General Quincy Adams Gillmore wants you . . .
to attend the December 1, 2014 Quincy Gillmore Civil War Round Table meeting!!!
The topic: "The Atlanta Campaign"
On December 1, our round table will welcome Joan Kapsch, a National Park service guide at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio. Ms. Kapsch, a Cleveland State University graduate, will speak on General William T. Sherman's 1864 campaign that helped guarantee Lincoln's re-election. Joan will explain the significance of the campaign, in both its military and political aspects. She points out that while the country was obsessed with Grant's stalemate outside Petersburg, Sherman won the most important victory of 1864 in Atlanta.
Involved in local history for nearly forty years, Joan has been with the Park Service since 1998. She has written articles for a number of publications. She was the principle write of "Mentor, the First Two Hundred Years" and is nearing completion of a guidebook for the James A. Garfield NHS.
The meeting will be held, as usual, in Lorain County Community College's iLOFT Building,
room 207. The meeting room opens at 6:30 and the speaker will begin promptly at 7:00 p.m. Guests are welcome and membership forms are available for those who are interested in joining.
For more information contact Jim Jablonski at jjjablon@aol.com.
Sherman's March to the Sea in Poetry
Following his capture of Atlanta in the summer of 1864, Sherman set out on his march to Savannah, Georgia. A Union officer held captive in a Columbia, South Carolina prisoner of war camp heard of the march and was inspired to write a poem commemorating it. Major Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers of the 5th Iowa infantry was taken prisoner during the Battle of Chattanooga. His poem "Sherman's March to the Sea gave the campaign its name. Below are the final two paragraphs of the poem.
Still onward we pressed, till our banners
Swept out from Atlanta's grim walls,
And the blood of the patriot dampened
The soil where the traitor flag falls;
But we paused not to weep for the fallen,
We slept by each river and tree:
Yet we twined them a wreath of the laurel
As Sherman marched down to the sea.
O, proud was our army that morning
That stood where the pine darkly towers
When Sherman said: "Boys, you are weary,
This day fair Savannah is ours."
Then sang we a song for our chieftain
That echoed over river and lea,
And the stars in our banner showed brighter
When Sherman marched down to the sea.
The poem is said to have been smuggled out of the prison in the wooden leg of an exchanged prisoner and became a popular song in the north before the end of the war. Byers later escaped from the camp and was sheltered by a slave. While riding in triumph through the streets of Columbia, Sherman was approached by a number of shabbily dressed former prisoners. One of them was Byers, who slipped the general a piece of paper on which was written the poem. Byers later served on Sherman's staff. He died in 1933 at age 95, the last surviving member of the 5th Iowa.
References: "Major Samuel Hawkins Marshall Byers," www.scriptoriumnovum.com; Marszalek, John F., "Sherman: A Soldier's Passion for Order."
