On September 2, 1864, the Confederate Army of Tennessee, barefoot and famished, prepared for its last major struggle against Sherman's troops in the Atlanta Campaign. Jonesboro had fallen in Sherman's hands and Atlanta was being abandoned. On the night of September 1st, Hood's Confederate Army fled southward from Jonesboro toward Lovejoy's Station and landed six miles south on the old McDonough Road. The next morning, Sherman's left flank, which belonged to John Schofields U.S. 23rd Army Corps, was ordered to feel for the Fosterville Road in the vicinity of Nash Farm.

September 2, 1864…. "Dawn creeps low and quiet over the fields of Nash Farm, a haze of pale gray fog tinged with fire. Slowly, too, Confederate General Stephen D. Lee's Army Corps rouse themselves. Along the old McDonough road, men yawn, scratch at the dirty tattered butternut material of their dew-soaked uniforms and huddle over the few embers that have smoldered through the night. A ragged double file of Georgia infantrymen slouch against their rifles as a caisson rattles past."

Then as fast as the blink of an eye, the sharp crack of gunfire north of the McDonough Road breaks the morning's stillness. "Everybody down!" yells a startled lieutenant. Across the field before them sweep the Yankee skirmishers, and behind them a denser wave of blue moves with startling speed. The massed forces of the Federal Army charge at a dead run toward the Confederate "right flank" now located at Nash Farm. Southern men load and fire as fast as they can, tearing paper cartridges with their teeth as the woods behind them echo with crashing volleys. But still the Federals come, their commanding officers mount on horses with their swords flashing as they rally their men forward.

As Stephen D. Lee's men get ready to fire their first volley, just about every other man on his front ranks falls mortally wounded in a fusillade of Yankee bullets. It was a struggle just to stand up as bullets thundered all around, kicking up the dirt and knocking men off their feet with powerful sickening thuds. The Southerners fired their second volley into the main Federal line and it is more deadly and immediate than their first. Now both armies go at it as though they know it would be their last leap at glory of the Atlanta Campaign.

Then suddenly from behind, the rebel yells of Confederate General A.P. Stewarts Corps charge forward with a counter-attack with battle flags waving all along his lines. Yankee cannons roar back in reply and the screech of the death angel gathered up more dead. Behind Lee's Corps on the high ridge south of Walnut Creek, bands could be heard playing jaunty airs of "Bonnie Blue Flag" in the heat of battle, and then onward came the splendor of A.P. Stewart's full frontal attack.

The Confederate right flank at the Nash Farm drove the U.S. 23rd Army Corps some ½ mile distance back to the swamps and ravines where their charge originally started. Then just as fast as the morning battle started, it ended with S.D. Lee's Corps withdrawing back to their original positions.

All across the fields the groans and screams of wounded and dying men were heard. Dozens of Federal sharpshooters keep up a hot constant fire to prevent gathering up many of the Southern wounded. Some were saved, some were not. The rest were the unfortunate ones of this battle who eventually became unaccounted for.

Somewhere they crawled off to die, alone in the bushes, in low gullies and around the sides of hills. There, in those secluded spots their skeleton bones bleached with tucks of hair, buttons and fragments of clothing hidden from their comrade's outreached arms. Many young men, once so handsome and so joyous, taken away. The son from the mother. The husband from the wife. The dear friend from the dear friend.

Although Sherman finally took Atlanta, he lost the final battles of the Atlanta Campaign which ended on the hallowed fields of Nash Farm.

Three and a half million men fought in the War Between the States; 620,000 men died in it. As many as the rest of American wars combined. One quarter of the South's men of military age, dead. In Mississippi, in 1866, one fifth of the state's entire budget was spent on artificial limbs. Millions were left with vivid memories of men who should have been living but were not. The Southern survivors of the war headed back to an uncertain future and went about the business of just living.

At the turn of the century, the boys who had gone off to war were old men now. They walked over the old battlefields with their families pointing out the places where they had once done things that now seemed impossible, even to them.

I have always believed that history ought to be able to ignite. And it has strengthened my commitment to learn about our battlefields, where men once paid the ultimate price for the liberties we have and now enjoy.

We must continue an investigation of the past; to see what it can tell us about who we were, and what we have become.

Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress