A hard choice during 'hard war': Federal soldiers gave women at burned New Manchester mill in Georgia two options. Only one ensured food on the table

Much has been written about Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s "hard war" in Georgia, and the debate over the accompanying destruction continues today. Did he focus almost completely on military targets, or was civilian property fair game, too?

There was no ambiguity when it came to textile mills and factories around Atlanta that supplied the Confederacy. “This whole region was devoted to manufactories, but I will destroy every one of them,” Sherman wrote to a subordinate the same week cavalry units burned textile mills in Roswell and at New Manchester in Douglas County, about 35 miles to the southwest.

The impressive ruins of the New Manchester mill today are the prime attraction at Sweetwater Creek State Park near Lithia Springs. I recently asked interpretive ranger Adrian Fox to detail its operation and the fate of the nearly 200 men, women and children there, and the tough choice they had to make.

This is among the records kept by Adrian Fox at Sweetwater Creek State Park (Picket photo, click to enlarge)

But let’s start with the Roswell mills, which were destroyed first, on July 6, 1864.

Sherman wrote he wanted 400 Roswell workers to be charged with treason, given the Ivy Woolen Mill was flying a French flag when Federal troopers rode by. The ruse was meant to show the mill was not subject to seizure or destruction. It failed.

From the Northern perspective, the workers were American citizens in open rebellion. Southerners said the women were eking out a living as menfolk defended their homeland.

Click to enlarge Sherman correspondence in Official Records about the mill workers

On July 7, Sherman wrote to Brig. Gen. Kenner Garrard about the Roswell employees, who had been making material for uniforms:

“I repeat my orders that you arrest all people, male and female, connected with those factories, no matter what the clamor, and let them foot it, under guard, to Marietta, whence I will send them by cars to the North...The poor women will make a howl. Let them take along their children and clothing, providing they have the means of hauling or you can spare them. We will retain them until they can reach a country where they can live in peace and security.”

The prisoners were placed in the Georgia Military Institute while they awaited trains. There would be no trials, so no one actually was formally accused and convicted of treason.

New Manchester, then the tallest building in the region, was burned on July 9. It manufactured muslin and osnaburg, a fabric lighter than canvas, for the Rebel army.

Fox said the historic site is “so instinctively human.”

This for a time was a thriving company town. But as conditions worsened and the war ground on, there was always the threat of homes being looted by desperate families who lived nearby.

A 1932 article (below, click to enlarge) in The Atlanta Journal newspaper described the memories of S.H. Causey, a worker at New Manchester:

“Shortly after the burning of the mill, Mr. Causey recalls, the Federal officers assembled the Sweetwater people and announced they were going to be allowed to take their choice between two courses. One was that they would be paroled upon signing an agreement that they would not again engage in the occupation of making cloth for the Confederacy, although they might remain where they were or find homes elsewhere on southern soil. The other choice was that they should be furnished free transportation to some point beyond the Ohio River, behind the Federal lines, and there given their freedom. Most of them chose the latter course, since under the circumstances it offered them the only means of earning a livelihood.”

Some of the workers had highly prized skills. The mill was in ruins and Atlanta was about to fall. As Fox said, they were given a "strong-arm choice."

“For the working poor, the priority was the safety and survival of their children.” So they chose to go north, where -- as it turned out -- they had no real freedom or autonomy.

Workers were sent to Marietta, where they were put together with the Roswell workers. After that, they were all treated basically the same. A monument in Roswell, funded by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, says they were effectively deported (Picket photo, click to enlarge).

The 600 (500 of whom were women and children) were shipped out July 10 and 11, with stops in Chattanooga and Nashville. Many were sent to Ohio and Indiana after they arrived in Louisville, Ky., where they were initially imprisoned in a hospital. A few died of typhoid, measles and other diseases.

“First housed and fed in a Louisville refugee hospital, the women later took what menial jobs and living arrangements could be found. Those in Indiana struggled to survive, many settling near the river, where eventually mills provided employment,” the New Georgia Encyclopedia says.

