Uncovering Civil War History In The NHA

The National Heritage Area contains some fascinating Civil War history from skirmishes at Flat Rock during the Battle of Atlanta to experiencing the destruction of William Sherman’s March to the Sea. 

160 years ago this mid-November, what would become Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area was the launching point for one of the largest military operations in US history: William Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea. Folks living back then in Stone Mountain, Lithonia, Conyers and Flat Rock would’ve witnessed tens of thousands of Union Soldiers marching across the landscape, raiding homes and plantations, destroying critical industry and infrastructure. They also would’ve witnessed a second army, not of Confederates, but of thousands of Black people who’d self-emancipated by fleeing to Federal troops. These formerly enslaved individuals were marching with the Union Army, they were marching to what they thought would be their “Jubilee.”

Stretching from Lithonia down to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area is where this incredible chapter in history started! In this Field Note, we’ll walk in the footsteps of Civil War history. 

From Atlanta To The Sea

Two months before the beginning of the March to the Sea, in mid-September, Sherman’s army of some 60,000 had taken Atlanta after spending weeks encircling most of the city and cutting it off from its railroad depots. It was during this time that what is now the NHA saw its first Union soldiers scouting the area. Confederate and Union troops even clashed on October 2 during a skirmish at the “Crossing of Flat Rock Road and McDonough Road” as described in a report by Union Brigadier General Joseph A. Cooper. After the fall of Georgia’s capital, Federal troops would spend weeks in the area foraging, taking supplies from Southern communities, and preparing for Sherman’s plan to “make Georgia howl,” as he’d written to Ulysses S. Grant.

On the morning of November 17, two days after the March to the Sea began with the burning of Atlanta, federal troops arrived in Lithonia, bringing with them much destruction. As in nearby Stone Mountain Village, the Union Army went to great lengths to demolish the Georgia Railroad track and depot. According to the book Crossroads of Conflict: A Guide to Civil War Sites in Georgia, “in Lithonia a special vengeance was extracted. In retaliation for ‘bushwhacking,’ sabotage activities carried out by locals, much of the town was ransacked and burned, with Major General William T. Sherman on hand to oversee the destruction. An exception was the Masonic Lodge, an organization with many members from both sides. Federal guards were posted outside the building to ensure its protection. Sherman spent the night of November 16, 1864 in a Lithonia home that is no longer standing, and the next day the Federals marched twenty miles to Conyers.”

Lithonia, which lies at the north end of the Heritage Area, was also the first site along the destructive March to the Sea path where Sherman’s men used special tools to lift railroad tracks and heat them over fires of stacked ties to such a degree that these steel tracks could be bent around trees and saplings, rendering them unusable. These bent railroad tracks became known as “Sherman’s neckties” and soon became a common signature of Sherman’s destruction as his army cut a path 60 miles wide across Georgia from Atlanta to the sea. 

Before leaving the region, Federal troops even climbed nearby Arabia Mountain (then called Bradley Mountain) and reported seeing plumes of smoke rising all the way back to Atlanta from various farms, businesses and public properties all set ablaze by federal soldiers. Local historian and DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond wrote in his most recent book James Oglethorpe, Father of Georgia: 

From [Lithonia] the general could clearly see the hauntingly grayish hues of Stone Mountain, “a mass of granite” illuminated by the glow of “bonfires of rail-ties” and burning Confederate buildings. The following day a dusty blue stream of soldiers passed through “the handsome town of Covington.” Several hundred jubilant and grateful Blacks crowded the roadsides and cheered their conquering heroes.

How The March Impacted Georgians

For many White Southerners, it was an apocalypse—the end of an era. For Black Southerners, however, the March to the Sea represented a once-a-lifetime shot at freedom, the beginning of a new world.

