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)

The remarkable story of the French flag ruse and imprisoned women and children of Roswell

Reflecting on the 14 months since I launched The Civil War Picket has reminded me of just little I know about the Civil War, especially in my own back yard.

Take, for example, the Atlanta History Center’s permanent exhibit, “Turning Point.”

This trove of artifacts that speaks to the humanity of those who fought is powerful. It took only took 20-plus years in metro Atlanta for me to make the discovery.

I got that feeling again recently when I pored through the state of Georgia’s new map of Civil War sites, with vignettes on fascinating people, such as “Blind Tom” Bethune, and places like Stone Mountain Village.

What most intrigued me was the account of a curious Frenchman named Theophile Roche and the “Exile of the Roswell Women.”

Thus began my search to learn more about the story, which got little notice from historians, scholars and writers until the 1980s.

Roswell is an old town north of Atlanta. Today it’s associated with suburbia, but back in 1864 it was known for its mill complex that spun clothing and items for the Confederacy. Some say the workers were akin to indentured servants, earning low wages that went back to the mill owners for housing, food and goods.

I contacted Michael D. Hitt, a Roswell police officer, historian and author of a 1991 book, “Charged With Treason,” that details this peculiar footnote of the Atlanta Campaign.

In the spring and summer of 1864, Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s thundering herd was descending on the prize of Atlanta, but first it had to negotiate the Chattahoochee River.

On July 5, 1864, Brig. Gen. Kenner Garrard and his Union troopers were battling the home guard for a vital bridge at Roswell, but the Rebels set it afire.

Garrard was surprised to see a most unexpected banner above the Ivy Woolen Mill at the river.

It was a French national flag. Another French tricolor waved in downtown Roswell above Bulloch Hall, built in 1839.

Garrard rode in to investigate and was met by mill workers claiming to be English or French citizens.

“They were scratching for ideas to save the factory,” said Hitt.

Roche, a journeyman weaver from Paris who claimed at least part ownership of the mill, had concocted the idea of flying the French flags, to show the mill was not part of the Confederacy and subject to seizure or destruction.

“He thought it might work,” Hitt said of Roche. “If it didn’t work, what did they have to lose?”

A lot, apparently.

We’ll get to the rest of the amazing story but for now, here’s how the mill drama went down.

The union cavalry commander (left) walked into Ivy Woolen Mill on July 6 to discover bolts of cloth with the letters CSA woven in. He was shown records indicating the material would be used to make uniforms for Confederate troops.

Game over. Roche’s ruse failed.

The mill workers wouldn’t leave voluntarily, but Garrard forced their exit. Some took mill records to owner James King, who was in the Roswell Battalion, the home guard fighting the Yankee advance.

Garrard ordered the mill burned and moved along the river to the Roswell Manufacturing Co., a larger complex that had nothing to do with the French flag incident but did make goods for the South. It was owned by the absent Barrington King, brother of James.

It, too, went up in flames. Some employees unhappy with wages and other conditions, assisted in its destruction, Hitt said.

Sherman (below) wrote a letter to a superior in Washington, explaining his rationale.

“They [Roswell mills] were very valuable and were burned by my order. They have been engaged almost exclusively in manufacturing cloth for the Confederate Army, and you will observe they were transferred to the English and French flags for safety, but such nonsense cannot deceive me. They were tainted with treason, and such fictitious transfer was an aggravation. I will send all the owners, agents and employees up to Indiana to get rid of them there.”

Union troops rounded up 400 of the Ivy Woolen and Roswell mill workers (a contingent that included 87 men -- some soldiers, some deserters), and then added another batch that worked at a mill at Sweetwater Creek, west of Atlanta, for a total of about 600 people. Five hundred were women and children.

Very few had anything do with the caper at the Ivy mill.

Sherman charged the assembly with treason. That included men, women and their children.

“This was the only time in the Civil War that something like this occurred,” said Hitt. “It was newsworthy at the time.”

At the time, rules of engagement called for treason, which was akin to obstruction if it was a civilian offense.

From the Northern perspective, the workers were American citizens in open rebellion, Hitt said.

Sherman wrote a letter to Garrard, giving him instructions on what to do with Roche and the workers.

"I had no idea that the factories at Roswell remained in operation, but supposed the machinery had all been removed. Their utter destruction is right and meets my entire approval, and to make the matter complete you will arrest the owners and employees and send them, under guard, charged with treason to Marietta, and I will see as to any man in America hoisting the French flag and then devoting his labor and capital in supplying armies in open hostility to the Government and claiming the benefit of his neutral flag. Should you, under the impulse of anger, natural at contemplating such perfidy, hang the wretch, I approve the act beforehand.

“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.”

The prisoners were marched to nearby Marietta (right) for shipment north. They were placed in the Georgia Military Institute while they awaited trains.

There would be no trials at which they could defend themselves.

The 600 were shipped out July 10 and 11, with stops in Chattanooga and Nashville. Many were sent to Indiana, but most arrived in Louisville, Ky., where they were imprisoned in a hospital. A few died of typhoid, measles and the like.

Many took the oath of allegiance to the United States.

“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.

Very few ever made it back to Georgia.

Those who did helped Barrington King (left) get his company back on its feet.

In 2000, the Sons of Confederate Veterans Roswell Mills Camp #1547 erected a monument remembering the troops who fought in Roswell and the mill workers.

The camp cites a Georgia historian who claims the deportation of the women and children was illegal.

I asked Hitt what lesson people may take from the tragedy.

“Don’t mess around with the army in the time of war,” the officer said. “They don’t have time for humor.”

As for the fate of Roche and the two French flags?

Roche jumped the train between Chattanooga and Nashville and eventually fled to France, where he filed a claim against the United States for the Roswell property. The bid failed.

The federal government documented receipt of the flags.

Their whereabouts are unknown.

“Probably up in Washington in a box somewhere,” Hitt said.