Notes on the Confederacy’s Next to Last Battle in Georgia
I leave US Highway 17, take the quiet oak-lined county road that divides subdivisions along the Ogeechee River to the entrance of Fort McAllister where history folds back on itself today, wormholes two dates —
December 13, 1864, Fort McAllister falls,
December 9, 2023, the Final Battle of Fort McAllister.
Beyond the portal of the Visitors Center the Yankee encampment has the symmetry of a movie set, tents geometrically spaced as if soldiers were required to measure their separation before raising them. An officer’s wide wall tent in the center, twice the size of others, has two flags guarding the entrance. A former Army soldier, I almost say “Permission to enter” before a bluecoat in slouch hat walks out, introducing himself as a colonel. He tells me he is frying sweet potatoes for breakfast, the smoke and sizzle of his iron skillet over the fire in front of his tent rises to join smoke from other campfires in the late morning’s winter bite of cold wind. He tells me his Union flag has 34 stars and the other’s a gold Irish regiment flag, a Celtic harp visible in its hanging folds.
The night before I searched the web for Civil War era facts —
In 1859, the year construction of The First African Baptist Church of Savannah was completed, an auction of 400 slaves occurred in Savannah, one of the largest in US history.
After Fort Sumter was attacked, President Lincoln called forth 75,000 soldiers to put down the rebellion.
Some young boys who volunteered wrote the number 18 on paper they stuffed in a shoe so they could say they “were over 18” honestly [a folksy tidbit in Smithsonian].
Elderly Confederate veterans were paraded before cheering crowds during the 1939 ‘Gone with the Wind’ movie premier festivities in Atlanta.
He falls out of character quickly, the drumbeat of battle still hours away, says he’s been a reenactor since retiring from the Army in 2014. I ask the obvious question for me, “Afghanistan and/or Iraq?” Like me he was in both wars. He, a retired Lieutenant Colonel, tells me of going home with the body of one of his soldiers, taking him home to his hometown, at the end of their Afghanistan tour. I tell him it somehow seems worst when soldiers die with only days left. He looks at me and doesn’t disagree, but behind his eyes are other deaths he will forever consider.
I think of another Civil War fact, from American Battlefield Trust: Military Losses in American Wars —
Civil War —————————————————————————————— 620,000
Iraq-Afghanistan – 7,000
I tell him I would wish him battle-luck, but, except for those of one Yankee grandmother, all my relatives fought for the South. He salutes. I flash a wave and walk the grassy lane to the Fort.
Two Rebel soldiers stand before a period plantation house outside the fort’s high earthen walls. Rifles long and bayoneted, one says to an audience of mostly children that his cap is called a “‘kepi’ based off French headgear.” His brown-coated chest crossed by straps, holding, as he points to them, “cartridge box,” “haversack,” “canteen.” His so far quiet fellow, much older, with the same coat and gear but sloppy-brimmed cowboy hat and black pullover-strap sneakers, asks the kids, “Has any of you’s heard a Rebel Yell?” After they shake their heads no, he lets out a high-pitched yelp that morphs into a guttural bark. Younger kids laugh and scurry. He asks if anyone can match him? Some older boys try, and, as if planned, a cannon’s earsplitting boom sounds from the fort as a shock to everyone, the children dissolving in squeals and laughter.
I walk inside the dim house where women sit around a spinning wheel in period dresses, glazed by light from the crackling fireplace. One rises to greet me, “Hello, visitor.” She tells me this is the officers’ barracks, bunk beds lining the walls. She says enlisted soldiers will sleep outside on the ground. I think back to sleeping on a cot in the winter woods of Fort Stewart, only a few miles from here, the cold from the ground making my cot feel like a wet towel I can never get comfortable lying on, and that some conditions for soldiers have hardly improved. I also think that to a soldier these women must truly seem lovely.
Back outside in the daylight I find a seat on a low, mock powder keg, against the faux-coquina side wall of the house, facing the yellow hazard tape closing off the area of imminent battle. Some families picnic on blankets in the intervening space, some have set up folding camp chairs along the tape. Children are running everywhere. A Girl Scout troop marches together loosely to a space near the now taped off footbridge entrance to the fort where a Confederate soldier and a ranger speak to them. “Sherman’s troops have been sighted by scouts and are close by and a battle is imminent. The Fort is preparing now.” I pull out the pocket New Testament I carried in the Army to read during periods of waiting. Looking down, I see a toad sitting in the shadow between barrel and wall make a few hops as I rock my seat slightly. I read in Hebrews, “In the time of David, and of Samuel, and of the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of foreign invaders.”
