Civil War History in the North Georgia Mountains

If you picture the Civil War as huge armies and famous battlefields, the mountains around Helen won't match it. Those battlefields, like Chickamauga, are farther west. Here the New Georgia Encyclopedia describes a home front "rife with conflict and dissent," where social and economic divisions set Georgians against one another.

Georgia left the Union without putting secession to a popular vote. The encyclopedia notes that more than half the popular vote for convention delegates went to candidates who initially opposed secession, and that the mountain counties were strongly cooperationist. After Fort Sumter, opposition faded and thousands of Georgians joined the Confederate army, but the divide didn't go away.

The encyclopedia's article on Georgia Unionists says only about 400 Georgians enlisted in Union units, and most of them came from the mountains and had to cross state lines to sign up. Many more people simply wanted out of the war. When the Confederate Conscription Act passed in April 1862, men who wanted to avoid the draft formed armed bands, joined by deserters, and hid in the hills. They were called "tory" or "layout" gangs by their opponents.

Mountain counties answered with safety committees and home guard companies. Governor Joseph E. Brown sent state and Confederate soldiers into the mountains in 1863 to arrest disloyal civilians. The best-known guerrilla leader in north Georgia was John P. Gatewood, who never had official state sanction and whose many victims were mostly Union soldiers and Unionist civilians. The same sources say the violence was personal: neighbors raided neighbors, and by the last months of the war local law had broken down in many places.

The one local story that's easy to see on the ground is the pikes. The Georgia Historical Society marker says that Edwin P. Williams's grist mill on Sautee Creek made daggers on long poles, called pikes, "to arm the Home Guard" at the order of Governor Brown. Church bells and old iron were donated for the metal. After the war the mill went back to grinding corn. The marker stands near Georgia Highway 17 on Sautee Creek. It's a quick roadside stop on a drive through the Nacoochee Valley.

The guerrilla warfare article and the Unionists article are good reading if you want the full picture.

The 1862 Andrews Raid happened on the Western and Atlantic Railroad, well southwest of Helen. The tie to this area is Hollywood: according to the encyclopedia's article on the Disney film, the action sequences for The Great Locomotive Chase were filmed in Habersham and Rabun counties, using the tracks of the old Tallulah Falls Railroad. For the line itself, see our railroad history page.

Captain James Nichols built the Italianate house now at Hardman Farm in 1870, per Georgia State Parks. For more on the valley, see the Nacoochee Valley history guide. The Georgia Historical Society and the Georgia Archives hold records for anyone researching an ancestor.