Video
The Action on Kennesaw's Memorial Field
Transcript
[audio description] Against a black backdrop the National Park Service arrowhead logo stands above the words Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.
Hey guys, it's Ranger Jake Boling here at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park with another awesome virtual program. Today's program is tied to our 157th Battle Anniversary which we're really excited to be able to present to you this year. Every year we try to do different things to celebrate, remember, and commemorate the battle that happened here in the Atlanta Campaign in 1864 on June 27, 1864.
What you'll see at most all of our battle anniversaries that a lot of the rangers and volunteers and folks try to interpret because the battle didn't happen in just one spot. So we try to interpret the whole battle and the events and the people surrounding it. As it stands today, if you've been here you know Kennesaw Mountain is actually very stretched out and if you've done your history, if you study some of your history, you know that some of the nastiest fighting in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain actually happened away from the mountain. It happened down at Cheatham Hill which is about five miles south of the Visitor Center. Again, that was the nastiest fighting and that's where the most casualties were incurred on the day of the 27th. However, as I just mentioned, there was fighting, skirmishing and other key important points to that battle that happened in other parts of the park and that's what I'm going to talk about today.
Now, I'll jump into where I'm standing. I'm now standing in the park's front Memorial Field which is located at the far north of the park. It was the far north of the Kennesaw line. Around me is a huge green field and at my back is Old Highway 41. It's fairly busy with late Sunday afternoon traffic. It is a nice overcast day and the temperature is just perfect.
Now I'm standing in the Memorial Field to talk about the action that happened here on the 27th. There was not a lot of casualties at this position and when the action that happened here doesn't get talked about a lot because again, there wasn't a lot of casualties and it wasn't necessarily a turning point for the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. But it added to the bigger part of the whole, and it of course was very important and very impactful for the people that were involved here. So first I'll talk a little bit about the strategy. Now after this program I'm going to have a visual with a little bit of a audio overlay to tell you more about it of the battle map of Kennesaw Mountain. So just bear with me as I kind of talk through it with you, and then again stay tuned for after the video presentation and I'll have a picture of that battle map out there to further put it in there. Sherman's big plan during the battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Picture this if you will: the Confederate line stretching 13 miles roughly north to south. I'm drawing invisible things in the air north to south stretching all the way again 13 miles. Sherman's forces coming from the northwest where their goal was to break through the line and get to and dissolve the Army of Tennessee and get to Atlanta as quick as possible. And to do this, Sherman devised a strategy. What he was going to do, now that the Confederates were spread out along that line about 13 miles, about 65,000 Confederate soldiers spread out along that 13 mile line. Sherman's idea was going to be one of frontal assaults and distraction. This is the idea: he sends two diversionary attacks or distractions or as they talked about in the records, demonstrations, to the Confederate right to the very top of the line and to the bottom. The idea being that if the Confederate commander, Joseph Johnston gets too distracted by those things happening there, that he will allocate forces to the north and to the south leaving his center weaker. So all of this was to happen simultaneously as demonstrations to the Confederate right and the Confederate left were happening, Sherman is going to order two frontal assaults as near the center as possible. And that's where you get the fighting at Cheatham Hill and Pigeon Hill. But where I'm standing right here in this park in the front Memorial Field is where the first demonstration of the day happened. Several hundred Union soldiers fanning out in what they call skirmish lines. Skirmishers were the first line of offense and their job was to be the first ones on the battlefield and to lay down suppressing fire for the heavier denser infantry lines. Now there were no heavier infantry lines behind these skirmishers, again, this was a demonstration. The goal was to take the attention away from the frontal assaults. So we have lines of Union soldiers in blue uniforms coming, sweeping across this field with this road at our back okay, and Old 41 was there in some way shape or form during the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. Now as we usually try to do when we do our programs, we do, we research so that we're not just telling you things that sound cool and a lot of our research comes from primary source documents. So you see I have a piece of paper in my hand and on that I have entries from a diary from a man named Benjamin Franklin Whittinghill who was a member or I'm sorry part of the 53rd infantry unit okay, 53rd Indiana infantry unit. And he's got definitely he's got diary entries from various days during the Atlanta Campaign and the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and on, to give you an idea of what was happening on the 27th. We turned to the 27th and he writes that Company I, Company D, Company B of his infantry regiment were "deployed as skirmishers" at nine o'clock am and charged across an open field okay. Now when I read out companies, a regiment is made up of several companies usually denoted by letters, so that tells you just right there of the 53rd there were a couple of hundred men fanning out in skirmish position coming across an open field. Now what my cameraman is going to do right now because again I'm facing the direction they would have been facing because they assaulted the base of the mountain with Old 41 at my back. He's going to rotate the camera so that we can see the rest of the field and eventually see what Benjamin and the rest of his infantry men were seeing as they assaulted. Now keep in mind for the final view it was much less wooded. They were described as small trees and brush, but one thing that was definitely still there during the battle was the was the peak of Kennesaw Mountain.
