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CANISTER From The Chattanooga Civil War Round Table |
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Written by Jim Ogden, Chattanooga CWRT President |
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CANISTER From The Chattanooga Civil War Round Table |
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| VOLUME XXI | AUGUST 17, 2004 | NO. 8 |
www.chattanoogacwrt.org |
Visitors & Guests Welcome |
| DATE: | TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2004 | TIME: 7:00 PM |
| TOPIC: |
"THE BATTLE OF UTOY CREEK & AUGUST OUTSIDE ATLANTA"
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| SPEAKER: |
CHARLIE CRAWFORD, PRESIDENT GEORGIA BATTLEFIELDS ASSOCIATION |
| PLACE: |
MILLIS-EVANS ROOM, CALDWELL HALL, ACADEMIC QUADRANGLE,
THE MCCALLIE SCHOOL, HISTORIC MISSIONARY RIDGE (Directions to Caldwell Hall-Enter the McCallie School campus off of Dodds Avenue opposite the end of Bailey Avenue. Take the main drive into the campus and follow the signs for the Academic Quadrangle. There is a parking area there beside the Chapel and you will have passed Caldwell Hall on the right as you approach the parking area. Find a place and park. Caldwell Hall will be behind you as you park. Come in either the first or second floor doors and follow the signs to the Millis-Evans Room.) |
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| AUGUST MEETING |
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The fourth month of the campaign was unfolding. It was already a campaign like
no other given its length and the nearly continuous nature of the contact with
the enemy. There had been marches by day and night, little battles and big, hot
weather and cool and rain, and losses in ones and twos and by the dozen. The
spires of the target city seemed to be just right there. The decision, seemingly,
must come soon. But, August of the Atlanta Campaign would be different, almost
a siege instead of the maneuver and battle of July or June or May. A listlessness
had settled over the main bodies of the combatants. One of the engagements that seemed to both indicated and belie the listlessness was that fought in the valley of Utoy Creek southeast of Atlanta at the end of the first week of the month. Union soldiers of the 14th and 23rd corps extended their lines in that direction to further tighten the noose around the "Gate City of the South" and Confederates reacted to parry the threat, further extending their already stretched lines in the process of doing so. The cost for both sides was not what it had been three weeks earlier along the banks of Peachtree Creek or in the Battle of Atlanta or at Ezra Church, but it was still a sharp little clash. And, today, it is one of the Atlanta battlefields where something remains and has been preserved and where, with the proper direction, you can make a visit and understand what happened. The story of what happened at Utoy Creek and the efforts by several organizations to preserve some of what remains of the battlefield and the story of some of the other events of the Atlanta Campaign of August, 1864 are the focus of our program this month. They are often overlooked or oversimplified, but they are a part of the story of finally what did happen. Our speaker, Charlie Crawford, the President of the Georgia Battlefields Association will relate both the history of this month one hundred and forty years ago and the efforts that have resulted in the preservation of the scene of some of that story. Charlie Crawford grew up near Philadelphia and has a B. S. in Applied Mathematics from Georgia Tech. Upon graduation, he entered the Air Force and served in Colorado, Vietnam, Hawaii, the Pentagon, Virginia, Germany, California, Maryland, Alabama, and Nebraska. He retired as a colonel in 1995 and taught technical writing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha before returning to Atlanta in 1996. He's currently director of operations for an information technology consulting company. Charlie has an M. S. in Systems Management from the University of Southern California and was a Senior Air Force Research Fellow at the RAND Corporation. He has authored and edited articles and papers on military and technical topics. In addition to being a member of the Georgia Battlefield Association (see below) (and editor of its monthly newsletter, Georgia Battlefields) and the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta, Charlie is a life member of the Civil War Preservation Trust and the Military Officers Association of America. |
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SPEAKER'S FUND SUPPORT OF THE MONTH There are four items this month. The first item is a copy of Larry Strayer's and Rick Baumgartner's wonderful Echoes of Battle: The Atlanta Campaign (2004 edition), a collection of more than two hundred and sixty accounts by or about soldiers who experienced the Atlanta Campaign one hundred and forty years ago. The second item is a copy of Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston, and the Yankee Heavy Battalions (2001), Stephen Davis's analysis of the Atlanta Campaign that is certain a must for consideration in any study of the May to September actions in North Georgia in 1864. The third item is a biography of Robert E. Lee's son "Rooney" Lee entitled Gray Cavalier: The Life and Wars of General W. H. F. "Rooney" Lee (2002) by Mary Bandy Daughtry. The fourth item is a collection of four issues of Civil War Times Illustrated from 1998 and 2002 with articles on John C. Calhoun, "Disaster in the West Woods" about John Sedgwick's division at Antietam, a special issue on William T. Sherman, Joe Wheeler beating Judson Kilpatrick at Waynesboro, Georgia. Three of the four awards this month were donated to the Round Table by members for the benefit of the Speaker's Fund and to those donors go our thanks. Proceeds from the Speaker's Fund go toward bringing speakers in from outside the area. Your support of the Speaker's Fund is appreciated. |
