Historic Macon

same. Hotels, churches, and public buildings
were used to house the wounded. By late
1864 more than six thousand wounded were
in Macon. Newspapers described the food
situation as desperate. Competing for food
with citizens, slaves, soldiers, visitors and
prisoners was a large group of people who
camped near the railroad. The campers were
described as “thieves, drunks, deserters, and
loose women”.
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy,
came to Macon late in 1863. He spoke to a large
crowd from the balcony of the Lanier House
hotel. His positive talk gave his listeners new
hope they needed badly. A few months later
Macon faced its first attack by the enemy.
During the summer of 1864 Atlanta was
threatened by Union General Sherman. Atlanta
citizens, hospitals, and newspapers moved to
Macon. To keep Macon safe, General Lee sent
Georgia’s General Howell Cobb to set up
headquarters in the town.
Late in July Sherman’s Lieutenant-General
Stoneman made a raid on Macon. Georgia’s
governor, Joseph E. Brown, was in Macon when
word came of Stoneman’s approach with a force
of twenty-five hundred men. The governor
ordered every citizen with a gun to gather in
Macon’s defense. Those who gathered were sick
soldiers, young boys and old men.
Stoneman fired cannonballs into Macon from
the Dunlap farm, site of the Indian Mounds, on
the east bank of the river. One struck the home
of Judge Asa Holt damaging a column and
crashing into the house.
Macon was lucky that an 800-man Tennessee
company and a 1,000-man state militia
company were passing through town at the
time of Stoneman’s raid. With the local
volunteers they made a stand at Walnut Creek.
Stoneman was fooled into thinking Macon
was protected by a much larger force, and so
retreated. Confederate losses were light, but
one was a sixteen year old boy, Michael Barfield.
Wounded in the fighting, he was carried to a
nearby cabin where he died before his parents
could reach him. Stoneman did what damage he
could in the area east of Macon, but after three
days he was captured. Macon remained safe.
In November, Macon learned that Sherman
had burned Atlanta and was marching
southeast. His army was spread out on a path
sixty miles wide and was taking or destroying
everything in its path that could be useful to the
Confederacy. Sherman headed for the state
capital at Milledgeville, sending General
Kirkpatrick to take Macon. Again, the main
battle was at Walnut Creek near the Dunlap
farm and, again, the union forces retreated.
Confederate losses were heavier there and at
nearby Griswoldville. But, again, Macon
remained safe.
State officials escaped as Sherman took
Milledgeville. The legislature met in Macon in
February, 1865. City Hall, which had been built
as a bank and was later used as a cotton
warehouse, became the temporary state capitol.
Sherman hoped by his march of destruction to
destroy Georgia’s will to fight. In Macon a group
❖
In 1884 Macon’s most elegant theatre,
The Academy of Music, was
constructed. With what was billed as
the largest stage in the Southeast, it
saw appearances by such luminaries
as Madame Pavlova, Sarah Bernhardt
and Oscar Wilde.
Chapter III ✦ 31