The Mud Creek Line-Remembering What the Soldiers Forgot

Today, we are pleased to welcome guest author Bobby Novak

When one thinks about 1864, the cities of Petersburg, Richmond, and Atlanta all come to mind, capped by Sherman’s March to the Sea. The battles for Atlanta happened nearly right down the street from my front door, but the rest of those famous events and places occurred tens, hundreds, and thousands of miles away, and to a child who grew up loving the Civil War, Northern Virginia seemed like the place I had to live. Surrounding my front door are numerous neighborhoods and roads that have constant traffic. My house stands in the shadow of Kennesaw Mountain whose numerous trails and preserved earthworks look more like a dog park than a historical landscape. And growing up in this area I thought Kennesaw Mountain was it – the western armies were in Tennessee and all of a sudden they were near my house, and then they were outside of Atlanta. I followed the National Parks that preserve some of the land that made up the Atlanta Campaign and it was not until I got much older that I learned of the many battles and skirmishes that brought the Union and Confederate armies to my back yard.

When I say “my back yard,” I mean that not a mile from my front door are the remnants of skirmish lines and earthworks that made up Hardee’s Corps’ section of the Mud Creek Line. While the eastern armies were busy flanking each other around Richmond and Petersburg, Walker’s Division of Hardee’s Corps was being driven back through drenching thunderstorms and crossed Mud Creek on the night of June 16, 1864. The following morning, the 97th Ohio and the 28th Kentucky pressed the Confederates, captured their skirmish line and held the position through the night. The morning of June 18, 1864 began with a driving rainstorm and the 26th Ohio, 57th Indiana, and 100th Illinois relieved the 97th Ohio and 28th Kentucky and prepared to move forward. Their commander, Colonel Frederick Bartleson, who had lost an arm at Chickamauga and had recently been released from Libby Prison, ordered them forward. The regiments crossed two swollen creeks and took the Confederate works, captured many prisoners, and pushed back the main Confederate. The Federals were then able to bring fresh regiments forward to Bartleson’s position where Federal artillery were able to enfilade  the Confederate lines. The next morning, Johnston ordered his army back toward the defenses on Kennesaw Mountain.

Where was this story while I was a kid?! Small forces bashing away at each other in a thunderstorm is the thing of Hollywood, but not here – not a mile from my front door! Inner-child excitement aside, the question of why I had not heard this story is one that I have been thinking a lot about recently. There are probably countless other stories like this one that get shuffled away and lost inside reports in the O.R.s or in diary entries. Nowhere on the ground near my house is any monument or plaque placed by the veterans. In a rough two square miles, there are four roadside markers placed there by the state of Georgia that give a bullet-pointed view of the action that took place there. Are these signs adequate? I’m not sure there is anything else that could be done. Marietta Country Club did an archeological survey of the ground that they built their neighborhood and golf course over (the same land that the June 18th assault took place) and published it, giving historians a good idea of what was there and what the ground looked like.

But where are the monuments? In the great monument-building boom through the 1870s and 1880s, remembrance organizations and the veterans themselves erected monuments all over the country, a few of the many sit today within the boundaries of the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. Because of their great expense, most organizations could only afford one monument on one battlefield to commemorate their regiment’s actions there but also their entire wartime experience. In that sense, it is understandable that places like Gettysburg and Antietam have so many monuments while Spotsylvania Court House’s can be counted on two hands.

Can it be said that the soldiers forgot places like Mud Creek? Were small engagements and skirmishes just stepping stones to larger clashes? What about the soldier who lost a relative or a friend? Is that seemingly insignificant brush with the enemy something to be forgotten?

I write not to call for a mass reclaiming of every spec of ground a Civil War soldier fought on. I write to ask how professional historians, amateur buffs, and weekend warriors should remember the things that the soldiers seemingly forgot. If the soldiers did not place a monument or spent more than a sentence explaining their experience on a piece of ground, is it worth remembering? In my previous post I wrote of how the average American really does not care about the war and it is because of this that places like the Mud Creek Line are virtually bulldozed over. But what about us, the contributors and readers of the Emerging Civil War Blog, how do we go about remembering these places lost to development and expansion and telling the stories that inhabit that landscape? How can we, how could we, and how should we remember what the soldiers forgot?

Sources for the June 18 assault on Mud Creek

http://www.lat34north.com/HistoricMarkers/CivilWar/EventDetails.cfm?EventKey=18640617a&EventTitle=Mud%20Creek%20Line

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/kennesawmountain/kennesaw-mountain-history-articles/cobbcountysecrist.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/?referrer=http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/kennesawmountain/kennesaw-mountain-history-articles/cobbcountysecrist.html

http://colfab.org/BartlesonFrederickA.html



5 Responses to The Mud Creek Line-Remembering What the Soldiers Forgot

  1. Excellent article! I grew up in Suffolk,Va where Longstreet with Picketts and Hood’ s division laid siege to the town in 1863. A Federal fort bordered our backyard…it was pushed down when a new home was built.Unless people with interests similar to us do something,all these places will be lost!

  2. Interesting. I would question how far the veterans had forgotten these smaller battlefields. For some the experience would undoubtedly be indelibly etched into their psyches and bodies, whilst for others it may well have been just another bloody, muddy field. The institutional memory of the company/regiment/brigade/corps will have been different from that of the individual soldier, and I suspect that it was the former, possibly driven by the officer cadre, along with numerous other factors (the perceived importance of the battle in the narrative of the whole war, for example) that determined the placing of monuments. The answer to this may come from a better understanding of the decision-making processes behind the erection of the monuments in the ’70s and ’80s (something, that as an Englishman and a medievalist, I know nearly nothing about).

    To address your question, the answer has to be one of recording, researching and reporting. Walk the field as it survives. Photograph and draw it. Look at the contemporary accounts and match them up. Write about the smaller engagements, work with local history societies and regional historical journals and the like to publish and share your work. We cannot hope to preserve every piece of ground fought over (the same is true in England, possibly more so because of the sheer density of population) but we can, at least, make sure they don’t disappear from history.

  3. I’m a 30 year resident of west Cobb and though have always been into history per se, I never truly appreciated my neighborhood until I started doing my family genealogy and realized that more than a couple of my ancestors (including great uncles) found themselves down here in Georgia from Indiana, New York and Iowa. My 3rd great grandfather’s unit was involved in skirmishes literally at the foot of my backyard!! What would he say, I wonder, if he were around to see me living here where he fought in the mud at the foot of Lost Mountain? Now that I understand the movements of the troops and where they fought, it helps me appreciate the terrain so much more.

  4. My great grandfather was in the 63rd Ga across Burnt Hickory.He was a Verdet and captured on the Mud Creek line in the early morning of June 19th. He was taken to a POW camp in Indianapolis and took the oath in January and released and returned south.

    1. My Great Great Uncle, Jacob Moss, died at Mud Creek near Kennesaw Mountain on June 19, 1864.Wonder if your Great Grandfather knew my Great Great Uncle? ?

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