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| Key's battery howitzer at Pickett's Mill (Picket photo), number 9 on top of dented muzzle (Georgia State Parks), gun after it was recovered in Spalding County, Ga. in 2010, and artillery Capt. Thomas Key (Wikipedia); click to enlarge images |
A dinged-up 12-pounder
howitzer that survived numerous battles, years of vandalism and theft from a city park will be returned next month from a Georgia battlefield to the Atlanta History Center, where it will
be featured in a new exhibition telling a bigger story about the Civil War.
The gun, manufactured in Boston in 1851 for the Arkansas
Military Institute, has been on loan for nearly 10 years to Pickett’s Mill Battlefield State Historic Site northwest of Atlanta. It’s possible it was used
to mow down Federal attackers who futilely charged through a ravine toward
Confederates waiting for them in strength.
“Captain Key's howitzer is one of the most important
artifacts /stories we have going into the new exhibit,” Gordon Jones, senior
military and historian at the AHC, wrote the Picket in a recent email. “It'll
be a cornerstone of the Atlanta Campaign area, right up there with the U.S.
Army wagon, Confederate flag that flew over Atlanta, Cleburne sword, plus more
new acquisitions.”
Jones was referring to Confederate Capt. Thomas Key, whose Arkansas
artillery battery served in the division of legendary Maj. Gen. Patrick
Cleburne during the Atlanta Campaign.
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| Key's Battery flag (Wikipedia |
The AHC in 2016 lent the gun to the state park as it
prepared to move the “Battle of Atlanta” cyclorama painting from the city’s
Grant Park to the center’s facilities in the Buckhead neighborhood (The gun, below, during its move from the AHC to Pickett's Mill).
For the AHC and history aficionados, the audacious Key and
his four-gun battery are remembered for being in the thick of things in
numerous 1864 Atlanta Campaign battles – Dalton, Pickett’s Mill, Peachtree
Creek and Jonesboro, among others..
Yet this
bronze gun has a postwar history as interesting as its service during the war. It
had several postwar homes and was vandalized while displayed outside in Grant Park.
Indignities included a broken cascabel, hacksaw marks and scores of
indentations.
The howitzer
was subsequently stolen, turning up in a county south of Atlanta.
The AHC gained
custody of the weapon and had it refurbished and placed on a carriage that was built in 1936.
Thomas
Bailey, who makes and restores carriages and other artillery components, recalls
working on the Key howitzer, which has an artillery shell jammed into its 780-pound barrel.
“It always stood out to me how beat up it was,” said the
owner of Historical Ordnance Works in Woodstock, Ga. “Somebody tried breaking
it up for scrap. There were saw marks on the trunnion.” He estimates the barrel
had about 60 marks from a sledgehammer.
So you can say this gun is a survivor -- from the horrors of
war and the ravages of vandals.
Key and his men always in the thick of things
The Key
battery howitzer was one of two cast by Cyrus Alger & Co. for the Arkansas
Military Institute. The number 9 is stamped on its muzzle face and the barrel
is marked with an eagle atop a globe.
At
Chickamauga, in September 1863, his superiors lauded Key for his gallantry and
effectiveness, saying that in the
fiercest part of the struggle he ran his battery by hand to within 60 yards of
the enemy's lines.
Key and his cannons played a large part in the
Confederate victory at Pickett’s Mill on May 27, 1864. Cleburne ordered Key to
place two guns to the right oblique to enfilade the ravine.
It’s
uncertain whether number 9 was one of those two, but it certainly was among the four battery guns there.
Federal troops under Brig. Gen. William Hazen charged uphill
in their attempt to take the top of a ridge. Key’s howitzers were ready for
them. The battery fired about 182 rounds of spherical case and canister in two
hours.
The Federal army suffered about 1,600 casualties at the
battle, compared to 500 for the South. (At right, volunteer Michael Hitt at Pickett's Mill ravine in 2023, Picket photo)
On July 25,
1864, Key’s Battery was issued Napoleons captured from the Federals during the Battle
of Atlanta and number 9 was sent to the Macon Arsenal. The Napoleons were
considered a step up.
In his postwar book, Key wrote he regretted parting with number 9, which had been with his men
at Perryville, Missionary Ridge, Resaca, New Hope Church, Peachtree Creek and other battles.
“So it cannot
be thought strange that I regret having separated from my command a gun that
has been my companion under such trying and bloody circumstances.”
The howitzer made a lot of stops after the war
A 2016 newsletter produced by the Georgia Battlefields
Association tells what happened to number 9 after the war:
At war’s end,
the gun became property of the U.S. Army and was sent to the Washington
Arsenal.
