During the Civil War, the Union units that came through Dade County and camped throughout the area as they made their way to what they knew would be a battle somewhere around Chattanooga consisted largely of troops from Illinois and Indiana. In case you’ve forgotten your U.S. geography, let me remind you that these are two very flat states. Indiana has some high land, but not much. Illinois is the flattest state in the union except for Florida because glaciers scraped it off like a bulldozer millions of years ago during the Ice Age.
So for many of the young soldiers who tramped through this area, it was their first sight of real elevations. Many of them found the area beautiful and described it in those terms in diaries and letters home. Some were fascinated enough and saw enough promise here to return after the war to marry and begin families in this area. As may you remember, one of my articles some time ago concerned Captain George Washington Eckles, the patriarch of many families on Lookout Mountain, who first came through this area during his service as a Union soldier in the Civil War and returned here with his family to live out his life. This happened far more often than I ever imagined until I began to research the war in this area.
The 40,000 Union troops who came here in General Rosecrans’s army remained in the area for some days because it took a while for their commanders to figure out how and where to go over Lookout Mountain and the ridges on its other side to reach the Chattanooga area. We have records of the messages that were sent between officers in different parts of the county—imagine only being able to communicate via written messages which had to be delivered by horsemen—and there are many exchanges about which passes and roads were the best and what the locals had told them about what would be the best way to proceed. They had not learned quite yet to take this with a large grain of salt.
Many of the locals in this area, especially on Sand and Lookout Mountains, were not dedicated supporters of the Confederacy. They were small farmers and had no slaves so, in their view; they had no dog in the fight. They were usually willing to supply the Yankee soldiers with reliable information about directions, roads, gaps through the mountains, water sources, etc. However, one of Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s favorite tricks for throwing the Yankees off-base was to send a few of his soldiers into the Union camps masquerading as deserters from the rebel forces and supply the bluecoats with wrong information on critical topics. The Yankees caught onto this, of course, fairly quickly, but it caused some wastage of time and resources for a bit.
While the soldiers were here, many of them were busy exploring and absconding with things they needed. It wasn’t just Sherman’s troops who lived off the land during the march to the sea; the armies on both sides often picked up supplies locally as they traveled, mostly by grabbing stuff from small farms and businesses. Sometimes they paid for it; most times they didn’t. The rule for the Northern armies was to take no more than would leave the affected family able to feed itself and meet its basic needs after the transaction, but, of course, this wasn’t always adhered to.
After the war, commissions were set up by the U.S. government to look into repaying people who said they were deprived of property by Union armies. Petitioners had to have at least one witness, had to prove that they had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, and meet some other requirements. I have read records of the proceedings of many of these hearings and found that it was rare, indeed, for the petitioner to be repaid for his/her losses.
Some examples of what went on when the armies passed through:
At Squirrel Town where a Union division camped on a farm with a spring, Private Bliss Morse of the 105th Ohio Infantry wrote, “We camp on a secesh (short for secessionist/Southern sympathizer) farm. Turchin’s Brigade was ahead.” (John Turchin was a Russian by birth and one of the toughest commanders in the Union army including when it came to his own soldiers) “The boys dug his (the farmer’s) potatoes, eat his honey, and killed his hogs and sheep. He would not take any of the greenbacks (Union army money) in pay for his produce. We laid there until noon of the 5th.” Several other units later camped there as well, so you can imagine the condition of this farm afterwards.
The Macon Iron Works was under construction in Dade at the time of the Union pass-through. There had been almost no such businesses in the South prior to the war, but the conflict had made them necessary and very profitable. Donna Street thinks the Macon Works was located about where the Shaw Plant building sits today. Again, from the diary of Pvt. Bliss Morse, “We marched five miles to Trenton, GA and camped near a foundry which is being built... Our camp is on a rebel farm, the owner was a quartermaster for them and he had stores of salt, flour, pork, pepper, and whiskey. There is a new furnace here which the owners left as we came up. They hid their horses in the woods and the boys found them.”
Empire State Iron Works was also under construction at this time with more furnaces being added. It was located behind the ridge just south of the Four Fields. General Negley sent two regiments of infantry and one section of artillery to reconnoiter the area. He reported the capture of the following articles: “Large lot of spades, picks, and shovels (probably made at the foundry), 29 pairs of shoes, 146 sacks of shelled corn (two bushels). 13 sacks oats, 6 kegs nails, 1 keg fuse, 2 kegs white lead, 250 sacks wheat, 1 keg blasting powder, 39 sacks salt, 1 sack cotton, 1 barrel tar, 3 barrels lard.” This, of course, was a bonanza for the finders. The next day, Negley wrote to his superiors, “I have the honor to report the discovery and seizure of the following articles 2 1⁄2 miles south of here: Between 200 and 300 bushels of wheat, 35 sacks shelled corn, 16 sacks oats, 6 bushels onions, 20 head of cattle - the property of the Empire Iron Works.” The iron works was destroyed on 21 November, 1863.
And one final report from the passing Union troops which brings home the true cost of the war to places like Dade County, from the records of the Regimental Historian, 73rd Illinois Infantry:
"McKaig’s at the foot of the mountain at Rising Fawn and Old State Road (The route used by most of Rosecrans’s army in crossing Lookout Mountain): On getting halfway up the mountain, we came to a small field, an orchard, and an old log hut. In the hut was a poor, helpless woman suffering from intermittent fever. She was lying on a very scant and rickety bed and had an army blanket for her covering. There was no furniture left in the house. A part box of army crackers, some coffee and sugar had been left by passing (Union) soldiers for the woman and her two small children to subsist on. The husband and father had been killed in the rebel army about six months previously. The floor of the old hut being partly gone and some of the many spaces between logs of the side walls, being not less than ten inches wide, together with the suffering and poverty within, made the picture a sad one to contemplate.”
I wonder whose wife and children these were in such dire circumstances in late fall of 1863, whether any of them survived, and how many more of our forebears lived similar circumstances because of the scourge of war.
--Joy Odom
hujodom149@gmail.com
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