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| Georgia Pvt. Watkins Banks' red jacket, his name written on interior lining (Courtesy Columbus Museum) and an ambrotype of him, at left, with first cousin Willis Butt, who also served (Courtesy John Sheftall) |
Dashing young
men from high society filled the ranks of volunteer militia companies across
the South in the decades leading to the Civil War. They dressed smartly in
stylish uniforms, rubbed elbows at social events and trained for
whatever military purpose they could fulfill for their states.
The Columbus
Guards in the west Georgia city by that name were considered among the
best-drilled in the region. They formed in 1835 and provided more men for Confederate
service than any other militia unit in the city. Its members, many from slaveholding families, participated in
more than 30 battles as part of the Army of Northern Virginia.
A Columbus Guards ”Red Jacket” worn by Watkins Banks at the
beginning of the war is the only such jacket known to still exist. I admit to
never tiring of gazing at it whenever I stop by the Columbus Museum on Wynnton
Road, not far from where Banks grew up.
The bright red jacket features insignia, brass buttons and,
as I noticed last week, small faux epaulets.
Banks was one of seven brothers who fought for the
Confederacy and one of three to die, within months of each other, in 1864.
There were no signs of the coming sacrifice when the
Columbus Guards – who fired a small brass cannon for salutes -- traveled to
Montgomery, Ala., in February 1861 for the inauguration of Confederate
President Jefferson Davis.
Banks wore this jacket in Montgomery and during the Guards’
departure from Columbus to join the Confederate army.
“It’s quite striking in the gallery, where it rotates with
Confederate Col. Peyton Colquitt’s gray coat,” Rebecca Bush, curator of history
and exhibitions manager at the museum, told me several years ago.
Banks identified his jacket by writing ‘Wat.
Banks’ and ‘1861’ on the coat’s interior lining, notations which are still
clearly visible.
Six original buttons remain, the rest were
likely cut as mementos for the family after he was killed near Atlanta in 1864.
New buttons were cast. They bear the initials “CG” and an eagle.
The buttons have drawn scholarly interest, as they have
never been identified on any other militia or federal uniform, despite
extensive research, according to the museum.
Bush told me
this week the Banks jacket has been on view since late May and will remain out
for about a year.
“Most of the jacket is made
of Melton cloth (or Melton wool) with white cotton lining and, of course, the
brass buttons,” she said in an email. “We do not have one known maker for the
jackets. In December 1861, a notice appeared in the local newspapers that ‘the
goods for the uniforms’ of the Guards had arrived at the store of Ellis &
Livingston, with instructions that family members should pick up ‘the goods,
have the suits made and returned for packing.’ I suppose it’s possible that a
similar home manufacture model was used before the war as well.”
Watkins paid a substitue, but returned to service
John and Sarah Banks, both from Elbert County, Ga., came to
Columbus in the 1830s. They built The Cedars in 1836.
John Banks was a successful businessman and lawyer who owned plantations in Georgia and Alabama and about 200 enslaved people.
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| Photo of The Cedars in Columbus by David Seibert, HMdb.org |
Columbus attorney John Sheftall, who lives in the Banks family
home called The Cedars, said the couple had nine sons and three daughters. One
of them, Josephine, is his great-great grandmother. (Watkins Banks is his
great-great-great uncle.) Sheftall said his children are the eighth generation to live at the stately home.
Only two of the Banks boys did not serve with the Confederacy (all nine are
buried in the Banks family lot at Linwood Cemetery in Columbus.)
According to one history, Watkins Banks and about 135 others
joined Company G of the 2nd Georgia
Volunteer Infantry when the war broke out. The unit wore the red
jacket for a few months before receiving their new issue of gray. The regiment,
which served in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, had its most famous moment at
Antietam, where it held the heights above Burnside’s Bridge with the 20th
Georgia.
Sheftall said Banks fought in Virginia, returned
home and at some point joined Nelson’s Rangers with a brother.
In 1863, the bachelor paid for a substitute,
lived in Columbus and then returned to service during the Atlanta Campaign. The private was killed during a skirmish on Aug. 11, 1864, outside Atlanta. He was 31.
An obituary in the Columbus Sun newspaper (right) said
Watkins had a “lofty sense of honor.”
“A brother, Lt. Eugene Banks, as noble hearted a
young man as ever lived, was killed in May, at Resaca, another Capt. Willis Banks, fell at Atlanta the latter part of July – three brothers killed in three
months – and all young men of the finest mould. Is it not folly to speak of
reconstruction or affiliation with a hated foe who thus daily is robbing the
South of her noblest sons?”
Eugene and Willis Banks – also unmarried -- served
with the 39th Alabama Infantry.
A funeral for the three siblings was held Aug.
14, 1864, at St. Luke Methodist Church in Columbus.
After the Battle of Columbus in April 1865, which saw the city fall to Union forces, a potion of occupying troops camped for a few days east of The Cedars, Sheftall wrote in an email this week.
"There was one particular
marauding party of soldiers who came to the house, took away lots of supplies,
food, and livestock, ransacked things inside to some extent, stole some silver,
and insulted John Banks, who was by that time partially paralyzed and sitting
on the front porch while all of this was going on.
"(None of the sons were
there, four already being dead, only John and Sarah and their three daughters, plus the slaves.) When one soldier insulted John Banks and knocked his hat off,
daughter Lucy blessed them out and they left. Subsequently, her mother,
Sarah Watkins Banks, paid a call on the commanding officer at the nearby camp,
and he agreed to post a guard at The Cedars, which resolved things until the
Union forces left and moved east toward Macon."
The end of the war brought an end to slavery and John Banks wrote about that in an
autobiography. (HMdb.org photo, left; click to enlarge)
Sheftall said about 27 enslaved people had been at The Cedars.
Others worked at a plantation south of Columbus on the Chattahoochee River and
at three locations in Russell and Macon counties in Alabama.
Some of the formerly enslaved stayed on with the
family as laborers.
Family papers are at the University of Georgia
The Columbus Museum acquired the red jacket from Sheftall through
a partial gift and purchase in 2012.
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| The letters CG are part of the brass buttons on the Watkins Banks' jacket (Courtesy Columbus Museum) |
“After acquisition,
the Museum sent the jacket to the Williamstown Art Conservation Center in
Massachusetts for stabilization and restoration. This process included the
insertion of a red cotton interlayer to disguise losses in the original red
wool, as well as the casting of replacement buttons,” says a page about the garment.
The University of Georgia Libraries has a John Banks papers collection, including his autobiography, at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Athens, Ga. The
collection includes letters from Watkins during the Civil War.
Sheftall has an ambrotype (top of this post) showing Watkins Banks on the left
with his first cousin, Willis Banks Butt.
“He was the son of Moses Butt and Priscilla Banks, sister to
John Banks, said Sheftall. “Willis survived the Civil War, married Julia
Treutlen of Eufaula, and settled there.They both lived a reasonably long life
but had no children.”
Willis Butt died in 1899 at age 59.
