| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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That seems a little unfriendly to me, but Evelyn thinks that it is because a major highway runs through Chickamauga Park. It seems that most National Parks are now charging admission. They used to let people in free, but since everything is going to pay-as-you go these days, the Park has to get back some of its cost. It can't charge admission so they have to get it back however they can. This is the great Republican plan to cut taxes and have payment by usage. You can decide what you want better than the government can. The only problem is they never got around to cutting my taxes.
Well, one thing that is free is they have a Civil War re-enactor dressed up in a Southern uniform telling you what it was like to be in the Confederate Army. First of all the stereotype of not having enough uniforms and having to go barefoot was usually not true, but the instances tend to stand out. He wore a broad-brimmed hat. The little round hats with the disk on top were hated. They called them 'sun-burners' since they gave no protection from the sun or much else. They were worn as a matter of style that once had a function. I think the people who designed them went on to design recessed bumpers for cars.
He talked about the difference of food. The North would pack up meat in barrels and send them by train, when they could, otherwise they had horses pulling it. Men would walk since meat had to be pulled. The South came up with a device so the meat actually transported itself. It was called a 'steer.' Large numbers of these steers would follow the army. It was a healthy but a tough life for a steer, following the army. And healthy but tough was the meat. (The witty remarks are mine, not presenter's, by the way. I thought you had a right to know. The presenter's only joke was that historical recreation and heavy metal music went together to do a number on his ears. Both are very loud.)
The army bought Enfield rifles from England and then wasted them in close-up battles. It was not until late in the war was it realized that it was a highly accurate rife that could be used from a great distance. Altogether there were 124,000 men in the battle of which there were 34,000 casualties. That accounted for only 2400 outright deaths on the battlefield, but of course many more would follow from the injuries. The battle was so loud it could be heard fifty miles away. The concussion of the cannon was so loud that gunners often came away with blood running from their ears and noses. The battle was so fierce that the local lumberyards would not afterward accept wood from Chickamauga because their saws kept being ruined on bullets.
We talked a little with our presenter afterward. He spent about a month working on Gettysburg. He was in the Little Roundtop scenes. Being near the firing of these loud guns and cannons really does damage, so he says you can imagine what it would be like on the battlefield.
We took the tape and went around the battlefield. It was a hot day. This is another battlefield with a lot of monuments. It is well forested as it was at the time. You see where the gap formed in the Union line and where Longstreet streamed through. Wilder Tower looks like a giant chess rook.
From there we headed up to Chattanooga for a look at the heights where Bragg shelled the town. We stopped to eat at a place called My Place. It had an interesting mix of fast foods and homemade. I had a barbecue platter and Blackberry Cobbler.
You pass through the town of St. Elmo. Now I had heard that there was no such saint and that he and St. Elmo's Fire was a fraud. Here they have a whole town named St. Elmo.
We drove up lookout mountain which looks like to day to be a posh residential area. They must have a lot of robberies since many of the houses have ADT security signs out. There is a park at the top of the hill that offers nice views of the city, not that it did Bragg's siege much good.
We stopped for the night at Shepherd Budget Host Motel between Chattanooga and Kennesaw. I wrote up the day and watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
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09/13/97--Kennesaw, Georgia:
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I was up writing until midnight. I woke up and it was dark out. I checked my watch and did a double-take. The watch claimed it was after 7 AM. I think this was the first time it has been dark at 7 AM for me since last winter. Of course, I am at the extreme west of the Eastern time zone. When we went west we had the longer summer day in our favor. In September the days are getting shorter the fastest they ever do. Now the question. Can we expect this every day from now on? We will be moving eastward, so the sunrise should be earlier each day but for the fact it is September and it should get later. Of course, it depends on how fast we go, but I expect earlier sunrises. The movement east should be the dominant factor.
Not a bad Continental breakfast was included with the motel. It was pastries and doughnuts from a box, but there was a microwave right there to heat them. They also had cereal packaged in plastic bowls. That made a reasonable breakfast.
We headed for the Kennesaw State Park, but passed on the way the Big Shanty Museum. No it was not a museum of big shanties. This was the final resting place of The General. Fans of silent movies may know what I am talking about, and also fans of obscure Civil War history. The General played an important part in one of the lessor-known chapters of history and Buster Keaton made a highly inaccurate film about the incident which nonetheless made one of the great classic silent films. Walt Disney also made a film version, somewhat more accurate, called The Great Locomotive Chase starring Fess Parker. It sounds like Turner is considering making a film about the incident also. It was Saturday, April 12, 1862, the first anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter. Captain W. A. Fuller, conductor of freight and passenger train The General had stopped the train at Marietta, Georgia, and twenty men came aboard. A few minutes later he stopped for breakfast at the town of Old Shanty. He went with engineer Jeff Cain and foreman Anthony Murphy.