In 1880, upon
a request on behalf of the state militia, number 9 was one of four guns
(including two originally belonging to the Georgia Military Institute) sent to
Rome, Ga. In 1887, Atlanta requested four obsolete guns for display in Fort
Walker in Grant Park; the Rome guns were selected. (Fort Walker is not far from
the old Cyclorama building).
“Over the
years, the gun was vandalized: initials scratched, dented, pieces broken off,
overturned, etc.,” according to the GBA newsletter, authored by Charlie
Crawford, who then served as GBA president.
Michael Hitt,
a volunteer historian at Pickett’s Mill and Civil War researcher, provided the
Picket two vintage post cards (below) showing the gun when it was at Fort Walker.
In one photograph, the barrel lies on the ground and the left
cheek of the gun carriage is heavily damaged.
“Maybe a tree or part of one fell on it,” Hitt said. “The
other image shows it remounted, with a big dent on the muzzle, at an 11
o'clock position.”
Something unexpected found at residence
In the 1980s, Hitt – then a suburban Atlanta police officer
-- restored three artillery pieces languishing at Fort Walker, part of the
South’s defensive works in Atlanta. But vandals continued to damage the guns.
“There’s a lot of history connected with that fort,” Hitt,
lamenting the lack of city protection, told The Atlanta Journal in 1984 (article below). “It’s
like they abandoned it.”
Things somehow got worse.
“In 1985, all
the guns were removed from Fort Walker,” according to the GBA. “Number 9 was
removed from its carriage and displayed on a Grant Park monument, from which it
was stolen in summer 1993.”
In February
2010, a tip about stolen goods led sheriff’s deputies to a Spalding County
house, where they found stolen items, including a crate with a damaged cannon barrel
inside. The whole affair was covered by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Hitt at that
time identified the gun as number 9 and said it was part of the Helena Artillery, also known as Key’s Battery. It was part of the Confederate Army of
Tennessee.
While a small
debate ensued on whether the gun belonged to Georgia, Arkansas or the U.S.
Army, the gun eventually was reclaimed by Atlanta. According to the GBA
newsletter, it sat in a crate in the foyer of the old Cyclorama building for a
few years.
In 2014, the AHC
struck a deal with the city to restore and relocate the giant painting, locomotive
Texas and other artifacts in the Cyclorama building to a new wing in Buckhead. That
meant the howitzer would move, too.
What a long strange trip it's been for gun
After
it was cleaned up, the Key howitzer was shown off in the visitor center at Pickett’s Mill, which is in Paulding County, just northwest of Atlanta.
John
Nash, head of the Friends of Pickett’s Mill Battlefield, recalls taking his
cannon trailer to the AHC to take the gun and carriage to Pickett’s Mill. The
carriage was among those built by Works Progress Administration (WPA) employees in the
1930s when the guns were at Fort Walker.
Now
the gun is heading to Buckhead. (Editor's note: I learned about the upcoming move from a Facebook post on The Atlanta Campaign History and Discussion Group.)
The
Atlanta History Center in
May closed its longtime Civil War exhibit, “Turning Point,” to make way for two
new galleries that will feature breathtaking artifacts and a broader discussion
of issues that engage the republic to this day: our belief systems, victory,
defeat, reconciliation and the evolving meaning of freedom.
Museum officials said they will announce the confirmed name
of the new Civil War era exhibition and an opening date in the next week or so.
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| AHC CEO Sheffield Hale with Union 20th Corps wagon that traveled near what is now the AHC (Picket photo) |
Some people on social media had expressed worry the gun would go back into storage at the AHC. Or they advocate it should stay at Pickett's Mill.
Josh Headlee, curator and historic preservation specialist
with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which oversees state parks,
said the weapon’s association with the battle made it a compelling artifact
there.
“Rather than it sit in storage for all that
time, the AHC was generous enough to reach out to us about the loan,” said
Headlee. “Since the Key’s Battery played a prominent role in that battle, it
has been a wonderful temporary addition to the Pickett’s Mill exhibits. However,
Key’s Battery played an important role in the battles for Atlanta as well, so
it’s just at home in their collection as it is ours.”
Hitt, a board member with the Pickett’s Mill
friends group, agrees.
“I was able
to get the Key battery howitzer (loaned) out from the AHC several years
ago with the knowledge that it would be returned when it was needed for a
display. Well, it is going to be part of a display now at the AHC and I don't
have an issue with it. The gun's Atlanta story is just as interesting as the
Pickett's Mill story.”
So there’s the story – for now – about old
number 9. Living historians occasionally fire a reproduction Key’s Battery gun
at Pickett’s Mill. The next event is scheduled for Jan. 17.
Those wanting to see the original gun at
Pickett’s Mill before it leaves have only a few weeks. It will be back in
Atlanta some time in February
The old GBA newsletter said the artifact might
win a contest for most interesting story. “Go see the gun and marvel at its long, strange trip.”
