Revised
Berrien County in the Civil War
29th Georgia Regiment on Sapelo Island
Part 5: Tidewater Time
During the Civil War, two companies of men that went forth from Berrien County, GA were known as the Berrien Minute Men. From October, 1861 to January, 1862, the campfires of the Berrien Minute Men were made at Sapelo and Blackbeard islands protecting the approaches to Darien, GA on Doboy Sound and the Altamaha River. The Berrien Minute Men arrived in early October and were stationed on Sapelo Island along with the Thomas County Guards, Thomas County Volunteers and Ochlocknee Light Infantry. Regimental officers were elected by the first of November. Through the fall, the men bided their time, fighting boredom and disease…
Berrien Minute Men on Sapelo Island
- Arrival On Sapelo
- Place of Encampment
- Camp Spalding
- Election of Officers
- Tidewater Time
- In Regular Service
The soldiers on Sapelo Island lamented their defensive position so far from the action of the war. William J. Lamb and Thomas L. Lamb left the Berrien Minute Men in October to join Company E, 54th GA Regiment. Moses Giddens and John F. Parrish left camp by the end of October. Parrish was a miller and took an exemption from military duty for service essential to the war effort; he later served as a judge in Berrien County. William Anderson, Enos J. Connell and Newton A. Carter left sick, but later returned to the regiment on Sapelo.
While languishing on the tidewater, the closest the Berrien Minute Men came to an enemy engagement was listening on Thursday, November 7, 1861 to the sounds of the Battle of Port Royal some 60 miles to the north. Cannonade sounds from Port Royal may have carried over the distance due to an acoustic refraction caused by atmospheric conditions. In the right combination, wind direction, wind shear, and temperature inversions in the atmosphere may cause sound waves to refract upwards then be bent back towards the ground many miles away. Numerous cases of acoustic refraction and acoustic shadows in Civil War battles have been documented.
Battle of Port Royal
Sounds of the Battle of Port Royal were heard sixty miles away by the Berrien Minute Men on Sapelo Island, GA.
The Battle of Port Royal was one of the earliest amphibious operations of the Civil War, in which a US Navy fleet under Commodore Samuel Francis Dupont and US Army expeditionary force of 15,000 troops under General Thomas West Sherman captured Port Royal and Beaufort, South Carolina. The Confederate forces defending the harbor at Fort Walker on Hilton Head and Fort Beauregard in Bay Point were completely routed after a four hour naval bombardment.
Angus McDermid in his letter of November 9, 1861 described what was heard by the Berrien Minute Men on Sapelo Island.
We counted from 4 hundred to 5 hundred cannons a minute. It commense at 9 oclok in the morning and ended at 5 in the evening. It was none of them little fights at all. Well all of our regment but what was hear [on Sapelo Island] was in it and we will be sent their soon. They had left Savannah the evening before the fight…I maint be able to rite to you any more but I am willing to dy on the battle field if it is my lot. A many a pore fellow died on the battle field las Thursday [Nov 7, 1861] but it is a honerable death to them…They is a man hear now to tell us about the fight…The norths side whiped their or tor up the landing and killed a few men. I don’t know how many…They was 41 vessels fout [fought] them. It was a heard [hard] fight…
Expecting that the Berrien Minute Men will be sent into battle, Angus McDermid adds, “If I never rite to you any more remember the death I died…”
Sergeant Robert Goodwin “Bobbie” Mitchell, of the Ochlocknee Light Infantry, Company E, 29th Georgia Infantry wrote to his sweetheart, Amaretta “Nettie” Fondren in a letter home dated November 11, 1861, “How bad did it make me feel to remain here and listen to the booming of the cannon and not knowing but what every shot was sending death to some noble Georgian’s heart…How my blood boiled to be there.”
Sergeant Mitchell’s letter also reported that Colonel Spalding had gotten “shamefully drunk.” That fact was known to Spalding’s fellow plantation owners as well. Charles C. Jones, who was Mayor of Savannah until August, 1861, wrote in a letter to his father on November 9, 1861, that Colonel Spalding was supposed to have taken the regiment to South Carolina to participate in the defense of Port Royal, but it was rumored he was too drunk to do so. Jones was 1st Lieutenant of the Chatham Artillery, which in the summer of 1862 would share a station at Causton’s Bluff with the Berrien Minute Men defending approaches to Savannah, GA.
