John West, alias "Kildee," an accurate story of a sharpshooting soldier or just an inflated fable of early yellow journalism to sell books, or merely the boastful reminiscences of an aging veteran of a horrible war?

West was born in Twiggs County, Georgia. When the Civil War broke out, West enlisted in the Confederate Army in Louisiana, but decided that it was best for him to transfer back his native land to fight the Yankees. On July 9, 1861, John West enlisted as a private in the Twiggs Volunteers, officially known as Company C of the 4th Georgia Volunteer Infantry. Also known as "the "Jorees" because of the resemblance of their uniform coats with their three black stripes on the tails to a beautiful bird of the era, the Twiggs Volunteers were assigned to the brigade commanded by A.R. Wright of Georgia. Their first taste of battle and blood began in the last week of June 1862. In a series of engagements along the peninsula of Virginia east of Richmond, the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac slugged it out in a prelude of the deadly battles to come. The battles, known as the Seven Days' Battles, culminated on July 1, 1862 at a small prominence known as Malvern Hill. In the fighting, West suffered his first substantial wound.

Many of the rifles which were used by Confederate soldiers had a limited range. It was in 1862 when General Robert E. Lee received a shipment of thirteen English Whitworth rifles, guaranteed to kill a man at a range of 1,800 yards and arguably the finest rifle that a soldier could possess. West was selected among an elite group of marksmen to train for three months on how to handle the coveted weapon. As the training came to end, West was ahead of the other dozen sharpshooters. In the final test a white board with a two-foot square diamond in the center was placed 1500 yards away. Shooting through a stiff wind, West scored three bulls' eyes, with the remaining shots striking the board. As the winner of the contest, West was given the choice of a horse, a rifle, a saber, a revolver and all of the finest accouterments.

Sharpshooters were an integral part of military operations. The men were often placed at strategic points to kill officers, silencing batteries, and especially picking off the sharpshooters on the other side. Artillerymen were easy targets, but when riled, would turn their canon on a sharpshooter and blow him a way. On one occasion, West and a associate killed the entire compliment of soldiers in a battery, allowing the infantry to take command of that part of the field.

West told the editors of Camp Fire Sketches and Battlefield Echoes, "I soon became indifferent to anger and inured to hardships and privations. I have killed men from ten paces to a mile. I have no idea of how many I killed, but I made a good many bite the dust." The sharpshooter's greatest fear was another sharpshooter. In the days before the advent of camouflage material, a sharpshooter would climb a tree and pin leaves to disguise his uniform. When two sharpshooters encountered an enemy sharpshooter, one would raise a hat on a stick or his ramrod to draw his antagonist's fire. Once the opponent revealed his position, the second marksman would point his sight directly at his head and fire.

"I've shot 'em out of trees and seem 'em fall like coons," West boasted. Occasionally West would be called upon to pick off targets while lying in a bed of tall grasses. Sparks from the discharge of his rifle frequently ignited the dry grasses and alerted the enemy of his whereabouts. West would then roll his body rapidly while Union riflemen poured round after round into the smoke. West claimed that he killed two Union Generals, General James Shields and Nathaniel P. Banks. The crack shot was sure he got General Shields as he was the only sharpshooter on the line that day and only a round from his rifle could have killed a man at that range. Shields was in command of a Union division near Winchester, Virginia in the late summer of 1864. He was wounded, but he was not killed. He went on to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate and died fifteen years after his wound at Winchester. No record exists of any wounds suffered by General Nathaniel P. Banks, though his division was thwarted by Stonewall Jackson's Army at the Battle of Cedar Mountain in August 1862. Banks served ten terms in the U.S. Congress and lived for nearly three decades after the close of the war.

At Cold Harbor, Virginia, West found himself and a Colonel Brown on the wrong side of the Union lines. West and Brown, wearing blue coats, attempted to fool a Union officer into believing that they were officers and needed to pass in front of the Federal wagon train. When the ruse was revealed, Col. Brown fired his revolver striking the Yankee officer. A hail of bullets was heaped upon Brown and West, who were attempting to flee for their lives. Brown's horse went down and both men tumbled to the ground. Thought to be spies, Brown and West were put under a close guard during the night by four Union soldiers. Deciding that trying to dodge four bullets in the dark was preferable to twenty bullets of a firing squad at dawn, the captives crawled on their bellies evading the inattentive sentinels and made their way to freedom.

During the fighting at the second battle of Cold Harbor, West was positioned at the front of the Confederate lines. For hours, West futilely tried to pick off a Union sharpshooter who had been killing his comrades all day. " I was behind a large rock. Several times he shot at me. He was out there about 1,400 yards in the woods, but I couldn't see his smoke for the treetops," West lamented. After two hours of silence, General George Doles, of Milledgeville, Georgia, appeared on the scene and asked West to silence that devilish tormentor of his men. "He asked me to do my best, and I told him that had been trying to do that all day," John remembered. It was then that Doles stepped in front of West and exposed himself. West warned the general to look out and take cover. At that instant a mini ball struck the general in the right side and passed through his body killing him instantly. West carried General Doles from the field and escorted his body home for burial in Milledgeville.

Though he may have never killed a general, John West believed it was his gun which fired the fatal shot which killed Major General John Sedgwick at the Battle of Spotsylvania on May 9, 1864. While some doubted the story, West lent his gun to Charley Grace while he was in the hospital and it was true that Grace fired the fatal shot.

John West surrendered with his company at Appomattox C.H. on April 9, 1865. He tried to conceal his prized rifle in a blanket, but it was discovered and confiscated. He spent the rest of his life trying to get his gun back. After the war, West returned to Twiggs County to farm. West enjoyed attending Confederate reunions and telling stories of his days as one of the best sharpshooters in the army. He died in 1912 and is buried in the family cemetery on Fountain Road, 2.3 miles west of the intersection of Highway 18 and Fountain Road.

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.