By O.J. Keller
The Georgia Civil War Commission is a small agency created by the Georgia General Assembly in 1993 with the mandate to “preserve, conserve and interpret the legacy of the Civil War in the state of Georgia.”
The commission has been doing just that – buying the battlefield at Griswoldville, acquiring state funds to start a system of Civil War heritage trails and raising more than $2.5 million to save the battlefield at Resaca.
The 15 commissioners, all volunteers serving without pay, are appointed by the governor, the lieutenant governor and speaker of the House. Their individual knowledge about the Civil War varies considerably.
A former member of the commission, Don Wesley Brown, a real estate broker, not a historian, has declared that the 1,159 acres the commission has been trying to buy at Resaca were “not the scene of actual battles” (“Missing the point on Resaca,” Saturday Talk, July 31). Nothing could be further from the truth.
If Brown were to read any valid account of the 1864 Atlanta campaign, he would see that deadly fighting took place on May 14 along little Camp Creek. Historian John Miles writes: “The ridges were heavily wooded, and the valley became a slaughterhouse during repeated futile Federal assaults. Union troops hid until dark in the creek and then withdrew.”
The only monument on the battlefield stands on the east side of Camp Creek Valley, erected by survivors of the 103rd Ohio volunteers years after the war.
Curiously, in 1996, Don Wesley Brown did not join his fellow commissioners when they were taken to Camp Creek Valley by members of a group, the Friends of Resaca, to see the Ohio monument and the earthworks of 135 years ago. Instead, he went off by himself. After looking at a sign in a roadside park on U.S. 41, he told the commissioners “that the property they were trying to save was not the actual battlefield.”
There is nothing incorrect about the sign, located at no great distance from the Confederate cemetery. We use that sign showing Federal and Confederate troop movements in our slide presentations about Resaca. Brown apparently did not understand the diagram.
Needless to say, the Civil War Commission would have had no success raising almost $3 million to buy the Camp Creek Valley property had a professional study not been done first. The detailed study of the entire Resaca battle area was conducted by the Jaeger Company of Gainesville. This respected preservation planning firm, financed by the National Park Service, divided the battlefield into six subplots. The Weaver property, now owned by Scott Fletcher, was chosen based on factors such as existing land use and battle significance.
Since then the American Battlefield Protection Program has earmarked $500,000 for Resaca. Former President Jimmy Carter, Se, Max Cleland and former Sen. Sam Nunn have written Gov. Roy Barnes, asking that Resaca be saved.
It is unfortunate that Don Wesley Brown might harm efforts to save a vitally important historic site. The evidence of the battlefield’s importance is available in any library.
O.J. Keller of Atlanta is a member and former chairman of the Georgia Civil War Commission.
Copyright © 1999, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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