Southern Sentinel
June 2014 Vol. XII #6
www. scv1642.com
Col. Hiram Parks Bell Camp # 1642
Sons of Confederate Veterans
A Southern Heritage and Historical Society
OFFICERS FOR 2014
OUR NEXT MEETING
CMDR: CLIFF ROBERTS
Monday, June 23rd
At 7:00 PM
Social time starts early around
6:30 PM
Bell Research Center
101 School St. Cumming GA
678-455-7216
Everyone is Welcome! Call for
Directions
770 656 5585
LT. CMDR: MICHAEL DEAN
404-771-6507
ADJ. DAN BENNETT
770 888 2800
CHAPLAIN: JOEL
ANDERSON
770 218 7785
COMMANDER’S TENT
Fellow Compatriots,
Four of our camp members, Joel Anderson,
Michael Dean, Mike McAlpin, and myself, were
present for the 117th Georgia Division Reunion held
in Columbus, Georgia. The Stewart-Webster Camp
1607 did a wonderful job hosting the event. Friday
night found us at the National Civil War Naval
Museum for a members-only tour. The Saturday
meeting went the entire day. Jack Bridwell ended
his tour as Division Commander, and he reported
that he had “had a ball” as our state leader. Ray
McBerry will assume the office. Philip Autrey of
Stone Mountain #1432 is the new North Lt.
Commander and Michael Mull is the new Lt.
Commander South. Karl Haun will continue in his
role as 2nd Brigade Commander. Finances remain sound and all five Division Tag Fund Projects, at a cost of
$44,000 were approved. Georgia remains the largest division in the SCV, though state membership has fallen
four years in a row to 3,092 members.
Deo Vindice!
Cliff Roberts
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UPCOMING EVENTS:
June 23 – June Camp Meeting – Michael Hitt will be speaking on the Canons of Fort Walker in Grant Park
June 28 – 9:00 Mill Worker Monument Ceremony conducted by Roswell Mill SCV Camp #1547. Martin O'Toole
will be the key note speaker.
July 4 – Independence Day Parade in downtown Cumming.
July 16-19 - Sons of Confederate Veterans 119th National Reunion North Charleston, SC. Observing the
sesquicentennial of the C.S.S. H.L. Hunley
Aug 25 – August Camp Meeting
Sept 20/21 – 150th Re-enactment of Battle of Atlanta – Nash Farms
Sept 22 – September Camp Meeting – Michael Shaffer, from Kennesaw State University, will speak on the
Atlanta Campaign and the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.
Camp Hardtack
The Bell Research Center added four
volumes to the ongoing South Carolina
Regimental Roster set. We now have all 14
volumes of the projected 50-volume set.
The new titles are Palmetto Sharpshooter
Regiment, 15th Battalion South Carolina
Heavy Artillery, A History of the Fifth
South Carolina Volunteers, Walk in the
Light; The Journey of the 10th and 19th
South Carolina Volunteer Infantry.
Each year the Col. Hiram Parks Bell
Chapter of the UDC has made a significant
contribution to the Bell Research Center.
Annelle Jones and Monty Johnson
presented to the UDC several books and a
new Songs of the Civil War music CD. The books include Our Connection with Savannah; A History of
the 1st Battalion Georgia Sharpshooters and Company A of the 40th Georgia Infantry Regiment in the
Confederate Service. In the photograph is Annelle Jones, Clark Rye, and Frank Clark.
Adjutant Dan Bennett reports that applications for camp membership have been received from
Mike Maciolek and Richard Gilbert.
Sydney H. Smith, our summer history intern from Georgia State, has been updating the Bell
Research Center web page and Facebook site.
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Thank you to Clark Rye, Mike McAlpin, and Jerry Sanders for placing the new marker next to
the grave of CSA veteran Lourico Payne at the Pleasant View Baptist Church.
Flashback Friday! Throwback
Thursday! Can anyone identify this
young Scot and his pretty wife
Carolyn?