“Unless husbands had been transported with the women or had been imprisoned nearby, there was little probability of a return to Roswell, so the remaining women began to marry and bear children.”

Lore has it few made it back to Georgia, but there are examples.

Sara Frances “Fannie” White Clay was a daughter of one of the New Manchester Mill workers.  She went north with her mother to Louisville, according to Charlie Crawford, president emeritus of the Georgia Battlefields Association. She was called “Sissy” while growing up.

“Don’t believe that ‘they were never heard from again’ baloney,” said Crawford. “Sissy, her older sister and her mom returned to New Manchester area when the war was over and were reunited with the father/husband. When Sissy grew up, she married Alexander Stephens Clay, who became a U.S. senator. One of their sons was General Lucius D. Clay, commander of the Berlin Airlift. One of their grandsons was General Lucius D. Clay Jr., who was commander of Pacific Air Forces when I was in stationed in Vietnam and Hawaii. So much for Sissy never being heard from again.”

Depiction of mill workers assembled in Marietta, Ga., for transport north

After the Civil War, mills were reopened in Roswell, but not at New Manchester.

It became a ghost town.

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Rendering of New Manchester mill in operation, exhibited at park visitor center (Picket photo)

A trip to the lab: It was a thrill to briefly hold a conserved Enfield rifle and see one going into a preservation tank at Georgia state park. These weapons and 18 others were found in a blockade runner wreck. The goal is to put them on exhibit

Josh Headlee prepares to place an Enfield in preservative dolution (top right); at bottom are a brass trigger guard and a piece of the wooden crate used to keep rifles in place during shipment from England (Civil War Picket photos)

There are fun days and then there are really, really fun days. Today was one of the latter.

I began my adventure by hopping into my old SUV for the leafy drive to Panola Mountain State Park near Stockbridge, Ga., below Atlanta. I was excited about finally meeting Josh Headlee, curator and historic preservation specialist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

We have stayed in touch by phone or email for nearly 13 years about a conservation project he calls “a labor of love.”

Of course, I was equally excited about seeing the fruits of that project: Two Civil War Enfield rifles that were part of a crate of 20 lost when a Confederate blockade runner ran aground in Charleston, S.C., in 1863. South Carolina divers brought them up in the late 1980s; the artifacts eventually came to Georgia, which had larger facilities to handle them.

The conservation of the rifles last year reached a significant milestone, with the first walnut stock emerging from treatment and appearing to be doing well outside a wet environment.

I had a chance to briefly hold the rifle stock this morning before we drove over to a laboratory housed in a former golf course building. Adrian Fox, interpretive ranger at Sweetwater Creek State Park, and I had the honor of watching Headlee dip the second gun into a preservation for a two-month bath (Picket video, above).

The British-made weapons have been displayed for nearly 15 years in a 300-gallon aquarium at Sweetwater Creek State Park in Douglas County as corrosive salts are removed. Headlee, who cleans the tank a couple times a year, chose guns 9 and 10 as the first to be treated with a preservative.

Visitors to Sweetwater Creek – about 50 miles from Panola Mountain - are a bit puzzled when they first see the aquarium, said Fox and Headlee. After all, shouldn’t it contain fish or turtles? And the mass of guns, a crate and lead lining appear to be a jumble.

Park employees tell them the gun cache is inherently interesting.

Rifles in aquarium at Sweetwater Creek State Park; below a replica used to provide context (Georgia DNR)

“It gives folks a rare glimpse to see historic preservation in action,” Fox told me. Staffers often hold a replica rifle near the tank to help them visualize what’s inside.

Conservation is a long process, so there is no timetable on when the weapons  – which have been in salt or freshwater for 163 years -- are completed. And there has been no decision on where they might be exhibited, finally free of a watery environment.

Headlee says Fort McAllister State Park below Savannah might be appropriate, given the Rebel blockade runner CSS Nashville was sunk there by the Union ironclad USS Montauk.

