Diary of Orrin Brown, on the road between Lithonia and Covington, Georgia.
Thursday–Nov. 17th
We were on the road again this morning at 7 Oclock, marched 2 or 3 miles, stacked our arms and sit down to rest about 15 minutes. Here I got some Persimmons the first I ever saw & they were exelent. We fell in and marched abour 2 miles and set down to rest again. The Artilery passed through the town of Athelia while it was burning. Here one of our men was shot by a Citizen and badly wounded in the face. We stoped twice this afternoon to tear up Railroad track, got into camp about 7.30 PM tired and hungry and nothing for supper for our rations have run out, spread our Blankets down without pitching our tent and layed down to rest.
Sherman divided his army in two for his March to the Sea. Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard commanded the Army of Tennessee on the right wing, with Maj. Gen. Peter J. Osterhaus’ XV Corps, and Maj. Gen. Frank Blair’s XVII Corps. The left wing was Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum’s Army of Georgia, with Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams’ XX Corps and Brig. Gen. Jeff C. Davis and our own XIV Corps. Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick’s cavalry division operated in support.
It would have been Howard’s wing (XV Corps and XVII Corps) that marched south through Gone With the Wind’s “Tara”, near Jonesboro. Sherman rode with Slocum’s wing. The XX Corps took the northern (far left), feinting toward Augusta along the railroad to Madison, Georgia. Pvt. Brown’s XIV Corps left the railroad at Covington and struck out southeast toward the State Capital at Milledgeville.
I believe Athelia is Lithonia, in DeKalb County, Georgia, on the Georgia Railroad 18 miles from Decatur and the same distance to Covington. Sherman himself stayed overnight in a Lithonia home before continuing his march the next day. This area (Stone Mountain, Lithonia, Conyers, and Flat Rock) is now part of the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area as the launching point of Sherman’s March to the Sea:
Lithonia, which lies at the north end of the Heritage Area, was also the first site along the destructive March to the Sea where Sherman’s men used special tools to lift railroad tracks and heat them over fires of stacked ties to such a degree that these steel tracks could be bent around trees, rendering them unusable. These bent railroad tracks became known as “Sherman’s neckties” and soon became a common signature of Sherman’s destruction as his army cut a path 60 miles wide across Georgia from Atlanta to the Atlantic.
Read More:
- Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman by Robert L. O’Connell (Random House, 2014)
- Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea by Noah Andre Trudeau (Harper, 2008)
- Sherman’s March by Burke Davis (Random House, 1980)
- The Memoirs Of General William T. Sherman by W.T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990)
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