Benjamin Hardin Newton's Civil War, 1862-1864

We last left Benjamin recuperating, probably at Spring Place, in the late summer and fall of 1862. It was the twilight of plantation life. A year later James S. Edmondson would sell his north Georgia property, gather his household, and seek refuge in the relative tranquility of southwestern Georgia. You would think the planters would have realized how little time they had left, but we don't really know if James Edmondson was a realist or a wishful thinker or somewhere in between. In any event, when the Edmondsons finally left Spring Place in the summer of 1863, James had already sold the property. In the years to come, many Edmondsons would be carried back to Spring Place and buried in the graveyard there.  But as living breathing human beings, after the summer of 1863 they were scattered to the four winds, and it was never their home again.

Georgians had thought the state would not be invaded, buffered from the major action as it was by the Carolinas. But they were wrong. If you look at a map of the battles and skirmishes and campaigns in Georgia, you see that a great deal of it ran along the railway line between Atlanta and Tennessee, right through the heart of northwestern Georgia. Gaining control of that railway was a chief strategy for the Union. The Edmondson family had been wise to leave.

Courtesy The National Park Service

The second major area of battle was of course around Atlanta itself, and Sherman's devastating sweep from there to Savannah, at the end of the war.  

Benjamin Newton had spent the first part of his war in Virginia, if not on the front lines of battle, at least within the realm of it. The rest of his war would be fought here in Georgia, in the midst of an increasingly disorganized military and a crumbling administrative infrastructure, as the Confederacy went down to defeat.

Three months after his resignation from the 11th Regiment, in the fall of 1862, Benjamin was serving as 1st Lieutenant and Adjutant with the Georgia Dragoons, headquartered not far from Spring Place, in Dalton.* (You can read about Dalton during this time here, if you want.) Records from February and March 1863 show that he was now a 1st Lieutenant in the 4th Cavalry, commanding recruits, and still headquartered in Dalton. In Dalton, in February, he requisitioned and paid for a pair of shoes, costing five dollars. Benjamin did not move from the Dragoons to the 4th Cavalry; the Dragoons were reorganized in 1863 into the 4th Cavalry, and later into the 12th Cavalry. So he was serving in the same cavalry unit from October 1862 until he received a special assignment in April 1864.  

It seems that Benjamin's health continued to decline. Records from Floyd House and Ocmulgee Hospitals in Macon show that he was on sick leave by the beginning of 1864. At the end of January, he returned to duty. But in mid-February he was back at Ocmulgee Hospital, from where he was transferred to the hospital at La Grange, with a diagnosis of tuberculosis.

As the war moved into its final, terrible months and Benjamin became more obviously ill, he and Amanda Caroline married. They were married in Macon in December 1863, possibly while he was actually in the hospital. Their marriage was performed by a Baptist preacher in Macon who was involved in the pastoral care of soldiers at the hospitals there. Both the bride and the groom were twenty six years old.  It's hard to imagine what they were feeling on the day of their marriage. Was it hope? Determination? Joy? Grief?

Bibb County Marriage Book, courtesy of The Georgia Archives

In the middle of March 1864 Benjamin requisitioned a new revolver from the Macon Arsenal, for which he paid fifty five dollars. (A sign perhaps of hope, or maybe determination.) Four months after his marriage and two months after his diagnosis, at the end of April 1864, Benjamin was assigned to special duty as the Enrolling Officer for the 7th Congressional District. It was a desk job, suited for someone frail. He proceeded to Griffin Georgia, a bit to the south of Atlanta, to begin his new post. Amanda Caroline probably went with him to Griffin.

In May and June of 1864 Benjamin requisitioned stationery, including letter paper, envelopes, steel pens, lead pencils, and blank books. In June he informed his superiors that  " I am entirely out of paper and it cannot be 'had' here." He needed the supplies urgently, and wanted them sent right away by the hand of a Private Bush. Benjamin seems to have been determined to stick to his post and to do his work as best he could, even while General Sherman was finishing up the destruction of Atlanta, just a few miles away, and about to begin his march to the sea.  

*The sources for this post and the preceding one are a collection of photocopied records from the archives of the Confederate army, which (mysteriously) I have.