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The historic Confederate statue in Cuthbert, Georgia was attacked and damaged this month. No
one has been arrested for the destruction. Civic groups from around Randolph County have pledged to
replace the soldier. Two of the cannons were also damaged. The statue has been in the town's square
since the late 1800s.
The Bell Center received, as a gift from Cliff Roberts, the Southern Cross of Honor awarded to
Henderson Estes (1826-1910) by the General James Longstreet UDC Chapter #6 in 1938. Henderson was
a lifetime resident of Forsyth County, the son of Miles Estes and Mahala Jordan, and served as a private
in Company A of the 2nd Georgia State Troops. His grandson, George Presley Estes, Jr., was also
awarded a cross of honor for his service in World War I. The Estes family are Forsyth County pioneers
and their descendants have become noted for their musical abilities. Henderson Estes is buried with his
wife Sara Sinclare Foster in the Estes-Foster Cemetery behind the Sawnee Electric building on Highway
9. The camp looked after the family cemetery until it was fully restored by the Sawnee EMC right-ofway crew in September 2007. Henderson Estes and Joseph D. Foster, Captain of the 22 nd Georgia
Infantry are the two CSA soldiers buried in the cemetery.
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Five Tag Fund projects were approved at the 117th Reunion. 35 Crosses of Honor will
be placed at the Clinton Methodist Church. 150 Crosses of Honor will be placed at Cedar Hill
Cemetery near Columbus, and 15 Crosses will be planted Greenwood Cemetery in Barnesville.
The Twiggs County Confederate Soldier will be restored and placed in a more suitable location.
Six camps received $22,519 to erect a bronze Confederate Soldier monument at the Marietta
Cemetery, the largest Confederate Cemetery south of Richmond, Virginia. Our trip included
stops at the Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, and the National Civil War Naval Museum.
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The 43rd Georgia, under Captain Ralph Mills, served as the honor guard for the Lt. General
Leonidas Polk Sesquicentennial Memorial Service near Kennesaw Mountain on Saturday, June 14th.
The "Fighting Bishop" was not forgotten on his special day. Present at the Memorial was Francis
Devereaux Polk IV, the great-great-great-grandson of Bishop Polk. While a resident of New Jersey, he
did point out that New Jersey was the only state to vote against Lincoln twice!
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Author Steve Davis spoke to our camp last year. His editorial on “Uncle
Billy” appeared in the AJC this week:
Sherman convicted by his own words
Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, U.S. Army, stands accused of four counts of war
crimes. By his own admission, he is guilty.
After World War II, the Nuremberg Charter defined war crimes as violations of the laws or customs of war. It lists
several categories of offenses. Let us see how Sherman, on his own authority and under no orders from his
superiors, violated the laws and customs of war.
Murder or ill-treatment of civilians: Union artillery had barely gotten into range of Atlanta when, on July 19, 1864,
Sherman ordered a bombardment of the city’s buildings: “No consideration must be paid to the fact they are
occupied by families, but the place must be cannonaded.” The Yankee guns fired their first shells on July 20, and
within a few days, Confederate newspapers began reporting casualties. One shell wounded a woman and killed the
child she was carrying in her arms. In my book, I have concluded that the victims were the wife and child of John
M. Weaver, an engineer who lived on Walton Street.
Sherman maintained a perverse determination to shell Atlanta, denying that innocent civilians still lived there. “You
may fire from 10 to 15 shots from every gun you have in position into Atlanta that will reach any of its houses,” he
ordered his artillery on Aug. 1. “Fire slowly and with deliberation between 4 p.m. and dark.”
Three weeks later, the bombardment ceased only because Sherman gave up on his semi-siege of Atlanta and led
most of his army toward Jonesboro to break the Rebels’ railroad supply line (this he did on Aug. 31, forcing
Confederate evacuation of the city the next day). Civilian casualties of Sherman’s 37-day bombardment are hard to
count, but I estimate about 25 dead, and two or three times more wounded.