Breakfast was interrupted when they saw The General pulling out of the station without them. It seems they had picked up eighteen Yankee soldiers and two spies. The leader was James J. Andrews, a Union secret service agent. The Union plan was to steal a train and sabotage rails, burn bridges, cut telegraph lines, and do whatever mischief they could arrange.
Fuller and the others jumped up and started chasing the train on foot. Two miles down the track they found a push car and chased the train with that. They had to stop to remove a pile of cross-ties left on the track. North at Acworth they added two men to their numbers and a shotgun. The group fond a train to transfer to, the Yonah, and set off in pursuit with that. They had hoped a freight train coming in the other direction would stop the Federals. It did, but not long enough for the pursuers to catch up. The Federals had told locals that they were carrying ammunition for General Beauregard.
The pursuers had to switch trains to avoid a freight blockade. They changed to the locomotive William R. Smith. They chased the Yankees in the Smith, but time and time again had to stop to clear from the track railroad ties left by the Yankees. After four miles they had to abandon the Smith as the General had torn up rails in its wake.
After walking three miles, the pursuers flagged down another train, the Texas. It had been sidetracked for the train supposedly carrying ammunition to Beauregard. But the train could not be turned around without a turntable so started chasing the Yankees going backward.
The Texas caught up with the General two miles north of Calhoun where they saw it stopped with Yankees tearing up rails. The Texas blew their whistle and the Yankees jumped back aboard their train. The chase was on. The Yankees de-coupled a boxcar, but the Texas only coupled it and continued in pursuit. Fuller expected the Yankees to set fire to the covered bridge at the Oostanuala River. Luckily it was a rainy day and the bridge would not burn. Instead they left another boxcar. The Texas added it to the load they were pushing. Further up the line they rid themselves of the boxcars on a siding. Fuller scrawled out a note explaining the situation and had it telegraphed to Chattanooga. Eight miles above Dalton was a tunnel that would have been an obvious place to sabotage, but nothing was done. The Yankees were too worried to get away. Ahead there were bridges to burn, but it was too wet for the Yankees to do it. Just a little short of Chattanooga the chase ended when the General ran short of wood and water. The Yankees abandoned the engine and ran into the woods. Most were eventually rounded up and executed as spies including James Andrews. The museum has a tape giving the story of that day. It has the actual engine of the General. And it had a bunch of other random exhibits of that day or of what things might have been like that day.
The place is run by one Harper Harris who is into historical re-enactment. We talked to him about the Buster Keaton film and other films that hire historical re-enactors. He was not happy with Gettysburg because they didn't really pay the historical re-enactors and they got a lot of free expertise with them. He talked about some of the films he was in. You never know if film will be good or not when you agree to be in it. He was in Paris Trout which he thought was just a terrible movie. And he was in The Last Confederate Widow Tells All. He expected that to be terrible and when he actually saw it he thought it was pretty good. I would say he is absolutely right in the first case and pretty much right about WIDOW. I thought it sort of petered out, but mostly it was good.
Another building nearby is called 'The General Store.' Something of a pun.
Well, on we went to Kennesaw Mountain. Let's see, when we last left the Civil War Jefferson Davis had reluctantly given Braxton Bragg's command to Joe Johnston. It now had 65,000 men.
Grant gave Sherman command of 100,000 and sent him to try to destroy Johnston's army and open the door to taking Atlanta. Johnston had his forces dance around Sherman's, rarely engaging him. Johnston moved his troops onto Kennesaw Mountain.
The aggressive Sherman was having more problems than he wanted to admit. (When the war was over the two men would have a close friendship based on mutual respect.) Sherman tried to extent his forces south of Johnston, this created a weakness in his lines and Johnston was quick to counter it June 22 with a jab to the center of Sherman's line at Kolb's Farm. Sherman decided on a quick punch to go through the Southern lines. He misjudged the strength and the battle ended in a standoff. They were stood off at Pigeon Hill in rough terrain. At Dallas Road 8000 Union infantrymen hit two divisions of Johnston's army. 3000 Union soldiers were lost to the Union, 500 to the Confederacy. Sherman spent a few more days beefing up to hit Johnston, but by then Johnston and his forces had slipped out.
When the fighting was over Johnston had killed a great many of Sherman's men but Sherman was closer to Atlanta. It is unclear who had the victory. Lee was exasperated with Johnston's unwillingness to engage the enemy in a single big battle. That was what Davis understood, a big fight that the Confederacy obviously won. Johnston doubted that could be delivered. Johnston's strategy may have been far more subtle. Johnston seems to have a similar strategy to Chairman Mao's strategy on guerrilla warfare. It is not clear that Jefferson Davis wanted or even understood guerrilla war. Davis wanted to see the Union army ashed. Johnston wanted to bleed it rather than bash it.
We went to Pigeon Hill and tried to climb it. |
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