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| St. Stephen's in Milledgeville (Thomas Blenk) |
The church
organ that endured the indignity of having molasses syrup poured into its pipes
by mischievous Yankee soldiers was replaced by a fellow from New York, no less.
The visual
reminders reportedly left by Union horses stabled at St. Stephen’s Episcopal
Church? “There are not really hoof prints,” said parish administrator Carolyn
H. Stone. “Plus, the whole place is carpeted.”
As for the
picket fences and outhouses dismantled by the invaders as a firewood source
during the chilly month of November 1864? They could be replaced.
Milledgeville,
capital of Georgia during the Civil War, was able to survive the ordeals that
accompanied three days of occupation by Federal troops during Sherman’s March
to the Sea -- and eventually rebounded.
But those
days of misery were not forgotten. Memories of privation during the war and the
psychological impact of the march, disorder and scavenging have been passed
down from generation to generation in the antebellum city in middle Georgia.
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| Sherman's March to the Sea (Library of Congress) |
“They
destroyed so much of the food and left people destitute with winter coming on,”
said Amy J. Wright, executive director of Georgia’s Old Capital Museum. “There is
nothing like being hungry.”
This
Saturday, Milledgeville will have a day of activities, including tours, a marker dedication, symposium and
re-enactments to commemorate Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s five-week
march through a swath of Georgia. He arrived in Milledgeville 150 years ago to the day.
In recent
years, scholars, historians and many ordinary Georgians have begun to widen the
lens on Sherman’s march beyond the legend: Uncle Billy, the devil incarnate who
mowed down buildings and homes in the land between Atlanta and Savannah.
A new sign
erected in Atlanta labels some of the stories as “popular myth.” W. Todd Groce, president
of the Georgia Historical Society, which sponsored the marker, told The New York Times that the movie “Gone with the Wind” is to blame for
ongoing regional perceptions of the general and Union army.
Others
point out that visitors can still take antebellum home tours.
Critics,
though, are not happy.
Stephen Davis, author of “What the Yankees Did to Us:
Sherman’s Bombardment and Wrecking of Atlanta,” told the newspaper that some
are “bending over backward to give Sherman a whitewash that he does not
deserve.”
Today, there
are more voices being heard -- such as those of Northern soldiers and slaves
that were set free -- and new discussions of
the march’s military purpose and its aim of dispiriting Southern soldiers
enough to force them to leave the front and return home.
Those
voices will be heard when the Old Capital Museum in late February will put on a
three-act play, “Dinner with Uncle Billy,” which originally was scheduled for
this week’s commemoration. Teacher and author Mauriel
Joslyn wrote the script, but a director was not in place in time.
“For many
people born and grown up in the South, we have one perspective. Much of what
Mauriel has interwoven is from perspectives of soldiers who served with
Sherman,” said Wright. “It is
multifaceted. It is the opportunity to delve into multiple perspectives, not
just the Southern view -- a more universal perspective, how the Union saw it
and those who experienced it.”
Among the play characters drawn from diaries and historical
accounts are Sherman, his
officers, Milledgeville merchants, a young mother and slaves, “all presenting
their perspective of what was first anticipated, what happened and (what they
see) in retrospect.”
As part
of the sesquicentennial, the Georgia Civil War Commission is sponsoring a free Civil War symposium from 9 a.m.-4
p.m. Saturday at the Georgia Military College Atrium in Milledgeville.
The
wide-ranging lineup includes discussions of horses and mules in the Atlanta
Campaign, hospitals, “The Civil War in Movies,” “Total Warfare on Southern
Civilians” and black Confederate soldiers, a topic that has engendered much
debate over how many actually served.
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| Georgia's Civil War capitol (Old Capital Museum) |
John
Culpepper, chairman of the commission, told the Picket the objective
is to “tell it like it was.”