The Battle of Port Royal dramatically exposed the vulnerability of the Confederate coast, ultimately leading to the abandonment of the Georgia sea islands.
“The attack on Port Royal had a major impact on General Robert E. Lee, who took command of the Confederate Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida on November 8, 1861. As a result of his observations of the potential of the Union naval forces, Lee determined that the dispersed garrisons and forts that protected the widely scattered inlets and rivers could not be strengthened enough to defeat Union naval forces. Accordingly, he concentrated the South’s coastal guns at Charleston and Savannah. Making use of the Confederacy’s interior lines of communication, Lee developed quick-reaction forces that could move along the coastal railroads to prevent a Union breakthrough.” – HistoryNet
For a while after the fall of Port Royal, time continued to drag for the Berrien soldiers on the Georgia tidewater. The sick roll continued to grow. Isaac Baldree, John M. Bonds, John W. Beaty, James Crawford, William W. Foster, John P. Griffin, John L. Hall, George H. Harrell, Burrell H. Howell, Bedford Mitchell James, James S. Lewis, Thomas J. Lindsey, Edward Maloy, Newton McCutcheon, Samuel Palin,Thomas Palin, A.D. Patterson, John W. Powell, William J. Powell, James S. Roberts, Jason Sapp, Sidney M. Sykes, Levi T. Smith, Charles N. Talley, James B. White and Thomas W. Beaty of Captain Wyllys’ company of Berrien Minute Men were absent on sick leave. In Captain Lamb’s Company Angus McDermid was absent on sick leave. Hyram F. Harrell left sick; he died on February 4, 1862. On November 27, Hansell H. Seward and James A. Slater of the Ochlocknee Light Infantry were discharged from service at Darien, GA.
On Sunday, December 1, 1861, Pvt. William Washington Knight wrote his wife that the weather was unseasonably warm. William and his brother John were recuperating from severe colds. Several of the men in camp on Sapelo Island were sick, and measles was spreading among the men. William and his father, Major Levi J. Knight, were up the river at Darien, GA, where they attended church together. The town was later described by Union officer Luis F. Emilio, “Darien, the New Inverness of early days, was a most beautiful town…A broad street extended along the river, with others running into it, all shaded with mulberry and oak trees of great size and beauty. Storehouses and mills along the river-bank held quantities of rice and resin. There might have been from seventy-five to one hundred residences in the place. There were three churches, a market-house, jail, clerk’s office, court-house, and an academy.” Wharves and docks were along the river.
Hugh E. Benton of the Thomas County Volunteers deserted the regiment on December 4, 1861. By this time, Sergeant Mitchell was frustrated and disgusted with the long inactivity of the 29th GA Regiment on Sapelo Island. In his letter of December 9, 1861, from Sapelo, Mitchell complained of boredom in the camp. Historian Lesley J. Gordan summarized Mitchell’s despondence:
Far from the front, he found himself doing “nothing exciting or encouraging.” The army seemed “cruel and despotic in its nature,” and he grew annoyed with the antics of his fellow soldiers, whom he deemed “rough and unrefined.”
On December 14, 1861, Colonel Randolph Spaulding resigned his position for unknown reasons. In a new election, Captain William H. Echols, was elected Colonel of the regiment. ” He was commissioned on December 30, 1861, by Governor Joseph E. Brown, as colonel of the 29th Georgia Volunteers, a position which he greatly desired to accept. But, notwithstanding General Alexander R. Lawton’s endorsement of his cause, Confederate President Jefferson Davis wrote Echols: ‘The number of engineer officers in our service is quite too small to permit them being placed in command of troops.’” Echols was sent to work on harbor defenses at Charleston, SC, where he was promoted to the rank of major of the Confederate States Engineers and served as Chief Engineer of South Carolina.
Yet another election was then ordered for the 29th GA Regiment and William J. Young was elected and commissioned as Colonel of the Regiment.
By mid-December, Berrien Minute Men Company D were on station at Camp Security. Little is known about this camp except that it was “near Darien, GA” which would seem to place it on the mainland, rather than on the islands. Another soldier’s letter written from Camp Security and postmarked at Darien describes Camp Security as “one of the most abominable places on earth.”