Blockade runner wreck served up a treasure

The Pattern 1853 Enfields were carried by the blockade runner CSS Stono and were bound for Charleston, S.C., in 1863. The rifles, stored in a wooden crate, were placed in an alternating butt-to-muzzle pattern, and blocks were used to prevent the weapons from shifting. 

The Stono, laden with precious arms, munitions and goods from Europe, ran aground on a submerged sandbar off Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor while trying to evade Federal ships.

The crate likely took a hard fall, breaking a few rifles, according to Headlee. (Picket video above and photo, right, of conserved rifle, piece of crate)

Saltwater destroyed most of the iron components, including barrels, locks and bayonets. The trigger guards, butt plates and nose caps at the end of the barrels are made of brass and are still intact.

Interestingly, the nose cap is the only metal piece still attached to the wooden stock of the treated rifle. It appears to be riveted in place and conservators don't want to risk breaking the fragile stock to remove it for treatment. 

Officials did not initially know how many of the highly prized Pattern 1853 rifles were inside, their position or condition. 

Each weapon originally weighed about 9 pounds and was approximately 53 inches long. The bore is .577-caliber. 

The treated rifle I hoisted weighed probably half of that, because much of the metal (iron) had corroded away.

The brass pieces survived. The iron, not so much

Adrian Fox and Josh Headlee with untreated rifle, gun parts and piece of crate (Picket photo)

The craftsmanship involved in the manufacture of the guns was very good, Headlee previously said. “Enfield was top quality.” It was the second-most widely used infantry weapon in the Civil War after the Springfield.

The 1851 and 1853 Enfields, made for the British army, were an important technological advance from smoothbore to rifled muskets, increasing the accuracy and distance.

At least one of the weapons bears the mark, “T. Turner,” believed to be a Confederate inspector of the rifle. His name was on a stamped cartouche in the wood.

Iron in barrel (left) and ramrod area (right) of treated gun are gone; at center is the end of the stock where brass butt plate was attached (Picket photos; click to enlarge)

A tin and lead lining that sealed the cargo from salt air and ensured the rifles were not tampered with is in bad condition. Officials are not sure how much of that can be salvaged for display. The wooden lid to the box did survive and is resting in a freshwater tank with other components.

There is a silver lining to all of this: Components made of brass withstood the onslaught of corrosive saltwater.

Iron or steel screws holding the butt plates in place deteriorated over the years and the plates just slid off, said Headlee.

Conservators years ago found in the crate a bullet mold, tools and tampions -- cork and brass plugs inserted into the muzzle to ward off moisture. The team counted 20 tampions “in various states” of condition. 

Tampions are used on cannons and rifles to keep debris from falling into their barrels. (Picket photo, left, of tampion and other items at Panola Mountain.)

Headlee reached out to Enfield experts in England and elsewhere about the half dozen remnants of iron bayonets found stacked together. They told him bayonets normally would be shipped in a separate box.

“Why bayonets were in this crate I have no idea,” Headlee told the Picket last year. “They are all but gone. The fact we have this much is amazing.” The pieces are about an inch and a half long.

The Enfield fired a Minie ball. No ammunition was found in the crate.

A jug of preservative and a case of nerves

Headlee in 2022 selected two rifles  to be treated with a solution made by Preservation Solutions. Conservators previously used SP-11 to treat an intact coffin found in 2013 on the edge of the marsh at Fort McAllister, a Confederate river outpost below Savannah. Results on the coffin led to use on the Enfields.

Before the chemical treatment, the rifles are kept in water, which protects their cellular structure. 

Josh Headlee pours SP-11 preserver into tank with Enfield rifle (Picket photo)

The treatment takes about two months and the rifle is turned once.

Without immersion in a preserver, pieces of wood will shrink, warp and crack.

“They could literally just fall apart,” Headlee previously told the Picket.

SP-11 is designed to displace water in the wood with preservatives that help to solidify the wood so it can be permanently exposed to the air. (At left, butt plate and other components, Picket photo)

The curator has been watching the preserved rifle to see whether there is leaching, cracking or splitting of the wood. 

