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It wasn't much of a battle, but it was the only infantry engagement during Sherman's March to the Sea. Further, the battlefield was still the same sort of farmland in the mid 1990s as it had been on 22 November 1864, when the fighting east of Griswoldville occurred. 17.3 acres of the battlefield were purchased for preservation in June 1997 through the coordinated effort of the following organizations:
- Georgia Battlefields Association
- Georgia Civil War Commission
- Peyton Anderson Foundation
- Turner Foundation
- Community Foundation
- Reichert Family Fund
- Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites
The individual hero of the Griswoldville site preservation is retired teacher David Cason of Thomaston, who donated over 25% of the purchase price himself.
An interpretive marker and monument were dedicated at a ceremony on 21 November 1998, and a small state park now marks the site. (Read Rick Bragg's New York Times article about the dedication ceremony below.) New buildings may mar the view from the park unless more acres are preserved. Georgia Battlefields Association is working on that effort now.
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"A Field of Honor at Last for a Ragtag 1864 Militia Macon, Georgia"...November 21, 1998...
The soldiers were not really soldiers at all, but old men and young boys and others who were considered unfit for a real Confedeerate uniform, armed with squirrel rifles and shotguns and smooth-bore muskets that hurled a musket ball in the rough direction of the enemy. Their commanding General had no real experience in battle. The rag tag regiment was called the Georgia militia but the real Confederate regulars, half starved, their ranks shot to pieces by late 1864, referred to them as "Joe Brown's Pet's". Gov. Joe Brown, who had formed the militia, as a home guard, never let it fight outside the state of Georgia, Civil War Historians say, so the regulars questioned the members courage. History would probably have remembered them that way too, or not at all, if the hated Union General Sherman had not put a match to the town of Griswoldville, Georgia, 10 miles east of Macon on November 22, 1864. What happened next would go down as one of the most courageous actions of the War, but one of it's most tragic, one sided and - many historians believed - foolish. "It was never intended to be a battle," said William R. Scaife, the premier Civil War Historian of Georgia.
But that is no reason, historians and history buffs here agree, that the fields and trees should be paved over and forgotten. The State of Georgia through it's Civil War Commission dedicated 17 Acres of Battlefield - virtually unchanged since that violent day - to the Ge. State Parks, which will maintain the land as a state historic site.
Griswoldville Article by Rick Bragg of the New York Times
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