I imagine a rebel officer sitting here last night, unable to sleep while knowing Sherman is coming with his demon’s desire to give Savannah the same fiery fate Atlanta has suffered. Watching a toad hop around in moonlight,
he mouths a prayer —
Almighty God, whose Providence watcheth over all things, in Thine infinite wisdom and power, so overrule events, and so dispose the hearts of all, that this fight may end in defeat and rout of the Yankees and lead to the honor and welfare of our Confederate States. Glory to Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Rat-a-tat-tat of a drum about 300 yards away where the Union soldiers are now leaving camp with rifles slung over shoulders in a two-by-two file, heading for a track where they disappear into the woods to the west of Fort McAllister.
Another cannon fires from the fort. The sun now lighting the western side of the oaks lining the river, makes shadows along the river’s bank. The fort was never taken by bombardment from the river despite Union attempts by wooden gunships and ironclads during the years of the war. Now Sherman, needing to move materiel over the Ogeechee, carried by Federal ships waiting offshore, to assist in taking Savannah, sends 4,000 troops commanded by Brigadier General Hazen to take the fort by land. In the growing exchange of rifle-fire between fort and woods, smoke rises in the woods to give away clumps of Union soldiers. Things settle again briefly. Then, sustained cannon fire. One of the cannons is visible through a valley in the earthen wall, its rebel artillery crew loading, firing, reloading. Then, another pause. After some time, an eager boy lining the hazard tape with his father asks, “How many minutes?!”
More rifle volleys come from the woods, and Union soldiers appear between woods and fort making a rough line. There is a raised soldiers’ chant from the woods then sustained combined yell as Union soldiers race across the open ground and into the moat, through its pickets. Much gunfire and yelling as additional Union forces run across the open ground, surge into the fort.
I imagine thoughts of a confederate soldier inside the fort as the fighting becomes hand to hand:
A tremor of exhaustion rifles like the wind along our line, and we know our bodies are more than our bodies. They are the only things holding back the end of our world.
Finally, the yells in the fort cease and a park ranger walks the footbridge over the moat from the fort. She tells us Fort McAllister has surrendered and invites anyone who wants to enter the fort. After the crowd makes its way in, the reenactors standing idle now, the ranger says she wants to thank Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the City of Richmond Hill, and all the reenactors. She tells us the last act of resistance in the fort was by Captain Clinch, CSA, who drew his sword and challenged Captain Grimes of the Union Army, who insisted his fellows allow him to accept the challenge. When Captain Clinch gained the upper hand by landing a cutting blow to Captain Grimes’ head, Captain Clinch was bayoneted “five or six times” by Yankee soldiers. However, Captain Clinch would survive, she said, and was visited at his sick bed by Captain Grimes who returned Captain Clinch’s sword to him. This story somehow believable in a war where men touted valor and honor so highly.
During the waning days of 1861, President Abraham Lincoln signed a Congressionally approved bill creating “Medals of Honor.” The government presented 1,523 Medals of Honor to recipients during the Civil War, more than in any subsequent war.
After Fort McAllister’s fall, Confederate General William Joseph Hardee rejected Sherman’s demand to surrender Savannah, but this was just a bluff to buy time to recall his troops from their trenches and move them across the Savannah River into South Carolina. By abandoning Savannah, General Hardee saved it from the destruction Atlanta suffered. With no shots fired, Sherman’s troops entered the city of Savannah at the invitation of its mayor, and on December 21st, 1864, General Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln:
I beg to present you a Christmas gift of the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.
Four months after the fall of Fort McAllister, on April 9th, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army to General Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. Lee rode away accepting and returning the salute of the Union officers present.
Seven days after Lee’s Surrender, Union General James A. Wilson would besiege Columbus, Georgia, defended by Confederates commanded by General Howell Cobb, and lay waste to much of the city (as yet unaware of Lee’s surrender, Wilson would say after the war that had he known of it, he would not have visited such devastation on Columbus) — effectively the last battle of the Civil War.
That war-torn, hollowed out South an eon ago of 160 years now.
In growing shadows of late afternoon, I walk with families of excited and talkative children back through the portal of the Visitors Center, back into our United States of America.
Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. His latest chapbook is At Home with the Dreamlike Earth (The Poetry Box, 2023). His work has appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, So It Goes, Synchronized Chaos, and other places, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.