The home guards remain one of the most confusing aspects of the history of the Civil War in Georgia. Family tales and reminiscences published in county histories prove that they did exist. However, official records of these units no longer survive. Allegedly pro-Confederate and authorized to act as commissaries to gather horses and cattle while arresting draft evaders and deserters, the home guards sometimes appeared indistinguishable from the bandits, such as Colquitt's Texas Rangers and Gatewood's guerrillas. The legends of the home guard repeatedly contain tales of the torture and murder of draft evaders.
Surviving documents leave many questions unanswered, and the official records of Georgia appear to have been purged of documents relating to the home guards. Bill Kinsland, however, found in the Southern Watchman (Athens, Georgia), 21 December 1864, p. 3, c. 4, an order of 7 December 1864 where the state government of Georgia transferred to the Confederate service Col. [J. J.] Finley's Regiment [of Lumpkin County, Georgia] and the battalions of Majors Beall, Murkinson, Graham, McCollum, Ledford, and of Lieutenant Colonel Glenn of Pickens County. The order proves that this militia cavalry or home guards did exist. Confederate General A. W. Reynolds reported that Colonel Ralston had 500 men in Gilmer County, Colonel Ledger had about the same number in Union County, Colonel Simmons had about 400 men in Hall County, Colonel Baker had a large force near the railroad, Major Graham had 400 men marching on Ducktown, and Colonel McCollum had 100 men in Canton. Reynolds failed to ascertain if Finley, who styled himself as a general, actually had a command.
Examining the indexed typescripts of the letters of the Adjutant General at the Georgia Department of Archives and History only adds to the confusion. References to Murchinson and Benjamin F. McCollum survive but not the official orders forming their home guard units. No commissions for the officers of these units stay.
The Augusta (Georgia) Constitutionalist, 11 February 1865, p. 1, cols. 1-2 carried a very negative article, reprinted from the Atlanta Intelligencer, that claimed that only Captains T. P. Edmundson and Benjamin F. Jordan, the latter of Pickens County, have authority to operate in Northwest Georgia. The writer went on to say that Lieutenant Colonel McCollum of Cherokee County claimed to have the authority to raise a regiment of reserves but that McCollum and his men were themselves deserters and cattle rustlers. The author said that Colonel Baker operated on the Coosawattie with an allegedly authorized regiment but that Baker had deserted the Confederate army and that his men had formerly been members of the Union home guard. The article also mentions Captain Colquitt with a company of deserters from the 8th and 11th Texas Cavalry Regiments and a company under Gatewood that, while brave and a terror to the Yankees, also menaced the Confederacy. The author argued that these gangs favored plunder rather than combat except for Edmundson and Jordan.
"J. A. T." in an article in the Augusta (Georgia) Daily Constitutionalist, 10 March 1865, p. 2, c. 5, wrote of "The Brigands of North Georgia," of "scouts" and "home guards" under Murchison, Gatewood, Colquitt, Baker, Graham, McCollum, and Brice as outlaws and deserters. He wrote that they claimed authority from Alabama General Clanton and Georgia Governor Brown. Murcheson supposedly had 300 deserters from the author's regiment, including Bob Childers, now a captain under Murchison. He named as members several other deserters from the 1st Georgia Cavalry: Sergeant Dempsey, D. B. Sparks, J. P. Davis, Joe York, and Bob Childers. Brice and his men were reported to be Alabamians.
A memoir of Benjamin F. McCollum appeared as "The Second Battle of Big Shanty" in Georgia Magazine 5 (February-March 1962): 31-33 and included a parole given to McCollum in 1865 at Kingston as a lieutenant colonel in Jeff Johnson's cavalry. The National Archives has no copy of this parole. McCollum's brother Robert H. would draw a Confederate pension in Texas, mentioning the surrender and parole at Kingston, Georgia, in May 1865. The records of the Georgia Adjutant General only show Benjamin McCollum as a captain. A description of the home guard at the time of their surrender at Kingston on 12 May 1865 survives on page 248 of Lucy Josephine Cunyus, History of Bartow County, Georgia Formerly Cass (1933; rep. ed., Easley, SC, 1994).
Several references to Captain Benjamin F. Jordan's Pickens County company appear in Series I, volume 38, of The War of the Rebellion to but nothing to suggest that they served under a higher command. The Pickens County Superior Court minutes after the war included indictments for murder and robbery against Jordan, McCollum, and several of their men as if they all served in the same unit: Charles Howell, Samuel Beck, William Kelly, John Worley, James McCraw, James Mullins, Dyer Simmons, William Whitten, Ambrose Worley, Syrus Dyer, William Prichard, John P. Nix, Augustus Dowdy, Thomas Stanley, William Willbanks, Ransom Collins, James P. Collins, James Brown, Jacob Collins, Marion Brannon, James Sterns, Adam Bracket, Wilson Watts, Marion Bracket, Calvin Patterson, George Roberts, John Weeket, Thomas Peoples, Philo Peoples, Barton Leach, Bud Underwood, Frank Hubbard, Bud Taylor, Calvin Glenn, Ad Harrison, Benjamin Hall, Isaac Lindsey, John Sosebee, Posey Ferguson, Joseph Morris, Wm. Whitfield, Rufus McKinney, John Hanie, Thomas Hanie, Frank Duck, Coke Griffin, Grafton Adair, Charles Howell, John Worley, James Mclerow, Dyer Sumner, William J. Whitten, William Prichett, Leo McKinney, and Joseph Merrion. No mention can be found of Jordan in the official records of the State of Georgia. The Confederate Conscript Bureau created one cavalry company in each congressional district in Georgia to arrest draft evaders. Jordan may have commanded such a company.