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GEORGIA BATTLEFIELDS ASSOCIATION Civil War sites in Georgia continue to be damaged and destroyed. Please help us save them. Your tax-deductible annual membership dues are used to:
We hope you will become a member. Contact us by mail: Georgia Battlefields Association, 2331 Fireside Court, Jonesboro, GA 30236. Contact us by e-mail: info@georgiabattlefields.org. |
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LAST MONTH'S MEETING July's meeting at the Marsh-Warthen House in LaFayette to hear Lee White talk about the Battle of LaFayette (June 24, 1864) was a big success. Fifty-six Round Table members, Walker County Historical Society members, guests and visitors attended. It was an interesting and informative evening. Lee did a great talk and looking around the Marsh-Warthen House was interesting. We'll look for a similar opportunity for next July's off-site meeting. |
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FUTURE ROUND TABLE MEETINGS September 21, 2004 - May 17, 2005 - Evan Jones, University of Virginia, "Going Home: Soldiers become Civilians" |
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UP-COMING LOCAL CIVIL WAR EVENTS OF NOTE September 16-20, 2004--programs to commemorate the 141st anniversary of Battle of Chickamauga, Chickamauga Battlefield, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, ranger led tours and walks, Living History demonstrations, book signing by author Matt Spruill; see the National Military Park website at www.nps.gov/chch and watch for more details here next month. October 16, 2004--Bus tour of Hood's North Georgia Campaign, October 1864, sponsored by the Friends of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, more details later. November 11-13, 2004--12th Annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression, sponsored by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Department of Communications, more details later. February 5-6, 2005--Northwest Georgia Trade & Convention Center, I-75 Exit 333, Walnut Avenue, Dalton, Georgia, 9-5 Saturday, 9-3 Sunday; more details later. |
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UNION NURSE'S ACCOUNT INCLUDES CHATTANOOGA Thomas Publications of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, (www.thomaspublications.com) released in May its latest offering, Ministering Angel: The Reminiscences of Harriet A. Dada, A Union Army Nurse in the Civil War, edited by Edmund J. Raus, Jr. Nurse Dada worked during the first half of the war in Union hospitals in Washington, D. C., Winchester, Harpers Ferry, Aquia Creek, Virginia, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Increasingly, her work was in hospitals that served the Union 12th Corps. When the 12th Corps was sent west, Dada followed, working first at Murfreesboro and then in Chattanooga between May of 1864 and September of 1865. Arriving as the Union hospitals in Chattanooga were full of Atlanta Campaign wounded, Dada wrote "Never was I in a hospital where there was so much suffering as at Chattanooga, and never was I more kindly received by the surgeons, nor were my services ever more appreciated by the sick and wounded." The whole account is relatively brief, just sixty-four pages, but is will certainly give you insights into another vastly important aspect of Chattanooga's war-time history. |
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Webmaster's Note: A two-page insert was in this month's issue. The first page was converted to HTML format and is shown below. The second page was scanned and the image is also shown below. |
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| A. D. Kirwan, editor Johnny Green of the Orphan Brigade: The Journal of a Confederate Soldier (Lexington, Kentucky: The University of Kentucky Press, 1956; reprinted 2002), page 151: |
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July 29th we made a hurried march towar[d]s our left to intercept a raiding party coming across by way of Fairburn & Fayetteville to strike the Macon road. We had a light skirmish & captured a few stragglers. On the next day we withdrew again into the trenches around Atlanta & took a position nearer our left, some other troups having been placed in the trenches we had previously occupied. Cannonading & light skirmishing until August 5th 1864 when we were moved to the Sandtown road about two miles from our former position. We were here posted near Utoy Creek to repel an attack expected to be made by a flanking party reported to be moving in this direction. We were given entrenching tools & set vigorously to work but the enemy was soon on us & we dropped the pick & spade & did rapid work with our rifles. The yanks retired & as it was now night we worked diligently & completed our trenches. At day light the enemy began to feel us & skirmishing kept up until about one PM when they made a savage assault but we repulsed them handsomely notwithstanding they made three determined attachs upon us. A portion of their forces effected a lodgement in some timber on a hill from which they annoyed the line on our right. We were ordered to charge this position, which we did, & drove away all except about thirty of them who fought desperately. These we completely overpow[er]ed & captured. So gallant was this fight that Genl Stephen D. Lee issued a Genl Order complimenting our Division 4. Genl Bate of Tennessee was at this time our Major Genl. The enemy lost much more heavily in this days fighting than we did; his loss in killed, wounded & captured was estimated to be about 800 men. The next day we retired into the main line of entrenchments, manning the rifle pits. Our line was so extended now that our men were one yard apart. 4 General Lee's complimentary order is in O. R., Series I, XXXVIII, pt. 3, p. 765. |
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