From the GA Division CSA History Curriculum Project:
New Manchester, Georgia and The Roswell, Georgia Mills
In July of 1864, Sherman's troops approached Atlanta, Georgia, during
Sherman's "March To The Sea." Enroute, Sherman left a trail of utter
destruction behind, leaving nothing for the civilian population in his path.
At ten o'clock on Saturday morning, July 2, 1864, two regiments of U.S.
cavalry, commanded by Colonel Silas Adams and a strong force of infantry
under Major Haviland Thompkins appeared at New Manchester, Georgia, a town
that once stood in present day Douglas County on the present site of
Swee****er Creek State Park.
>From high ground across Swee****er Creek, Confederate scouts saw them set up
artillery within sight of the factory, but they could do nothing. From the
windows of the mill, anxious employees watched as a line of blue-uniformed
skirmishers approached the building. Not a shot was fired, however, and
Major Thompkins and Colonel Adams were soon in the mill office demanding to
know who was in charge.
Henry Lovern and A.C. "Cicero" Tippens were quickly brought before the
officers and placed under arrest, along with every man, woman and child in
the nearby town. The mill was shut down and the citizens of New Manchester
returned to their homes under guard, having been misled after being told
that once transportation arrived that they would be moved west out of the
path of the armies where they would be safe from harm. For the next several
days, Federal soldiers searched the town, broke open the company safe-it was
empty-and sent patrols up and down Swee****er Creek to check out the
Ferguson-Merchant Mill to the north and Alexander's Mill to the south.
Meanwhile, Major Thompkins led part of the cavalry force in his command up
the Chattahoochee River to Roswell, Georgia, where the Roswell Mills were
located. Here he encountered a defiant Frenchman named Theopholie Roche. In
a desperate attempt to save the Roswell Mills, the owners, without
consideration, deeded the property to Roche. He was an "attaché" of the
factory and was as that time a citizen of France, a foreign national. Roche
ran up a French flag and claimed protection under it. When told of this,
General Sherman became furious. "I repeat my orders," he raged at U.S.
General Garrar, "that you arrest all people, male and female, connected with
those factories, no matter what the clamor, and let them foot it, under
guard, to Marietta, where I will send them by cars to the North." "If you
hang Roche," he screamed, "I approve the act beforehand!"
On Friday, July 8, Major Thompkins arrived back at New Manchester where he
informed Colonel Adams of General Sherman's determination to destroy the
town and deport it's people. The next morning Major Thompkins sent a guard
for Henry Lovern to tell him of the decision.
Thompkins had burnt the Roswell Factory on the previous Thursday. Thompkins
advised Lovern that the New Manchester hands "must fix up to go west where
they could get provisions as they intended to destroy everything in this
part of the country."
On Saturday, July 9, 1864, a detachment of eight men went to the factory and
set fire to it in several places. One by one the company store, the machine
shops and the homes around the mill were put to the torch. Great clouds of
smoke filled the air as the civilians of New Manchester watched their homes
burn.
Major Thompkins then ordered that the 300-foot-long wooden dam across the
creek above the mill be cannonaded. After several shots ripped holes in the
dam the swirling waters of Swee****er Creek finished off the destruction.
Within minutes, several hundred thousand dollars worth of property perished
in the flood, including one piece of Union artillery. The transport wagons
then arrived, not to take the citizens to safety westward but to
take them to Marietta, Georgia, where they would board trains for
deportation to the North.
When the transport wagons proved to be insufficient, each cavalryman was
ordered to take a second rider on his horse. The women hated riding behind
the soldiers, but it was "a very fine sight," one Illinois soldier wrote
home, one "we don't often see in the army." "The employees were all women,"
he continued, "and the
ordered to take a second rider on his horse. The women hated riding behind
the soldiers, but it was "a very fine sight," one Illinois soldier wrote
home, one "we don't often see in the army." "The employees were all women,"
he continued, "and they were really good looking." Since the men had not
been near a woman for months, order and discipline quickly broke down.
Besides, one soldier later wrote in his defense, "we always felt that we had
a perfect right to appropriate to our own use anything we needed for our
comfort and convenience." The Yankee troopers' "delirium," one soldier
confided to his diary, "took the form of making love to the women." In this
manner, the people of New Manchester set out for the sixteen-mile trip to
Marietta, Georgia. Before night, one officer found it necessary to move his
troops one mile north of the prisoners to restore a semblance of order and
discipline within his troops.