It would appear that Governor Joseph E. Brown or Adjutant General Henry C. Wayne authorized the creation of militia cavalry to deal with desertions, draft evasions, potential slave revolts, and militant unionism in North Georgia. Bill Kinsland has identified Finley's regiment as the 11th Georgia Militia Cavalry. In a deposition on file in Supplement One of the Georgia Confederate Pension Files at the Georgia Department of Archives and History, Cherokee County veteran G. W. Evans stated that he enlisted on 3 September 1864 in the 12th Georgia [Militia?] Cavalry under Colonel Jeff Johnson, Lt. Col. Benjamin F. McCollum, and Major Robert Graham.
Perhaps these militia cavalry regiments, battalions, and independent companies had official status with commissions kept in a record book of the Georgia Adjutant General that had not survived. Governor Brown cited the need to suppress slave revolts and unionist uprisings to justify protecting the militia cavalry from the Confederate draft. While some of these home guard outfits, such as Colonel J. J. Finley's regiment, did what they were intended and Jordan's company did raid the Federal railroad and act as guerrillas, these home guards seem also to have been a haven for deserters, Confederate and Federal, even among their officers. General Reynolds felt they were deserters when he visited them in North Georgia in the winter of 1864-1865. Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown proclaimed on 24 November 1864, denouncing his home guard in North Georgia and urging the local people to use whatever means they could in self-defense.
Federal General George H. Thomas authorized General Steedman to accept the surrender of these guerrillas but threatened to make Georgia a wilderness if they did not surrender. When offered captured guerrillas in exchange for federal soldiers in rebel hands, Confederate General Nathan Forrest stated that the Federals would do him a favor if they would hang any guerrillas they captured. The Georgia home guard units appear to have surrendered mainly at Kingston, Georgia, on March 12, 1865, although their parole records disappeared before the War Department began compiling Confederate records at the turn of the century. A Confederate soldier described the men who gave up:
I saw the motlest crew I have ever seen before or
since. These so called scouts were strutting around
with broad brimmed hats, long hair and jingling
spurs. You could see the old “moss back” who had
crept out of his cave. You would find groups of
sad-looking men whop had followed Lee, Jackson,
Johnston, and Wheeler through the war. Some of them
carried the mud and dust of 5 or 6 states on their
old clothes.
The last page of General George Thomas's headquarters diary, 25 May 1865, announced that all amnesties to Confederate soldiers and citizens since December 15, 1864, were ordered repudiated and annulled, which may explain why the Kingston paroles have not survived. (Headquarters diary, 25 May 1865, April 1, 1863-May 25, 1865 is in the George H. Thomas Papers, Generals Papers, Records of the Adjutant General, Record Group 94, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC; also see the order of 25 May 1865 in Robert N. Scott, comp., The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols., (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1890-1904), Series I, vol. 49, pt. ii, p. 905.)
There were also pro-Union home guards and guerrillas. In 1863, North Georgia had two separate anti-Confederate uprisings that required state troops to be suppressed. The Macon Daily Telegraph, 16 July 1864, p. 2, cols. 4-5, reported a raid by Federal home guards under Captains Rains and Hendricks of Murray County and a Captain Woody of Bradley, Tennessee. These men were probably organized, as were 125 men in Pickens County, by Federal officers and scouts. James George Brown, civilian chief of scouts for the Federal army and the self-proclaimed military governor of Georgia, organized a battalion from Pickens, Dawson, and Union counties that fought the Confederate home guards of Finley and Jordan. Brown's battalion never officially officially joined the Union Army.
NOTES
1 Published as "A Partial Roster of the Georgia Confederate Home
Guards," Georgia Genealogical Society Quarterly 31 (1995): 146-
55.
2 (see the War of the Rebellion, Series I, vol. 49, pt. i, pp.
963-64)
3 Horace Montgomery, Howell Cobb's Confederate Career (1959),
117.
4 Freeman Cleaves, Rock of Chickamauga, 279, 283.
5 Lucy Josephine Cunyus, History of Bartow County, 248.
6 See "Forgotten Union Guerrillas From the Mountains of North
Georgia," North Georgia Journal 5 (2) (1988): 30-40.