Hugh T. Harrington

Preface from the book

The Civil War and Milledgeville, Georgia are indisputably linked. As Milledgeville was the capital of Georgia from 1804 to 1868, one cannot study the history of Milledgeville and ignore the Civil War. Equally, one cannot study the Civil War without considering the events and individuals connected with Milledgeville.

There are aspects of the Civil War, as with all wars, which are objectionable and even offensive. To ignore the distasteful would be dishonest. One must see the good and the bad, the heroism and the cowardice, the altruism and the selfishness.

It is my intention to tell the stories of people and events that are not generally covered in history books. They have been overlooked by others sometimes because they were considered too local for a broad sweep of history, or because the stories were unknown and forgotten.

Readers of The Baldwin Bulletin will recognize some of these chapters as having appeared, perhaps in a somewhat different form, in my 'Round and About columns. However, many of the chapters were written especially for this volume.

While many primary and secondary sources were used, a great deal of the information presented here appeared in the newspapers during and after the war. Much of the material for the chapters on General Sherman and Brown Hospital in Milledgeville came from Dr. Robert J. Massey's articles, which appeared in The Sunny South and The [Atlanta] Constitution in 1901-1905.

The reader will not find in this book great truths or earthshaking historical revelations. What one will find is a collection of stories that are likely unknown to the average reader. It is my hope that the stories will be both entertaining as well as enlightening. Perhaps they will even encourage readers to do some historical sleuthing on their own. History can be fascinating and enjoyable. History can also demonstrate that the men and women of our past are not just dim figures on a far off stage. They are very much like ourselves with their own preconceived ideas, their struggles with decisions, big and small, and their living with the consequences of those decisions.

Hugh T. Harrington
Milledgeville, Georgia