“Some of the
stuff that is coming out is politically correct. War is brutal. Sherman said he
would make Georgia howl and he made Georgia howl, militarily and civilian and
so on,” said Culpepper. “As far as tactics and Union winning the war, it was
the right thing to do. You still had many people who suffered because of that
and they suffer every day. It was the beginning of the war on civilians and
manufacturing.”
Joslyn said
she is appalled by what she calls the downplaying by historians of actions
against civilians.
“I do take
issue with the recent revisionist history trying to claim the destruction and
purposeful hardships were exaggerated. I have found plenty of sources from
Union soldiers as well as civilians that describe the same events.”
Sifting through fact and fiction
An article in
the Nov. 14 issue of The New York Times, on the eve of the anniversary of the
beginning of Sherman’s march, captured the ongoing debate about the general’s
aims and conduct.
The marker,
placed at the Carter Center, reads:
On
November 15, 1864, during the Civil War, U.S. forces under Gen. William T.
Sherman set out from Atlanta on the March to the Sea, a military campaign
designed to destroy the Confederacy’s ability to wage war and break the will of
its people to resist. After destroying Atlanta’s industrial and business (but
not residential) districts, Sherman’s 62,500 men marched over 250 miles,
reaching Savannah in mid-December. Contrary to popular myth, Sherman’s troops
primarily destroyed only property used for waging war – railroads, train
depots, factories, cotton gins, and warehouses. Abandoning their supply base,
they lived off the land, destroying food they could not consume. They also
liberated thousands of enslaved African Americans in their path. Sherman’s
“hard hand of war” demoralized Confederates, hastening the end of slavery and
the reunification of the nation.
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| Sherman during occupation of Atlanta (Library of Congress) |
The Georgia
Historical Society’s Groce writes in The Times’ Disunion blog that Sherman’s “hard war” policy was sanctioned by
President Abraham Lincoln and was considered a military necessity to hasten
victory and damage Confederate morale.
“Sherman’s primary targets -- foodstuffs
and industrial, government and military property -- were carefully chosen to
create the desired effect, and never included mass killing of civilians,
especially those law-abiding noncombatants who did not resist what Sherman
described as the national authority,” Groce writes.
Only one person (who was inebriated)
died in Milledgeville during Sherman’s march.
“It was a
freak situation that we had an ice storm, said Matthew Davis, director of the
Old Governor’s Mansion on the campus of Georgia College & State University.
“This overseer of a local plantation did throw snowballs and ice (at the
troops) and he got shot for it.”
Civilians and soldiers alike left behind
journals, including that of Dolly Burge, who lived on a plantation near
Covington, Ga., and witnessed one wing of Sherman’s army come through on Nov.
19, 1864.
Like demons they rush in! My yards are full. To my
smoke-house, my dairy, pantry, kitchen, and cellar, like famished wolves they
come, breaking locks and whatever is in their way. (Source: “The Diary of Dolly Lunte Burge”)
“Sherman’s goal was to destroy any means of
continuing the war,” said Wright. “It was things like the arsenal, magazine,
factories that were producing arms and uniforms.” The museum’s legislative
chamber was where Georgians voted to secede in 1861 and Union soldiers held a
mock assembly more than three years later to repeal that move.
“When I look back at my family 150 years ago …. they did not know where he was headed or his intentions,” said Wright, whose mother is from Baldwin County and her father a “reconstructed Yankee” from Pennsylvania. “There was not the opportunity to read objective reports. There was a sheer terror of anticipation … that if Sherman did not come across his farm there was expectation that some of his foragers would.”
Historian John Marszalek, author of
"Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order," told the Associated Press recently that the
general was more about “shock and awe” than anything else. Marszalek said he is
approached by people after lectures and told an ancestor’s barn was burned by
Federal troops, but the farm was nowhere near the army’s path.
Still, many private homes in central
Georgia were ransacked and damaged by Sherman’s foragers, or “bummers,” as they
came to be called, and a few were burned. Sherman and his officers turned a blind
eye to many cases of wanton destruction, according to Wright.
