Civil War in the Hill Country, Part Two

The sky was Confederate gray when we set out on the drive to Pickett's Mill State Historic Site, located on the road to Etowah, near Dallas, Georgia. Eleven of us carpooled from Rico Community Center to the battlefield, where we met up with Dr. Keith Bohannon. I had known that the site had been, until the 1970s, privately owned woods and fields (in fact, it was heavily logged in the 1960s). But I was unprepared for the discovery that not only are there no military monuments there, but there also aren't any roads. The closest to a road was an old track, right beside where we stood, above. That track had been there when the battle was fought, back on May 27th of 1864. In the photo above, the Ravine Overlook is a vantage point for viewing where most of the carnage occurred: the Federal troops occupied the ravine, while the Confederate forces fired down on them with rifles and cannon from this very place. The Confederates held the high ground, and won the battle, though the victory was short-lived; Atlanta fell a few months later.
Our path led along the old roadway, past red flags standing in patches like strange out-of-season flowers. We passed a couple of college students, surveying. Archaeology is ongoing there, particularly near where Pickett's Mill once stood. Archaeologists are hoping to locate the home of the farm family that owned the land, and operated the mill, back in 1864. Their fate is unknown, though it is assumed that they abandoned the area before the battle began. The mill itself was burned down after the battle. All that remains is the well, boarded over and fenced off, and a pair of large square stones on opposite banks of Pumpkinvine Creek. The stones were part of either the mill or, more likely, the mill dam. Such a tranquil place now, but it must have been horrible to be standing there during the battle, when Confederate forces held the high ground on the far side of the creek, pummelling the Federals below with cannon and rifle fire. I cannot imagine the horrors of that battle, or the Civil War in general. The only writer I have found that evokes what I suspect the experience was like is Ambrose Bierce, in short stories such as "Chickamauga". Bierce was present in this battle, too, and he wrote a short essay about the experience, though it did not inspire him to craft a story, the way the Battle of Chickamauga did.

The stream was so peaceful, flowing over boulders of gneiss, the weathered skin of Georgia's upper Piedmont. We admired the way the water splashed over pebbles, flowing through the valley where so much blood must have flowed from fallen soldiers. Later, Keith would explain to us how often it was not possible to tell whether a dead soldier belonged to the Union or the Confederacy; in death, all were brothers.

Our path continued along the stream a short distance, then up the ravine, following the route that Hazen's Brigade of Federal infantry had taken, all the while being fired at from the top of the ravine by dismounted Confederate cavalry. We walked along the edge of a field, which had been planted in wheat at the time of the battle. A terrible place to get caught in crossfire -- sometimes it is not so wonderful to be out standing in one's field.

Continuing upslope, we came to a place where a pair of low ridges with a narrow gully between could be seen under a blanket of oak leaves. Amazingly enough, these earthworks were dug hastily by the federal troops positioned there when the battle began. Over 140 years ago now, yet the land remembers. Could there be a finer monument to the fallen dead than these gentle furrows in the ground?

We made our way back to the visitor center, watching the ravine beside us get deeper and deeper, more and more narrow and rugged. Our band of eleven found the way tough going, and we were not lugging guns and packs. One of us found the uphill route too difficult, and the park service dispatched a small vehicle to pick her up and bring her back. Such a sorrowful place, haunted, in my imagining, by the bodies of so many hundreds dead. I was ready to go home.