Union, Confederate Descendants Cooperated to Restore Forgotten Site

Unless you're a history or Civil War buff, it's likely you may not know about the battle at Pickett's Mill. But the story of how ancestors of Union and Southern soldiers alike joined forces more than a century later to create the Georgia State Historical Site is worthy of note.

Pickett's Mill often is referred to as the forgotten battle as General William T. Sherman didn't include any account of the loss in his official reports to Washington, nor did he include any mention of it in his published memoirs. No significant news of the battle was included in Northern newspapers, which tended to cover the largest battles, battles for large cities, or -- by this point in the war -- glorious Union victories. Word of the Confederate victory was but a whisper in the South, lost among the mounting defeats, declining morale and near panic of Atlanta's impending doom.

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A restored cabin and small museum are open for visits at the Pickett's Mill Historical Site.

During the war, Ambrose Bierce, a journalist, poet and short story writer, was a topographical engineer in the Union Army. His job was to plot territory for battle planning, including at Pickett's Mill. His post-war essay about Pickett's Mill, with the inflammatory title, "The Crime at Pickett's Mill, speaks plainly of the tactical planning and battlefield blunders committed by Union leadership.

While Bierce's account of the battle received great attention, there was a determined effort by Union soldiers to keep the memory of the battle alive. Part of the motivation was to honor their fallen comrades, where some units lost more than 50% of their members.

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