At the start, it seemed like an idea too good to screw up: The state, coupling its funds with federal and private money would buy nearly 1,200 acres where the Battle of Resaca raged 135 years ago.
The land, 70 miles northwest of Atlanta, was to be the crown jewel in a fledgling effort to save historical sites in a state where preservation has long been an afterthought.
But efforts to secure the land have taken nearly as long as the Civil War itself and with more twists than Gen. William T. Sherman's famous flanking divisions.
In April, the state's efforts gained momentum. An increasingly hard-line Georgia Department of Natural Resources board threatened to condemn the land north of Calhoun and mandated that "negotiations not be extended" past June 1.
But momentum has swung to the land owner, Scott Fletcher, as Bert Lance, the controversial and politically connected former Carter administration official, has entered the fray on his behalf and gotten Gov. Roy Barnes' ear. (Jimmy Carter last week wrote Barnes in favor of preserving the site.)
Fletcher, the 33-year-old founder and president of American Weavers, last year stunned the state by buying the 1,159-acre tract just as state negotiators thought they were ready to close on the site.
But it turns out that the June 1 deadline wasn't as drop-dead as it originally sounded. DNR Commissioner Lonice Barrett is still talking to Fletcher. Barrett insists the deadline was just to force Fletcher to return to the table after he cut off negotiations in March, saying, "I don't want a state park in my front yard."
And to further muddy the situation, a former Georgia Civil War commissioner is again questioning the historical significance of Fletcher's property, arguing that construction of I-75 near Resaca in the early 1960s erased most of the Confederate trenches where the fighting took place. The two pre-eminent historians of the Atlanta Campaign differ on the trench claims.
Lance, who once headed the state's Transportation Department, got involved after hearing of the condemnation threats, saying Fletcher needed help from someone who knows how the system works.
"I saw Scott wasn't handling it well; he was being vilified and getting beat up and didn't need to be," said Lance, whose daughter-in-law is an executive with Mohawk Industries, which bought Fletcher's company last year. Fletcher declined to be interviewed.
Lance said he told Barnes, "There's got to be some middle ground." Lance has also had meetings with Barrett and Bobby Kahn, Barnes' chief of staff. Both are longtime friends of Lance.
Lance noted the battle - where 160,000 men fought and 6,000 fell in one of Sherman's first clashes on the road to Atlanta - was also fought on several nearby properties. "By condemning (historical property) the state would be setting a precedent," he said. "A public policy needs to be set forth. Why condemn one tract without condemning every other tract involved?"
Barrett conceded the DNR has never used eminent domain to condemn a historical site.
Battlefield supporters like Oliver Keller of the Civil War Commission and Ken Padgett of the Friends of Resaca worry that time is slipping away and that Lance has swayed his old friends. Kahn and Barrett say they are merely listening to another point of view.
"It's just hard for the troops to keep up the fervor," said Keller, who helped in an effort to flood Barnes' office with supportive mail. After Lance talked with state officials, Fletcher has mounted his own mail onslaught.
Adding to the barrage is Don Wesley-Brown, a former Civil War Commission member who claims most of the battle occurred elsewhere and what fighting did originate on the Fletcher property was obliterated when I-75 was built.
William R. Scaife, author of the "The Campaign of Atlanta," defended Wesley-Brown's assertions, saying most of the Confederate trenches, where the majority of the soldiers died, are gone.
"The Confederate line they attacked was destroyed; they're getting the field that (Union troops) crossed," said Scaife. "People with Southern sympathies aren't interested in the Yankee positions. The most important action may have taken place elsewhere."
Kennesaw State University professor Philip Secrest, author of "The Battle of Resaca" disagrees with Scaife, saying long stretches of the Rebel lines where the battle was waged still exist. "I've walked them," he insisted.
Copyright © 1999, The Atlanta Journal
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