Like many retired people, John Miller is as busy, if not busier, than he was when he was working. The retired civil engineer, after careers in the Navy and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says “his family and his church come first.” After that he takes care of a very large garden with his wife Jane, and also plays in two bands, “old folks bands,” John calls them. He had just come from band practice, and was toting his guitar, when we met to talk about a new duty he has assumed, organizing field trips for the Atlanta Civil War Round Table.
John has been a member of the Round Table since 2009 and was elected to a slot on the organization’s Executive Committee in 2020. Last spring Mary-Elizabeth Ellard, who was moving into the president’s chair, prevailed upon John to set up a series of tours to supplement to Round Table’s regular monthly meetings and lectures. The COVID pandemic interrupted the Round Table’s plans as it did everything else. For several months there were no meetings at all, then lectures were held via Zoom. The Round
GEORGIA’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS In Honor of a Fallen Nation Gould B. Hagler, Jr.
This unique work contains a complete photographic record of Georgia’s memorials to the Confederacy, a full transcription of the words engraved upon them, and carefully-researched information about the monuments and the organizations which built them. These works of art and their eloquent nation’s profound grief, praise the soldiers’ bravery and patriotism, and pay homage to the cause for which they fought.
Table will restart its dinner meetings in September. The tours John has organized have gotten Round Table members out to some of Georgia’s many Civil War sites during the pandemic and will continue after the regular programs resume.
In March a dozen or so members toured the Confederate lines protecting the northwest perimeter of Atlanta against Sherman’s invading force. This initial field trip was led by Charlie Crawford, Round Table member and president of the Georgia Battlefields Association. The works are long gone, of course, as the land has for many decades been part of the Georgia Tech campus. Undulations in the terrain that are today barely noticeable on the pavement and among campus buildings were significant battlefield features. With maps and period photographs to supplement his narration, Charlie brought the past to life.
“As we stood by the building near the Georgia Tech natatorium and looked over to where the Ponder House was, with Charlie’s explanation and the photograph, you can almost make the jump,” John said.
Jim Ogden, Park Service Chickamauga, led the April tour.
the National Historian at
“We examined a number of important monuments and markers throughout the battlefield and discussed their origins and meanings,” John said. “We saw the Fuller gun collection,” he added, “one of the largest collections of military weapons in the U.S.”
In May the tour went to Jonesboro, a few miles south of Atlanta, to examine the site of the final battle before the fall of Atlanta. Bill Dodd, a Round Table member and expert on this phase of the Atlanta Campaign, led this excursion. John pointed out that Bill is “the author of a highly informative volume on Clayton County campaigns during the War of the Rebellion.”
Bill also took the group to the Patrick Cleburne Cemetery in downtown Jonesboro, where hundreds of Confederate soldiers are buried. John said, “We shared a picnic lunch at the old railroad depot,” stressing that these activities are not just about the history. They are also about the fellowship with other Round Table members, who have not seen much of each other during the COVID pandemic.
June found 15 Round Table members off the beaten track, at a place called New Manchester, about 20 miles west of Atlanta. There stand the ruins of a textile mill, destroyed by order of General Sherman in July 1864, and never rebuilt. The small town was abandoned and the area is now part of a state park. John said that the group, led by the park’s interpretative ranger, “walked to the ruins of the old textile mill while discussing its antebellum development, its role in providing materials to the Confederacy, the logistics of getting raw materials to the mill and completed work to the users, and its destruction.”
The ranger also told the story of the mill workers. Mostly women, they suffered the same fate as some 400 workers and their children from nearby Roswell. They were arrested and granted 15 minutes to pack up. Then, with their children, they were deported to the North. From New Manchester there were 43 men and 150 women and children. Two of those participating in this tour are descended from John Cicero Alexander, one of the deported men.
New Manchester is off the beaten path, but in the fall John’s plans are to visit two sites that are on well-beaten paths, Kennesaw Mountain and Chickamauga.
Michael Shaffer will guide a tour of Cheatham Hill on the Kennesaw battlefield, where the well-intrenched Confederate defenders repulsed a Federal attack on the morning of July 27, 1864. On the 50th anniversary of the battle, a monument honoring the Illinois men who fought at Kennesaw was dedicated. The monument was restored and rededicated in 2014. In July this year vandals defaced the monument.
This tour will also take in nearby Pine Mountain, where Confederate Gen. Leonidas Polk was killed by Federal artillery on June 14, 1864.
In November there will be another trip to Chickamauga, but no one should expect any redundancy. Whatever Park Historian Jim Ogden chooses to emphasize on this tour, attendees can expect to learn something new and explore one of the myriad aspects of this great battle.
The maximum size for each tour was set at 15 because of the COVID restrictions. The tours have been mostly outdoors. Masks were not usually required and social distancing was not an issue. John says he will continue to stay abreast of the CDC guidelines and expects restrictions to loosen as more people are vaccinated.
There are many significant Civil War sites in the Atlanta vicinity, so John has no trouble finding interesting places to visit. “I polled the Executive Committee and received a number of great suggestions,” John said. “And Sarah Kelehear reached out to the Round Table to volunteer for her tour at New Manchester,” he added, “so all were very simple to set up.”
Just as important, there is no shortage of talent to lead the tours. There are plenty of local experts willing to volunteer and help further the Round Table’s mission of promoting the serious study of the Civil War. Many of these experts are also members of the Round Table, all the ones mentioned, in fact, except one.
As these events entail no expenditures by the Round Table, no fees were charged, but John has encouraged attendees, and everyone else, to contribute to worthy causes related to the tours: the Georgia Battlefields Association, Friends of Sweetwater Creek State Park, and National Park Pa r t n e r s — C h i c k a m a u g a - Chattanooga-Moccasin Bend.
John took on this job when the pandemic caused the cancellation of the Round Table’s dinner meetings. “The zoom gatherings were still being planned,” he said, “so there was talk of field trips to at least have our members active together.”
John pointed out how the tours focused on different aspects of the war. “We toured the sites of several forts in the Confederate lines of northwest Atlanta,” he said. The Federals were unable to breach the lines, so Sherman went around. Hence the tour to Jonesboro south of the city. “By severing and holding the rail line at Jonesboro in late August 1864, Atlanta’s fall was imminent, so we chose to tour this important area.”
John said that the tour of the mill at New Manchester “provided insight into economic sustenance of the Confederacy, plus we learned of the fate of many of the mill workers and their families.” Of course, Civil War monuments have frequently been in the news of late, “so we visited the site of some of the earliest monuments, Chickamauga.”
Regarding the upcoming tour at Kennesaw, John pointed out that “Sherman learned much at Kennesaw Mountain and the death of Leonidas Polk had an impact on Confederate military leadership during the Atlanta campaign.” As for the next trip toward the northwest, “the battles for Chattanooga proved an important step in the career of U.S. Grant; Missionary Ridge was the beginning of the end for Atlanta, and ultimately for the Confederacy.”
The August column told the stories of three famous women, Antonia Ford Willard, Pauline Cushman, and Loreta Velazquez. Regarding Miss Major Cushman, I mentioned the reports of her visit with Abraham Lincoln at which she demanded her back pay. I received an email from William Christen, author of Pauline Cushman, Spy of the Cumberland. In my column I stated that I was relaying press
accounts and would not attempt to separate fact from fiction. I didn’t, but Mr. Christen did. He advised me that in a very thorough search of sources, including accounts of Lincoln’s daily schedules, he found no evidence Cushman ever met Lincoln.
Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He is a past president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table and the author of Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation, published by Mercer University Press in 2014. Hagler speaks frequently on this topic and others related to different