Measles were soon rampant among the men. On December 18, Pvt. William Washington Knight wrote from Camp Security, “Nearly all of our company have the measles. Capt [John C.] Lamb has it. We have eighteen privates fit for duty. Reddin B. Parrish of our company son of Ezekiel Parrish died yesterday evening at sundown. He was one of the best steadyest young men in our company. Capt Lamb sent him home last night to be buried.” The body of Redding Byrd Parrish was returned to Berrien County, GA. The internment was at Pleasant Cemetery near Ray’s Mill (now Ray City), GA.
Grave of Redding Byrd Parrish, Pleasant Cemetery near Ray City, Berrien County, GA. Parrish died of measles December 17, 1861, while serving with the Berrien Minute Men at Camp Security, McIntosh County, GA. Image source: Terrell Anderson.
There were some sixty men of the regiment sick with measles including John Knight, Ed Lamb, J.S. Roberts, Jasper M. Roberts, John Clemants, John W. McClellan, and Angus McDermid among others.
Most of the men recovered from the measles. Some didn’t. Nathan B. Stephens of the Thomasville Guards died of measles on December 11, 1861, at Camp Security.
Just before Christmas, the fifer in Company D died of measles. On Christmas Eve, Angus McDermid wrote from Darien, GA that his measles were just about over, and that the doctor had approved his furlough to commence on Sunday December 29, 1861. Henry C. McCrary died of measles on Christmas Day.
On New Year’s Eve, John C. Clements was put on sick leave. Sergeant Lewis E. Cumby of the Thomas County Volunteers was sent home with measles and pneumonia and died on New Year’s Day, 1862. Elbert J. Chapman, known to the Berrien Minute Men as “Old Yaller,” was furloughed. Chapman later deserted the Berrien Minute Men, joined another unit, was court martialed and executed for the desertion. John A. Parrish and John M. Griffin were absent on sick leave; Griffin never returned. E. Q. Bryant of the Thomas County Volunteers was at home sick. Harrison Jones of the Berrien Minute Men was discharged with a disability January 12, 1862. Stephen N. Roberts and James S. Roberts, kinsmen of John W. Hagan, went home sick. James returned to the regiment by February, 1862, but Stephen never recovered; he finally succumbed to pneumonia in Lowndes County, on January 6, 1863.
On January 1, and again on January 4, 1862, Sergeant Mitchell wrote that there was drinking and fighting among the men. The conditions of camp life had taken their toll on the morale of the men, but soon the 29th Georgia Regiment would be reported ready for action.
About Robert Goodwin Mitchell:
Robert Goodwin Mitchell was born on a plantation in Thomas county, Georgia, July 15, 1843, a son of Richard Mitchell and Sophronia Dickey. His father had served as a state representative from Pulaski County, before settling in Thomas. After some preliminary work in the neighborhood schools, Robert Goodwin Mitchell attended Fletcher Institute, at Thomasville, and later he was a student in the preparatory department of Mercer University for one term. When but eighteen years old, he volunteered for the Confederate service at Thomasville, and was mustered in Savannah in July, 1861, as color bearer, in Company E of the 29th Regiment. Mitchell had the natural countenance of a leader; He stood 6′ 2″, with blonde hair, grey eyes and a dark complexion. He was soon appointed sergeant and at the re-organization in 1862, was made second lieutenant. When Gen. C. C. Wilson, of the 21st Regiment, was put in command of the brigade, including the 29th Georgia Infantry, Mitchell was appointed to the General’s staff as aide-de-camp. He married Amaretta Fondren on January 21, 1864. Mitchell was serving in the trenches under fire in the battle at Atlanta on July 22, 1864, and was severely wounded on the line southwest of the city, August 9, 1864. It was while Robert G. Mitchell was disabled from the wound he received in the war that he began the study of law. In 1865, he established a home south of Thomasville which grew to be a 2000 acre plantation. He went into a law partnership with his brother for a while before being appointed Solicitor General of the Southern Circuit. He was elected a state representative, then a state senator. After serving his term as senator, Mitchell resumed his law practice until 1903, when he was elected judge of the superior court of the southern circuit of Georgia, to succeed Judge Augustin Hansell. The letters of Robert Goodwin Mitchell are part of the Robert Goodwin Mitchell Papers, Hargrett Rare Books & Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, GA.
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