Say What Saturday: “We will hang her if we find her”

DBF

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A Sharpshooter on Picket Duty
Illustration drawn by Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
(Public Domain)

Izora (Zora) Fair was born in Charleston South Carolina into a family described as “patriotic and high spirited people”. When the war came she was a teenaged girl living with her uncle Mr. Abram Crews. All around her she witnessed the changes in her town. She knew the United States Navy was off her coast running blockades as her own uncle was later detailed to run the blockades as he traveled to Europe. For safety sake Zora had been sent to the Oxford/Covington area in Georgia to stay with family not realizing the danger she would be in when in September of 1864 Atlanta fell to the Yankees and panic had fallen in Georgia. All Zora heard was talk of ridding the south of these Yankees so she began to formulate a plan:

“She got from an old negres, the necessary outfit for a disguise and secreted it in her room. One Thursday night after the family had retired, she prepared for her trip. First she cut off her pretty long brown hair and crimped the short ends to make it look like a mulatto’s; she stained her face, neck and arms with walnut juice, tied up her hair in a big bandana. . . put on an old ragged shawl, and bundled up to hid her slender figure”. {1}

In early November, Zara begins her walk to Atlanta. When she reaches the Yellow River and discovers it had been partially destroyed. As she sent a prayer to God she crawled on her hands and knees over the charred timbers while below she could see the rushing waters. At times she was able to get rides on wagons until she evidentially made her way to the Atlanta area. With cotton in her mouth and stuffing throughout her body she truly looks like an elderly slave woman. When she makes her way to the Union pickets she gets into the character she is pretending to be and simply states to the Union soldiers: “she was looking to find her husband who had run away to join Marse Sherman’s army”.

No problem - no questions asked - she is allowed into the city. Her disguise miraculously works and she was always dismissed as a “simple creature”. She makes her way to General Sherman’s headquarters where she is permitted to sit and wait in an area right outside his office. It is while she is there during those early days of November she overhears the general’s plans to evacuate the city leaving it in flames and cutting a path through Georgia, including the very town of Oxford where Zara has been staying. She hears of troops numbering seventy thousand men and Sherman plans to divide his army.

She decides she doesn’t need to visit with the general after all and high-tails it out there. As she runs through the picket line she shouts the password but will not halt as a hail of gun fire is heard. She reportedly rolls in the high grass and makes it out unscathed. She may be out of the “tall grass” but she is not “out of the woods”.

She arrives safely back in Oxford with blisters and swollen feet, bone weary and a strong spirit. She had walked eighty-two miles in less than three days. Now she tries to determine what to do with her information.​

*

Zora knows that General John B Hood is in Tennessee so her plan turns to General Joseph E. Johnston. She decides her best course of action is to alert the general via a letter which she immediately writes and details everything she gleaned from her stay in the outer office of General Sherman. She even signs her own name - “Zora Fair”. Unfortunately she was not aware the mail bag containing her very interesting missive would be captured by Federal scouts. Now they know there is a female spy from Oxford that knows all of their military plans. They are angry, determined and ready to capture the spy named Zora Fair.

However, the Union soldiers were not prepared for the loyalty the citizens had for their “Fair Young Lady” in helping to hide her. They checked houses, attics, barns and outbuildings. When they passed by a house a young “graceful, gentle and refined young lady” inquired of a soldier why they wanted to find the spy as the message would never be delivered to General Johnston. The soldier replied:​

“We will hang her if we find her, and burn the house that dares shelter her!” {1}

Little did he know that he was talking to the spy he wanted to hang. Zora heard the threat in his words and she found her way to a place called “The Rock”. It was known as a lover’s lane area of town especially in the spring with its “yellow jessamine and bright honeysuckles” but this is November and the weather and scenery is not quite as pretty.

Zora remained there for three days before the frustrated soldiers left the area. By the time Zora returned home she was not in the best physical condition. Her friends nursed her as best they could but for Zora Fair there was disappointment when on November 16 the Yankee Army was approaching. Not much was left when the Army marched away on their way to Savannah.

Zora Fair was grieved after the devastation of her town. The young lady that almost stopped the most famous march through Georgia had failed. She risked her life to stop the assault but could not.

“It was like a butterfly against a hurricane. The girl seemed crushed. The fatigue and exposure of her experience as a spy seriously injured her health. She returned to Carolina spend her last days, and there died a few months after leaving Oxford.” {1}

The people who knew of her exploits never forgot this daring young lady.

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General Sherman reviewing his army in Savannah before starting on his new campaign.
William Waud - artist
(Library of Congress - No Known Copyright)


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Sources
1. “Grandmother Stories from the Land of Used-to-be”, by Howard Meriwether published 1913
2. “A Standard History of Georgia and Georgians”, by Lucian Lamar Knight, published 1917
3. “General Sherman and the Georgia Belles: Tales from Women Left Behind”, by Cathy J. Kaemmerlen
4. “Through the Heart of Dixie Sherman’s March and American Memory”, by Anne Sarah Rubin
 
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