Film tells story of 1864 battle near Savannah, team's archaeological finds

Archaeologists have uncovered and analyzed bullets, canister shot, gun parts and soldiers' personal belongings that will help tell the story of a little-known action west of Savannah, Ga., during the final days of Sherman's March to the Sea.

About 350 Confederates slowed the advance of 12,000 members of the Union 20th Corps for seveal hours on Dec. 9, 1864, at the Battle of Monteith Swamp (Monteith Station). Although it was a relatively minor confrontation, it delayed the taking of a vital Southern railroad for a day.

The Federals were able to force the Rebels off the field near the Chatham and Effingham county lines, employing an effective flanking movement in the snake-infested swamp.

The LAMAR Institute team found the rusted and smashed remains of a Union soldier's Springfield rifle (below) in that portion of the battle.

"I guess someone lost the gun. It was pretty much laying in the swamp with the barrel still sticking out," said Dan Elliott, director of the non-profit archaeological group.

The group's research and the battle are detailed in a 15-minute film that will premiere April 12 at Fort Pulaski National Monument, which next week is marking the 150th anniversary of the fort's fall to Union forces.

The LAMAR Institute in 2010 received a $40,000 grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Service to “conduct archeology fieldwork to identify and document the battlefield as well as foster public outreach.”

The ABPP’s mission is to "safeguard and preserve significant American battlefield lands for present and future generations as symbols of individual sacrifice and national heritage."

( Previous Picket coverage of the battle )

Local historian and documentary producer Michael L. Jordan worked with Elliott and re-enactors to make the film, entitled "Stalling Sherman's Army: the Battle at Monteith Swamp."

"It was a real chokepoint," Jordan told the Picket of the Confederate artillery-supported positions.

Union forces were anxious to lay siege to Savannah.

"When they got here they were hungry, tired and running out of supplies," said Jordan, owner of Cosmos Mariner Productions. "A small number of Confederate troops forced thousands of Yankees into one spot."

The team, working in late 2010 and early 2011, found about 50 bullets, most of them Yankee, the rifle, canister rounds, an artillery friction primer, buttons and personal items, including jewelry, the latter found at the site of an encampment occupied by Federal soldiers after the battle.

"It's always fun to go where we are supposed to find something and be able to prove it," Elliott said, who expects to submit his formal report on the project during the summer.

The battle was typical of desperate Confederate efforts to stall Union advances on Savannah.

The small force felled trees and built an abatis and trench lines for its flanks. The Rebels used a long line of swamp to its advantage against an overwhelming force.

On Dec.9, 1864, the entire 20th Corps (12,000 regulars) under Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams advanced down Monteith Road from Zion Church. Around noon they hit Confederate positions.

“The sounds of fighting could be heard for miles, as units of the Twentieth Corps began to stack up like an accordion along the narrow road,” historian Barry Sheehy writes.

A flanking movement became bogged down in marsh and reinforcements flooded in to assist the 61st Ohio, the 31st Wisconsin and the 82nd Ohio. The going was slow.

Eventually, a flanking attack on the Rebel right bought some high ground and sent the Confederates out of their entrenchments, across Monteith Road and to Harrison’s Place, where they fought some more.

By late afternoon, the defenders were gone, leaving knapsacks and camp equipment but taking their colors and four guns with them. The Confederates had about 14 killed and four captured in the six-hour battle. Union losses were one or two dead and six wounded.

"We have a pretty good understanding of where the battle is, based on the distribution of bullets," said Elliott.

Elliott is heartened by the fact that a local resident whose family has owned much of the battlefield since the 1870s is committed to its preservation.

That family has a trove of artifacts picked up over the years. Most of what was documented and analyzed by the LAMAR Institute was on their property.

But that doesn't mean parts of the battlefield in private hands aren't at risk.

Elliott cites the construction of a couple retail establishments and the anticipated rebirth of housing developments in the area.

He hopes the film and project will be the first step in drawing attention to threats to Savannah's wartime defenses. He'd like to see the movie shown on public television.

"Very little is done to preserve the area," Elliott said.

The archaeologist will attend the premiere of the film, made in conjunction with his research. Fort Pulaski that same evening will premiere another film by Jordan called "Savannah in the Civil War."

Observations of the war's 150th anniversary are "a good opportunity to tell the stories of the Civil War," Elliott said. "These are the resources we need to protect."

Images from the film courtesy of LAMAR Institute and Cosmos Mariner Productions. Fort Pulaski National Monument will air the two movies beginning at 7:30 p.m., April 12, on a wide screen in the parade ground. Admission for the screenings is $5 for adults. Children 15 and under are free.

• Fort Pulaski 150th anniversary events

Monteith Swamp: Trying to save what's left of an 1864 battlefield near Savannah

Jerry Dotson remembers the dirt fortifications he crawled on when he was a child.

Those redoubts built 100 years earlier at Monteith Swamp were an unwelcome sight for 12,000 Federal soldiers only days away from securing Savannah.

To win the city, men of the 20th and 14th corps and the rest of Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s 65,ooo-strong blue mass had to bust through a line of craftily-planned defenses erected by Confederate Gen. William “Old Reliable” Hardee (below) and a group of 10,000 defenders.

A contingent of 300 North Carolinians were among the scant 800 Rebel troops deployed along one stretch on the Chatham County and Effingham County line in December 1864. They employed four guns in the redoubts near modern-day Monteith Road.

“It was here that Confederate soldiers, weary and outnumbered, tried unsuccessfully to stave off the inevitable,” writes historian Barry Sheehy, who lives in nearby Rincon.

The title of Sheehy’s 2005 article in the Georgia Historical Quarterly refers to the minor engagements at Monteith Swamp (click photo above to enlarge) and nearby Shaw’s Bridge as “Forgotten.”