Most of Milledgeville was spared,
although a key bridge, the penitentiary, the arsenal and a powder magazine were
destroyed. Union troops emptied the library of the capitol and threw the
documents and books onto muddy ground.
“The horses
trampled the books and documents,” said Wright. “Some were priceless. That was
done out of orneriness.”
Another legend has been slow to die.
“There is a
story that Sherman was a womanizer, that he had girlfriends in some of the
towns,” said Stone, of St. Stephen’s. “Any town where one of his ladies lived
had less damage than others. That is one reason (according to the story) we did
not get burned.”
Sticky situation finally resolved
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| Lectern at St. Stephen's (Thomas Blenk) |
Soldiers from the 107th New
York Infantry Regiment occupied St. Stephen’s Episcopal and other Milledgeville
churches during the brief occupation.
Besides the syrup incident, they burned
some pews, ostensibly to keep warm. The church roof was damaged and windows
were blown out when the magazine and arsenal were set to the torch.
The current stained glass window over
the altar was a gift of Christ Church, Savannah “in appreciation for
hospitality extended during the Civil War years.”
The sticky pipe organ was never quite
right for decades after the war and worshipers made plans to replace it.
A boy told the church’s new rector that,
“The Yankees poured molasses down the pipes when that doggone old Sherman was
here.”
Hugh T. Harrington, in “Civil War Milledgeville: Tales from the Confederate Capital of Georgia,” tells the story of a young girl who helped bring about a new organ by writing a
letter mentioning what the Yankees did and seeking a donation.
Nylic Bland, 11, owed her unusual first name to her
father, Marshall, who worked for the New York Life Insurance Company. He used
the company’s acronym for her name.
Nylic, whose mother was the church organist, wrote to
George W. Perkins of New York in 1909. Perkins formerly was an executive with
the insurance company and was currently a financier with J.P. Morgan and
Company.
According to the book, “Little Nylic Bland received
a telegram from George W. Perkins. ‘Buy the organ and send the bill to me.’ The
church bought a new organ for $2,100 and Mr. Perkins, the Yankee, paid the
bill.”
Stone, the parish administrator,
told the Picket that visitors also see the original pulpit and lectern.
The congregation has a food pantry and
is well-known in the community for its volunteers in outreach.
While to
forgive is divine, it’s now always been easy for Southerners to do the same for
their Civil War transgressors, said Stone, adding with a touch of humor that
she is careful about saying she was raised in Pennsylvania.
A host of activities, interpretation
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| An exhibit at Georgia's Old Capital Museum |
Saturday’s events include tours and a
re-enactment at Lockerly Aboretum, re-enactments at the Old Governor’s Mansion
and two exhibits at the Old Capital Museum.
At the latter, one exhibit, “From Broom
to Musket: Women of the South, 1861-1865,” chronicles the lives of eight women,
six from the Milledgeville area, said Wright.
“The focus so
long has been on the soldiers, both Northern and Southern…. Women and what they
were doing has been a subject largely marginalized.”
Featured are
depictions of a sharecropper’s wife, a teen, a woman who disguised herself as a
soldier, a nurse, slave, plantation mistress, widow and spy.
A new exhibit, “Butternut to Gray,”
depicts the life of a Confederate soldier through the art of W.L. Sheppard and
Gilbert Gaul.
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| (Courtesy of Old Governor's Mansion) |
At 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., re-enactors
dressed as Union troops will raise the U.S. flag outside the Old Governor’s Mansion to coincide with Sherman occupying the home Nov. 23, 1864. The mansion,
which underwent a $9.5 million restoration nearly 10 years ago, will be open
for tours and re-enactors will patrol the building and issue passes.
Georgia Gov. Joseph E. Brown had the
house stripped of nearly everything three days before Sherman arrived. He and
many other townspeople evacuated.
“A letter
said the governor was eating turnips and greens while furnishings were boxed
and moved around him,” Davis told the Picket.