Deportation of civilian population in occupied territory: On Sept. 4, just days after his troops entered Atlanta,
Sherman dictated his Special Field Orders 67: “The City of Atlanta being exclusively required for warlike purposes,
will at once be vacated by all except the Armies of the United States.” Civilians wishing to go south would be taken
to Confederate lines under truce flags; the Rebels would then have to transport them on to Macon. The displaced
could take some possessions, but most of their property, not to mention their homes, would be left behind.
The real shock was that Sherman expelled even those Atlantans who were Northern sympathizers (“secret
Yankees”). They and their belongings would be taken by train to Nashville or other points north. Eventually, some
1,650 men, women and children were dumped into Confederate lines south of the city during September. (A
handwritten list of their names is in the National Archives.) Probably an equal number went north. Sherman’s forced
expulsion of Atlanta’s civilian population has been called by historian Mary Elizabeth Massey “the single largest
forced evacuation of an entire city during the Civil War.”
Plunder of public or private property: Maybe 50 families were allowed to stay during the Union occupation, which
lasted till mid-November. This meant that most of the houses in the city were abandoned. Union officers moved into
the nicer ones, but most of the Northern troops camped outside of town. To build their huts, the Yankees tore down
houses, outbuildings and shacks. Sherman’s Field Order 67 allowed “buildings, barns, sheds, warehouses and
shanties” to be so used, and they were. “All around fine houses are leaving, by piece-meal,” wrote one of Sherman’s
men, “on the backs of soldiers. All these, to fix up quarters.” For the civilians who came back to find their homes
gone, Sherman would simply have told them that war is war — a kinder phrase than the one he is more famous for.
Wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages: Before he left Atlanta on his March to the Sea, Sherman ordered the
destruction not only of railroad depots, factories, shops and warehouses in Atlanta, but whole blocks of the
downtown business section along Whitehall and Peachtree streets. The engineers knocked down what they could,
then blew up or burned what was left. Soldiers saw that “the engineers were having all the fun,” as one put it, and
set fires of their own throughout the city. Sherman never ordered the wholesale burning of Atlanta. He didn’t need
to; he knew what his veterans would do when he looked the other way.
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“The boys commenced burning every house in (the northwest part) of the town,” wrote Capt. James Ladd of the
113th Ohio. “The wind was blowing hard at the time, and soon that part of the city was gone.” We’ll never know how
much of Atlanta was burned before Sherman rode out on Nov. 16. Estimates run from a quarter of the city to 80
percent or higher. Sherman was satisfied, as he announced later in a field order congratulating his men: “We quietly
and deliberately destroyed Atlanta.” The Yankees’ destruction was not quiet, but it was certainly deliberate.
A few years ago, I participated in a “mock trial” of General Sherman, staged by the historical society of Lancaster,
Ohio, his home town. I was invited up to serve as prosecutor. We lost, of course: The three judges were Lancastrians
playing U.S. generals, and the gallery was also stacked against us. It didn’t matter: I and my Southern witnesses
argued our case strongly and passionately. In my closing statement, I addressed the judges: “Go ahead and justify
him! Nobility, decency and civility have already been vanquished, ground into the red clay of Georgia by the heels of
100,000 Yankee soldiers under the direct command of William Tecumseh Sherman!”
I rest my case.
The Please make plans to participate in Cumming’s 4th of July Independence Day Parade in
Cumming. We will need men to carry our camp banner in front of the re-enactors. The Memorial Day
Parade in Gainesville drew loud cheers and a few Rebel yells.
Charles Bearden did a wonderful job describing the life and times of General Clement Evans at
our May meeting. Members present:
Jerry Bryan # 1418
Clark Rye #1642
Elijah Anderson #1642
Mike McAlpin #1642
Mike Maciolek # 1642
Joe Bailey #1642
Chad White #1404
Richard Thompson #1642
Tony Lett #1642
Michael Dean #1642
Michael Dean #1642
Joel Anderson #1642
Ralph Mills #1404
Jerry Sanders #1642
Frank Clark #1642
Cliff Roberts #1642
Mike Couch #1404
Dan Bennett #1642
Michael Dean #1642
Guests: Sydney Smith, David Mitchell, Bill Potter, Teresa Dean.
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