As to be expected, the lives of the former Antebellum aristocracy and slave-owning class were irrevocably altered. In 1918, Dolly Sumner Lunt published A Woman’s Wartime Journal about how the Civil War came to her plantation in small-town Covington, GA, which lies just outside the Heritage Area. On November 19, 1864, Lunt wrote: 

Sherman himself and a greater portion of his army passed my house that day. All day, as the sad moments rolled on, were they passing not only in front of my house, but from behind; they tore down my garden palings, made a road through my back-yard and lot field, driving their stock and riding through, tearing down my fences and desolating my home—wantonly doing it when there was no necessity for it.

Such a day, if I live to the age of Methuselah, may God spare me from ever seeing again!

As night drew its sable curtains around us, the heavens from every point were lit up with flames from burning buildings. Dinnerless and superless as we were, it was nothing in comparison with the fear of being driven out homeless to the dreary woods. Nothing to eat!

As for the enslaved individuals who lived on her plantation, Lunt wrote that Federal troops forced them to abandon her and leave with the army, a common claim from former enslavers who could not accept the willingness with which enslaved populations fled plantations toward Sherman’s Army as it burned and slashed through Georgia toward Savannah. Many of these formerly enslaved Black people became invaluable in the Union Army’s progress across Georgia, serving as laborers, scouts, cooks and providing intelligence. 

Sadly, the lives of formerly enslaved folks are easily the most overlooked perspectives of history written about Sherman’s March to the Sea. While most Southern Whites suffered from a lack of food and supplies in the fall of 1864 and into the winter of 65, those who suffered the most would’ve been the most vulnerable. This would’ve been large populations of Black folks who might’ve been recently freed by military decree but were not yet citizens with any rights. (Indeed, the emancipated would not officially become free until the passage of the 13th Amendment in January 1865—and it would take another three years until the 14th Amendment for them to become naturalized citizens.)

In his landmark study “Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and Georgia’s Refugee Slaves,” Ben Parten wrote: 

According to the Emancipation Proclamation the army had a mandate to “recognize and maintain” what Lincoln called “actual freedom,” but “actual freedom” itself, remained undefined. And whatever responsibility the army may have had to enforce emancipation, its responsibilities ended there. According to General William T. Sherman’s official orders, refuge was not to be granted unless a freed man or woman could be incorporated into the army as either a cook or common laborer. The freed people, however, paid little heed to Sherman’s commands. From the young and healthy to the old and infirm, scores of refugee slaves fled to the army, and as many as 17,000 refugees followed the army as it marched on to Savannah.

Sherman and his men had no desire to make their march one of liberation, but by running from their plantations, the enslaved did so for them. Indeed, through their experiences as refugees, Georgia’s freed men and women transformed Sherman’s march into one of black freedom and citizenship. While individual refugee experiences varied, African American men and women throughout the state acted in ways that secured their freedom and resolved their ill-defined relationship to the federal government. By the time the army reached Savannah, the refugees efforts would be recognized. Not only would they find committed allies in many of the soldiers, who, so far as one officer knew, had become “all abolitionists [sic],” but Sherman would issue his famous Field Order 15, which set aside the South Atlantic coastline exclusively for black landownership. What the refugees called their “jubilee” seemingly came true, only to meet a tragic end.

Looking Back On Promises Broken

Sherman’s destructive and crippling military campaign would serve as one of the largest emancipation events in US history, between 17,000 to 25,000 Black refugees over 37 days from Atlanta to Savannah. However, it would also come to represent one of the Federal Government’s biggest betrayals of its own people.

Field Order 15, which famously became the promise of “40 acres and a mule” to emancipated African Americans, never came true. And after Reconstruction efforts fell apart in 1877, many of the gains made in human and civil rights after the Civil War were lost. Black folks across the nation slid back into marginalization under the reign of a new form of racial terrorism and segregation known as Jim Crow.   

As we look back 160 years on how this chapter of history began and unfolded in our Heritage Area, we should never forget that nothing is written in stone—not even our histories—and that hard-fought progress of many years can be torn down in a day.