The List

By Dr. David Evans · Originally published March 2016 · pp. 2–3

Preservation News By Dr. David Evans

The List

In 1991, the United States Congress created the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission (CWSAC) and tasked it with identifying America’s “most important” Civil War battlefields. Two years later, the 15-member commission published its report, listing 384 “principal battles” which it ranked according to their military importance as a first step toward preserving these historic sites for future generations. It was a good beginning. For nearly three decades, the commission’s recommendations have helped shape the course of battlefield preservation across America. However, the CWSAC report has also had some unintended consequences which give cause for concern. The commission listed battles in 26 states, including one in Idaho, five in North Dakota, and two sites in Oklahoma that are so obscure historians can’t precisely pinpoint their location. The report identified engagements in Georgia, but the Battle of Brown’s Mill, near Newnan, and the Battle of Sunshine Church, near Clinton, went unnoticed. Both battles had a profound impact on the course of the Atlanta campaign, yet neither is on “the list.” As Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman approached Atlanta in the summer of 1864, he had no intention of laying siege to the city. Sieges took time, and for a variety of personal, military, and political reasons Sherman was eager to win a quick victory. With that in mind, he sent his entire cavalry corps, nearly 10,000 men, riding south on July 27 on what promised to be one of the most daring mounted raids of the war. Two columns of blue-coated cavalrymen, led by Brig. Gen. Edward M. McCook and Maj. Gen. George Stoneman, quietly slipped behind the Confederate lines. Their orders: rendezvous at Lovejoy’s Station, 20 miles south of Atlanta; cut the two vital railroads that fed and supplied the Confederate army defending the city; then continue south, to liberate 30,000 Union prisoners of war being held at Andersonville. The resulting chaos would compel the Confederates to either retreat or come out of their trenches and risk everything on the outcome of a pitched battle, a battle Sherman was confident he could win. Learning Sherman’s horsemen were on the move, Confederate Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler spurred after them. Outnumbered and outgunned, his relentless pursuit of the raiders reads like a script straight out of a John Ford movie. After a grueling 60-mile chase, Wheeler’s exhausted troopers overtook McCook’s column near Newnan on July 30 and won a stunning victory at the Battle of Brown’s Mill. The next day, one of his subordinates, Brig. Gen. Alfred Iverson, compelled Stoneman to surrender after a hard-fought battle at Sunshine Church, near Clinton. In less than 24 hours, these two clashes completely changed the complexion of the Atlanta Campaign. Instead of winning the quick victory Sherman hoped for, this abortive raid, which Joe Wheeler called “the most stupendous cavalry operation of war,” left more than 3,200 Union troopers killed, wounded, or missing. Instead of liberating the inmates at Andersonville, many became prisoners themselves, including General Stoneman, the highestranking Union officer captured during the war. The loss of so many men and so many horses forced Sherman to adopt new tactics. With his cavalry crippled and his infantry bogged down in front of Atlanta’s formidable defenses, he reluctantly began a siege, the very thing he had hoped to avoid. For the next three weeks, shells rained down on Atlanta as Sherman began an around-the-clock bombardment aimed at blasting the beleaguered city into submission. While the battles at Brown’s Mill and Sunshine Church did not change the ultimate outcome of the Atlanta Campaign, they did prolong it, at a critical hour in America’s history, when the outcome of the November elections in a war-weary North was still very much in doubt. Realizing the threat posed by Atlanta’s urban sprawl, in 2001 the Coweta County Board of Commissioners took steps to ensure the preservation of the Brown’s Mill battlefield. Using Georgia Community Greenspace Program funds and an appropriation from the Georgia General Assembly, the county purchased 104 acres of the core battlefield. Even though Brown’s Mill is not on CWSAC’s “list,” the Civil War Preservation Trust recognized it in 2004 as one of America’s most endangered battlefields. Concerned citizens formed the Brown’s Mill Battlefield Association. This 501(c)(3) organization now has a rare opportunity to acquire 60 additional acres of the battlefield, but these efforts have been severely hampered because Brown’s Mill is not on CWSAC’s 1ist. This makes it ineligible for grants from the American Battlefield Protection Program and the Land and Water Conservation Fund because, as the Civil War News has reported over the years, “Priority is given to battlefields listed on the National Park Service’s Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation’s Civil War Battlefields.” In other words, if a battlefield is not on “the list,” it is not considered for federal grants. Other funding sources, both public and private, also tend to ignore any application from a site that is not on “the list.” This slavish adherence to “the list” makes the already challenging task of historic preservation even more difficult because, unintentionally or not, it robs lesser-known Civil War sites of the credibility so necessary to secure proper recognition and scarce preservation funding. This could have been remedied in 2002, when Congress made the American Battlefield Protection Program, an agency of the National Park Service, responsible for updating and revising the original CWSAC report, but this was not done. According to Georgia Battlefields Association president Charlie Crawford, “When Congress chartered the update to the 1993 report, it mandated that only the sites already in the report could be included. Thus, the ABPP staff couldn’t add any sites, though they freely acknowledge that some are not covered in the 1993 report.” Despite these obstacles, the Brown’s Mill Battlefield Association will continue its efforts to acquire key components of the Brown’s Mill battlefield. We welcome any and all assistance because we believe this important piece of Georgia’s Civil War history is crucial to any understanding of the Atlanta Campaign – even if it is not on “the list.” Dr. David Evans is the author of Sherman’s Horsemen: Union Cavalry Operations in the Atlanta Campaign and a charter member of the Brown’s Mill Battlefield Association which can be contacted at www.friendsofbrownsmillbattlefield.com.