He has seen no problems; a white film appeared on some of the stock as it emerged from the tank, but it was successfully cleaned off, he added.

“So far, it looks good,” Headlee said during my visit.

If the second rifle does as well as the first, another two rifles will be selected for the preservation treatment, perhaps this summer. In the meantime, he will travel back to Sweetwater Creek in the coming weeks to clean the tank and inspect and care for its contents. Fox, the interpretive ranger, said the staff there is very interested in the progress of the work.

The curator concedes he was nervous when the first gun emerged from its bath, and he will probably want to babysit the second a bit, as well.

As for me, it was exciting to see the Enfield components up close, especially the wooden block (Picket video above) that held the rifles in place when they were crated more than 160 years ago. I just imagined a craftsman cutting the grooves in which the barrels rested.

Oh, what a day.

Support team: Crew finishes work that will protect Georgia textile mill ruins for decades

Wooden support shortly before it was removed near end of project

Arch now supported by ring of steel plates (Don Scarbrough photos)

Add Tropical Storm Irma to the list of hazards that the remains of the Civil War-era New Manchester textile mill have weathered.

Crews wrapping up a 10-week stabilization of the towering brick ruins at Sweetwater Creek State Park in Douglas County, Ga., were concerned by approaching high winds and the potential for flooding.

“It did fine. The park lost only a few trees,” said park interpretive ranger Don Scarbrough. While Sweetwater Creek rose, water did not flow into the mill’s interior, as it did in 2009.

Contractor Aegis Restauro recently completed a $375,000 stabilization of the New Manchester Manufacturing Co. factory, which at five stories was the tallest building in North Georgia. Thread, yarn and cloth were initially produced when the mill began operations in 1849.

It produced a variety of material for the Confederacy before it was burned in July 1864 by Federal cavalry moving on Atlanta. Nearly 100 New Manchester residents, mostly female workers and their children, were sent north by train to spend the rest of the war. Many took an oath of allegiance to the United States. You can read details of that sorrowful story here.

Graffiti includes Gilbert, a Union soldier part of unit that took mill

“There were some interesting discoveries, like more Civil War graffiti as they cleaned the walls,” Scarbrough said of the project. Some of the initials are believed to have been etched by Federal soldiers, though officials are not certain how many of the new discoveries were made by them.

Workers put in steel rods, applied specialized mortar and installed concrete caps on pillars and around windows, stabilizing the 160-year-old bricks and protecting them from moisture. Some of the bricks are still scorched from the fire that sent tons of machinery crashing to the bottom floor.

Ricky Day, an engineer with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said the slaved-made bricks were solid, but made of softer material than today’s versions.

Mill now includes capstones on top of brick (Photo by Don Scarbrough)

The project was meant to keep the ruins stable at least for several decades and “to keep it from tilting out,” said Day.

A few years ago, Scarbrough said, a group was paddling near the rapids and took a closer look. A member of the Friends of Sweetwater Creek State Park “thought a column was leaning slightly.” Engineers visited the interior in late 2014 and closed it. This summer’s work is the most significant since about 1990.

The work crew had to contend with loose bricks through the structure, including at the tops of brick columns. They used bricks strewn on the floor to make repairs. The top of the tallest wall lost a little height because the masonry was so deteriorated, Day said.

Photos by Don Scarbrough

Plate used to buttress many remaining windows, openings

For at least three decades, a wooden piece supported the arch connecting the mill race (or stream) and the giant wheel that drove the mill machinery. The piece was finally removed in the renovation, and steel plates are supporting the historic arch, making for a more authentic appearance.

Now that the project is complete, the picturesque mill interior will be available again for guided tours by park staff, weddings, photo sessions and filmmakers – all a source of revenue for the state. The mill is enclosed and locked.

While the interior is accessible to only those with a guide, you can get impressive views of the mill from several angles outside the fence.

Courtesy of Don Scarbrough