Battle of Allatoona Pass - 155 Years Later

A woman soldier lost her life in a horrifying manner 155 years ago during a nasty little fight just north of Atlanta. She and a few other of her sister soldiers fell in the Battle of Allatoona Pass, which can be viewed as a footnote to the Atlanta Campaign or an introduction to the ill-fated Franklin-Nashville venture.

Atlanta fell to the Federals a month prior, on September 2nd.  John Bell Hood continued to lurk in the area and decided to attack the Federal supply base at Allatoona, located along Western and Atlantic railroad.  William T. Sherman ordered Brigadier General John Corse stationed in Rome to defend the pass and the stores at Allatoona.  There, on October 5, 1864, he clashed with Confederate troops commanded by New Jersey native Major General Samuel French.

Samuel French's map of Allatoona
From Two Wars:  The Autobiography of Samuel G. French (1901)

The gap was cut through the Allatoona Mountains to make way for the Western and Atlantic Railroad.  Construction began in 1842 and was completed three years later.  The pass continued to be used until 1949 when Lake Allatoona was created.

The men who cut the pass could not have imagined the carnage the area would see nearly twenty years later when Americans destroyed each other in a brutal battle that bore the gap's name.

View looking north.  The Star Fort is on the western side of the cut.
George Barnard photograph, National Archives

Allatoona Pass today
Photo by Mark Hidlebaugh

Massachusetts native Claudius Sears and his Mississippians attacked the Federals from the north while Francis Cockrell and his Missouri brigade assaulted from the west.  The latter - along with Ector's Texas Brigade commanded by William C. Young - overwhelmed the Federals at an earthen fort called Rowett's Redoubt, named for the colonel of the 7th Illinois Infantry, Richard Rowett, who commanded the redoubt.  Fighting there was hand to hand and absolutely ferocious at the Union works.  Embattled soldiers bayoneted, clubbed, punched, kicked, and hurled everything they could at each other.  Blood ran freely about the redoubt.  Multiple individuals observed how it pooled and ran like a stream.  One Iowa soldier noted that there were 116 dead men piled up in an eighth of an acre of ground at Rowett's.

Looking towards Rowett's Redoubt 200 yards in the distance

Don Troiani painting of the fight at Rowett's Redoubt.   

Alfred Waud drawing depicting Sgt. Ragland of the Missouri Brigade capturing the flag of the 39th Iowa
This is the drawing on the plaque shown above.

Dislodged from their defensive position, the Federals fled east to the Star Fort, dragging a Napoleon cannon with them.   The Confederates charged them there multiple times, each one thwarted in part due to the arrival of Federal reinforcements from the Eastern Redoubt across the cut.  Fearing the arrival of more reinforcements, French ultimately withdrew his Confederates.

http://www.civilwarvirtualtours.com/allatoonapass/map.html

Below is the same map cropped to highlight Rowett's Redoubt and the Star Fort:

With the killing concluded, surgeons worked feverishly to attempt to save the broken while burial details commenced to performing the grisly task of interring the dead.   Among the casualties were multiple women.

One of them was with Cockrell's Missouri brigade.  Several soldiers wrote about her, including Federal engineer William Ludlow.  She had been wounded, captured, and treated by a Federal surgeon who discovered her secret.  He told Ludlow about her and challenged him to see if he could spot her among the other wounded in the hospital.  The engineer could not.   When the surgeon pointed her out to him, Ludlow observed that she was dirty, tanned, freckled, and smoked a corncob pipe.

What I find remarkable about this account is the fact that the Missouri brigade was considered an elite fighting force.  Some noted historians today, such as Ed Bearss, believe it to have been the best on either side.  And there was a woman who experienced all the trials with this vaunted unit until late in the war when a wound ended her service.

And she may not have been the only one.  Several other soldiers wrote about seeing two other women warriors among the Confederate wounded.  These women may very well have also been with Cockrell's Missouri brigade because one of the male soldiers specifically mentioned that there were many Missouri men at the hospital he visited. Wherever they were from, they blended in with their male comrades.  One Minnesota soldier observed, "Looked pretty tough, didn't look like women to me.  Didn't sound like women, and sure didn't smell like a woman should."  Indeed.

And then there was the woman from North Carolina.  Out of all the accounts I have researched in twelve years, this one grips me like no other.   And it was because a burial detail discovered her without her face.  It had been beaten off during the fierce hand-to-hand fighting around Rowett's Redoubt.   She was buried with her male comrades.  Unfortunately, nobody knows where the mass grave is.  I hope it will be found one day.

You can read more about the Battle of Allatoona pass and these women in my book, Behind the Rifle.

Mark and I visited the battlefield a few years ago.  It is well interpreted thanks to the efforts of my friend, Shane.  Enjoy these photos Mark took.

One neat feature is a ring of monuments representing each state whose soldiers participated in the battle.  Allatoona Lake is in the background.

My state

Mark's state

North Carolina

The back of the Minnesota monument is really neat.

I would like to thank  Shane for sharing a few of the letters and diary entries of male soldiers who wrote about the women who fought at Allatoona so that I may share them with you here on my blog and in my book.  Shane is an author himself, and you can purchase his gripping novel, Men of Flesh and Blood, by clicking [HERE].

Until next formation....rest.