The battles slipped into history, a small footnote in the March to the Sea. A Google search on the Battle of Monteith Swamp doesn’t turn up much, either.

Fortunately, the battle is about to bubble back up from the quagmire of oblivion.

The LAMAR Institute, a non-profit archaeological group, recently received a $40,000 grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Service to “conduct archeology fieldwork to identify and document the battlefield as well as foster public outreach.”

The ABPP’s mission is to "safeguard and preserve significant American battlefield lands for present and future generations as symbols of individual sacrifice and national heritage."

Sheehy and the LAMAR Institute are concerned about urban sprawl in this semirural area two miles from I-95 and just west of Savannah.

“The ultimate goal is to keep these [lands] preserved in public domain,” says LAMAR director Daniel Elliott (left).

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The NPS lists the Battle of Monteith Swamp as a “devastating loss” for the Confederacy.

Sheehy, Elliott and Dotson, who owns 90 acres containing much of the battlefield, including Harrison's Field (photo below) disagree.

They believe it was a successful, if momentary, “holding action.”

“I look at it as a brief victory for the South,” says Dotson, 65, a semiretired corporate pilot who has a home not far from the mostly-gone entrenchments

Elliott is waiting for the weather to get a little cooler and less buggy before he does the bulk of the survey, which he expects to submit to the NPS in late 2011. He will study about 500 acres and learn about the regiments that fought there.

Knee boots are essential wear for a foray into Monteith Swamp. Although alligator sightings are rare, the land is home to all kinds of snakes.

The Union troops that fought in the area recall the inhospitable terrain as a “morass.” Dropping to their bellies in the swamp water, even if to escape enemy fire, wasn’t appealing.

Still, they could taste victory and just needed to push through this line and a few other positions before grabbing the vital railroad linking Savannah and Charleston, S.C.

“The dominoes were falling when they left Atlanta,” says Elliott.

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In his 2005 article, Sheehy lays out the circumstances and details of the Battle of Monteith Swamp.

“The advance of enemy soldiers across the state ignited a frenzy of defensive preparations along the coast,” he writes. “The idea that an enemy might approach from the landward side had been considered so outrageous that the Confederate authorities had largely ignored the possibility.”

Gen. Hardee built a strong set of defensive lines west of downtown Savannah. Part of that included flooded land, small lakes and more swamp land.

Sheehy, who is writing a four-volume series on Savannah, slavery and the war, says land behind the modern Savannah Christian Preparatory School several miles away has magnificent surviving earthworks.

Confederate Col. Charles C. Jones dug in to slow Sherman and protect railroad tracks near “Harrison’s Place,” a plantation field at Monteith Swamp that has been cultivated since before the Civil War and is currently leased by Dotson to a hay farmer.

The 14th and 20th corps with about 30,000 men advanced on three roads -- Monteith Road, Middle Ground Road and Old Augusta Road. (Photo above is a view from Meinhard and Monteith roads)

Jones’ detachment of 300 at Monteith Swamp strengthened its defensive works, felled trees and built an abatis and trench lines for its flanks. The Rebels used a long line of swamp to its advantage against an overwhelming force.

On Dec.9, 1864, the entire 20th Corps (12,000 regulars) under Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams (below) advanced down Monteith Road from Zion Church. Around noon they hit Confederate positions.

“They had the Confederates on the redoubts, right in their face,” Dotson tells the Civil War Picket.

“The sounds of fighting could be heard for miles, as units of the Twentieth Corps began to stack up like an accordion along the narrow road,” Sheehy writes.

A flanking movement became bogged down in marsh and reinforcements flooded in to assist the 61st Ohio, the 31st Wisconsin and the 82nd Ohio. The going was slow.

Eventually, a flanking attack on the Rebel right bought some high ground and sent the Confederates out of their entrenchments, across Monteith Road and to Harrison’s Place, where they fought some more.

By late afternoon, the defenders were gone, leaving knapsacks and camp equipment but taking their colors and four guns with them. The Confederates had about 14 killed and four captured in the six-hour battle. Union losses were two dead and six wounded.

Union forces got to the railroad the next day and rolled up the Confederate defenses on the western line. The loss of Fort McAllister soon after spelled the end for Savannah. Sherman had ships to bring in supplies and a “biscuit line” to feed his massive army, Sheehy says.

Hardee skillfully escaped with the remnants of his army into South Carolina.

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Subdivisions have been built in recent years near the Monteith battlefield. But the area still maintains a somewhat rural feel, with nearby churches like White Oak Baptist (right).

“It’s all doomed,” Sheehy says of remaining open land. The Georgia Battlefields Association lists Monteith Swamp as an endangered battlefield.

Sheehy believes Chatham County should buy and preserve the site, especially Harrison’s Place.

Dotson takes part in Georgia’s Conservation Use Value Assessment (CUVA) program. Landowners who donate an easement automatically qualify for the lowest property tax assessment.

He has turned down development offers and would like some government or group to buy Harrison’s field. The land currently is worth between $30,000 and $40,000 an acre.

“I would just hate to see any of my children develop that place,” says Dotson, who can trace the land back to his great-grandfather, Zachary. “It’s one of the last battlefields still intact.”

Over the years, Dotson has unearthed some treasures. A metal detector yielded what probably is a soldier’s ring. He has found hundreds of bullets, dozens of buttons, a buckle and a couple of artillery shells, including a Hotchkiss.

His grandfather and father passed down remnants of two swords and two rare rifles.

He doesn’t know how much longer the area will stay as it is.

“You can see the builders are starting back,” Dotson says.

Photos of battlefield and church courtesy of Cindy Wallace.