Sherman’s
arrival in the mansion brought an irony: He set up his headquarters, including
field equipment, in the room where Brown dined. “It is a nice synergy that they
were in the same place,” said Davis.
Sherman was
gone the next day, after a strategy council with his officers in the mansion.
The mansion and capitol weren’t destroyed by Federal forces.
“There was no really reason to do that type of
damage, or take that action,” said Davis. “He said he would destroy property if
you would impede his march …”
Executive director Steve Longcrier said
the organization continues to install interpretive markers along the March to
the Sea Heritage Trail. Others were recently placed in Conyers, Social Circle
and Sandersville.
Three markers are planned or already
installed in Milledgeville.
“Our marker at the Old Governor's Mansion was installed
several years ago and the one next to the main archway entrance at Georgia
Military College will be installed later this week (Saturday).” It is entitled
“State House Square.” In coming weeks, a third sign will interpret the old
state penitentiary.
Longcrier distributes brochures about the March to the Sea
and Atlanta Campaign to visitor centers across Georgia. “To date, the ratio of
brochures requested and shipped to these centers is 52% Atlanta Campaign vs.
48% March to the Sea. Both brochures are very popular. We just
shipped 900 more of each brochure to one location.”
“I believe the Atlanta Campaign Heritage Trail
will always attract the most attention because that is where most of the
battles were fought, where two major national parks are located, and because of
its close proximity to metro Atlanta and Chattanooga. But the March to
the Sea Heritage Trail is a strong second because of the uniqueness of its
Civil War era history.”
'It was brutal, a brutal conflict'
Georgia’s capital moved to Atlanta in
1868, leaving Milledgeville with a large void.
Today, Milledgeville continues to
strongly promote antebellum and other historical tourism, including its place
on the old frontier. But Wright also touts the city’s educational institutions,
including Georgia College & State University and Central Georgia Technical
College. And there are many state offices in the city.
She also mentioned
efforts to redevelop the old Central State Hospital, which began as a mental
health institution in 1837. The campus declined as such treatment was
decentralized. It has 200 buildings on 2,000 acres.
This
Saturday’s events will cast a spotlight on the past and what Sherman’s March to
the Sea means today.
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| Sherman's foragers, as seen in S. Carolina (Library of Congress) |
The Georgia
Civil War Commission’s Culpepper questioned those who say the general didn’t
focus on civilians: “How can you say he only attacked the Southern military
complex and did not destroy houses. How long did he besiege Atlanta?”
Culpepper
said he is aware there is debate over the march’s effects and legacy.
“The bottom line is we are one nation, and
came together to make the greatest nation in the world. History is history. Put
the facts out there. It was brutal, a brutal conflict. Don’t try to soft soap
what happened: Just the facts.”
The Picket
recently published a three-part series
on Sherman’s March, asking historians and experts to weigh in on its legacy.
Charlie Crawford, president of the Georgia Battlefields
Association, said: “Sherman can be criticized for not keeping better
control over his troops and for sometimes turning a blind eye to their
excesses, especially regarding theft; but his attitude is consistent with his
belief that the war would end sooner if the people of the South lost the will
to fight and wrote to their husbands, sons, and brothers in Virginia to come
home.”
Davis, of the Old Governor’s Mansion, said it is the job of
historians to look at what is myth and what is fact. He hopes visitors leave
with questions that they can pursue.
“I somewhat
agree with revisionists in that regard,” he said of the destruction. “If every
building burned, would we have so many antebellum buildings in the state. No? There
is a fog of war. (Sherman) couldn’t have been everywhere.”
It’s true
that Sherman’s troops did unspeakable things, but that has to be tempered with
the reality that “horrible things” occur during war, said the mansion director.
Regardless, the March to
the Sea and the Civil War will continue to fascinate for years to come, said
Davis.
“If the state
of Georgia has a bogeyman, Sherman is that man.”