Now as I am standing in position You saw the camera sweep past the big field, you see the big beautiful field, and behind me is Big Kennesaw Mountain. And you can imagine what a daunting sight that was for these skirmishers. And running across an open field. As they ran across the open field, the Confederates did not leave this mountain and this part of their line unattended. Ringed along the base of the mountain was the Confederate picket line, and the picket line just like the skirmishers, were the first line of offense, the picket line was the first line of defense for the heavier entrenchments further up the mountain. Along the picket line, the Confederate forces were the first Alabama dug into shallow depressions in the earth called rifle pits, or which you might call in the modern day, foxholes. And as Benjamin and his fellow infantrymen got into roughly this position, they came in range. The average musket that each infantry soldier was carrying back then had a maximum effective range around 250 to 300 yards. That's three football fields and we are just under that, so we're just inside that range from the base of the mountain here. So he and the rest of his men would have been hearing buzzes and pops and cracks coming across their ears. Some men have described it as sounding like bees and hornets. In fact, in basic training, they were taught to load and fire and ignore the bees and hornets buzzing around their heads. But unfortunately for him and his men those were not actual bees and hornets, for their sting would have been much preferable than the sting of this. So I'm holding in my hand a heavily damaged minie ball. A minie ball was just the type of bullet that was fired back then. It is fairly squashed as it was either stepped on or actually hit something back then. You can see it's cylindrical in shape or cylindro-conical, with three bands at the base of it. That was all designed for the way it fired out of the gun. These men were fairly accurate by this time in the war and these guns were fairly accurate. Unfortunately for Benjamin, we know the fate of the demonstrators and the skirmishers that day, at least for the 53rd Indiana. Remember, we have 1,2,3 companies that were deployed as skirmishers, so several hundred men. At the end of his entry on June 27th, "nearly all killed, wounded or captured by the first Alabama infantry. Went to Atlanta as a prisoner." So unfortunately for the men and for a lot of the Union men on the day of the 27th and elsewhere on the battlefield, it was not successful. But that was also true for the demonstration here. Not only did it not take away from the attention enough that the further down the line, but also, as you, saw many of the men that were involved were either killed, wounded, or captured and considered to be casualties of war.
Now when possible, we do like to highlight the happy ending of stories. Now while the Union did not necessarily win the day of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Benjamin Whittinghill did end the day as a prisoner, he would later end the war as a free man, and a living man, which was not always the case for a lot of Civil War soldiers. And he made it home. So I have here with my notes the obituary of Benjamin Franklin Whittinghill who died back home in Indiana in Dubois County, or Ellsworth, Indiana. He died a doctor who served his community and as a father of eight children. He made it home on foot after the war, a mixture of on foot and on train, married a high school, well maybe not a high school sweetheart, but a woman who he had known before and they had a large family, and he served his community. So that is a very happy story. And we try to end it on that, but as we try to remember on days like this and on battle anniversaries that not all stories were happy. And and we try to honor the memory of men unlike Benjamin that did not make it home, by talking about these battles and doing these programs so that you can learn more about it and appreciate the history of these places, so that when you come to this battlefield from now on and you see these beautiful green fields think about it and sit and admire it and and really contemplate it, but think about why these are here and what happened here, and hopefully that will give you an informed appreciation for these places and the sacredness of these places.
So with that being said, I'm going to sign off with this virtual program. As always I'd like to say thank you for sticking around with me and thank you for attending another one of our virtual programs. We hope to see you at the mountain, and until then, bye!
Description
[Sat 4:00 pm ET] In this short video, Ranger Jake discusses the Union demonstration/diversionary attack that took place in the Memorial Field at the base of Kennesaw Mountain. While short and ultimately unsuccessful, this event is still a vital part of the Kennesaw Mountain story. This video highlights the Memorial Field in front of the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park's Visitor Center.
*This video connects with the next video of the battle map.*
Duration
11 minutes, 1 second
Credit
NPS/ J. Boling
Date Created
06/26/2021
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