By the time the New Manchester women reached Marietta, Georgia, they had
long since ceased to exist as identifiable individuals. They had been merged
with groups of other mill prisoners and were huddled together - 400 in the
group - the male prisoners having been segregated from the female. This
group hereafter was referred to in official reports and dispatches simply as
the "Roswell Women," or the "Factory Hands."
Once they arrived in Marietta and were housed in the Georgia Military
Institute building, the battered women became an embarrassment to U.S.
General George H. Thomas, who wrote to Sherman on July 10: "The Roswell
Factory hands, 400 or 500 in number, have arrived at Marietta. The most of
them are women. I can only order them transportation to Nashville where it
seems hard to turn them adrift. What had best be done with them?" Sherman
replied, "I have ordered General Webster at Nashville to dispose of them.
They will be sent to Indiana."
On July 15th, these women were given nine days' rations, placed on trains
and were sent to a distribution point in Nashville, Tennessee. On July 20th,
they were again moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where a local newspaper
reporter noted their arrival: "The train which arrived at Louisville from
Nashville last evening brought up from the South two hundred and forty-nine
women and children, who are sent by order of General Sherman, to be
transferred north of the Ohio River, there to remain during the war. We
understand that there are now at Nashville fifteen hundred women and
children, who are in a very destitute condition, and who are to be sent to
Louisville to be sent North. A number of them were engaged in the
manufactories at Swee****er at the time that place was captured by our
forces."
By this time, however, General Sherman's wholesale deportations had caused a
furor in the North. One New York newspaper wrote: "...it is hardly
conceivable that an officer bearing a United States commission of Major
General should have so far forgotten the commonest dictates of decency and
humanity...as to drive four hundred penniless girls hundreds of miles away
from their homes and friends to seek their livelihood amid strange and
hostile people. We repeat our earnest hope that further information may
redeem the name of General Sherman and our own from this frightful
disgrace."
In April 1865, a great silence descended across the land - the war was over.
The South, shattered and defeated, had become a conquered province. Nowhere
was the silence greater than at New Manchester. Not one of the New
Manchester women ever returned and only a handful of the men. Henry Lovern,
for instance, returned in January 1866 and became an employee of the
Princeton Manufacturing Company's textile mill in Athens, Georgia. Nathaniel
Humphries, who ran the company's store at New Manchester was confined for
eleven months at Jeffersonville, Indiana. From there he returned to Georgia
and spent the remainder of his life in Cobb and Carroll Counties. W.H. Bell,
second in the card room, finally returned, as did Gideon J. Jennings, who
had been employed at the factory as a machinist.
In March 1868, these were the only men who could be found within the state
who had a first-hand knowledge of the events at New Manchester on those
fateful days. Most of them never saw their families again. One husband
traced his wife to Louisville, Kentucky, where they were reunited, but this
was an exception. Most of them died never knowing the whereabouts of their
wives and children.
On October 26, 1882, Theopholie Roche, the Frenchman, brought suit against
the government of the United States claiming damages in the amount of
$125,000 for false arrest and destruction of the Roswell Mills. When this
case came to a hearing before the French-American Claims Commission on July
2, 1883, it was dismissed "for want of prosecution." Roche had escaped the
hangman's noose but not Gen. Sherman's wrath.
References: "The Lost Cause" by Edward A. Pollard, Chapter 37. "The Story of
the Confederate States" by Joseph T. Derry, Part 3, Section 3, Chapter 3 &
4. "The South Was Right" by James R. Kennedy and Walter D. Kennedy, Chapter
4. "Truths of History" by Mildred L. Rutherford, Chapter 10. Also 3 pages
of documentation (available upon request) found in: O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME
XXXVIII/1 [S# 72] MAY 1-SEPTEMBER 8, 1864.--The Atlanta (Georgia) Campaign.
No. 1.--Reports of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, U.S. Army, commanding
Military Division of the Mississippi. O.R.-- SERIES I--VOLUME XXXVIII/5 [S#
76] UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN THE
ATLANTA CAMPAIGN, FROM JULY 1, 1864, TO SEPTEMBER 8, 1864.--#4 O.R.-- SERIES
I--VOLUME XXXVIII/5 [S# 76] UNION CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, AND RETURNS
RELATING TO OPERATIONS IN THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN, FROM JULY 1, 1864, TO
SEPTEMBER 8, 1864.--#5 Elijah S. Coleman©