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| "LaGrange vs LaGrange" - Painting by Mort Kunstler |
This is a departure from my usual food and garden posts but I wanted to share it because it is a very interesting part of the history of the town we moved to - LaGrange, Georgia. It is an account of how the women of LaGrange, after the men had gone off to fight in the Civil War, formed a local militia group to help guard and defend the town if the occasion arose. They actually had an opportunity to do just that. They formed an armed battle line to stop a Union Cavalry regiment, the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry, that had orders to burn down the town - and the women won - by negotiating a peaceful end to the encounter and sparing the town. And then made dinner for the the regiment's commander and his staff. Here is their story from an article in the New Georgia Encyclopedia
"The Nancy Harts militia, formed in LaGrange during the
first weeks of the Civil War (1861-65), was a female military unit organized by
the wives of Confederate soldiers to protect the home front.
On April 26, 1861, the LaGrange Light Guards of the Fourth
Georgia Infantry, comprising men mostly from LaGrange, in Troup County, left home
to fight for the Confederacy. In that year alone, 1,300 men left LaGrange,
making the town particularly vulnerable to Union attack because of its location
midway between Atlanta and the Confederacy’s first capital at Montgomery,
Alabama. Soon after the men departed, two of their wives, Nancy Hill Morgan and
Mary Alford Heard, decided to form a female military company. The two women
called a preliminary meeting at a schoolhouse on the grounds of U.S. senator
Benjamin Hill’s home. Almost forty women attended, ready to do their part to
defend their homes and families.
Inexperienced with firearms and unfamiliar with military
matters, the women turned to A. C. Ware, a physician who remained in town due
to a physical disability, for assistance in their training. The members
initially elected Ware as captain but soon thereafter chose Nancy Morgan as
captain and Mary Heard as first lieutenant. The regiment leaders were assisted
by elected sergeants, corporals, and a treasurer. The group called themselves
the “Nancy Harts,” or “Nancies,” in honor of Nancy Hart, a Patriot spy who
outwitted and killed a group of Tories at her northeast Georgia cabin during the
Revolutionary War (1775-83).
The women began their military training using William J.
Hardee’s Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics (1861) and met twice a week for
drilling and target practice. The leaders offered prizes to the best
markswomen, and after several mishaps, including shooting a hornet’s nest and a
cow, the women became expert shots.
Although the Nancy Harts organized as a military unit,
they served primarily as nurses. During the latter half of the war, LaGrange
became a medical and refugee center because of its proximity to key
battlegrounds and its intact rail line. LaGrange’s four hospitals were often
full, and a number of residents, including nearly all the Nancy Harts, took
patients into their homes for individualized care.
Although it was not the only female military unit
organized during the Civil War, the Nancy Harts militia was unique in several
respects. First, the women drilled and continued target practice until the end
of the war. (Most other such groups existed only fleetingly.) Second, unlike
other female militias, the women faced Union troops as a regiment. In mid-April
1865 Major General James H. Wilson led a Union raid on west Georgia. As the
Union troops approached LaGrange from West Point, the local Confederate
cavalrymen fled, and the Nancy Harts stepped in to protect the town.
On April 17 the Nancy Harts marched to the campus of
LaGrange Female College (later LaGrange College) on the edge of town to meet
the enemy forces. When the Union cavalry arrived in LaGrange, the women negotiated a peaceful surrender of the town to Union colonel Oscar H. LaGrange
(coincidentally named) and laid down their weapons then organized an effort to feed both the Union and
Confederate soldiers. In return, Col LaGrange agreed to only destroy facilities that were helpful to the Confederate war effort - factories,
stores, and railroad tracks, but spared private homes and property.
After the war the Nancy Harts members returned to their
prewar duties, though many were forced to make difficult adjustments since more
than a quarter of LaGrange’s enlisted men did not return home.
The Nancy Harts have been a point of pride for residents
of LaGrange over the decades. In 1904 the Ladies Home Journal published an
article on the Nancy Harts, giving the militia national attention. In 1957 the
Georgia Historical Commission placed a historical marker commemorating the
women’s service in front of the LaGrange courthouse, and four years later a
group of LaGrange women staged a reenactment of the Nancy Harts’ activity for
the Civil War centennial, complete with officer elections. In 2009 the LaGrange
chapter of the UDC and the Pine Needle Garden Club planted a tree in the city’s
Stonewall Confederate Cemetery in honor of the Nancy Harts."
