9/5/09

Decatur reliving Civil War today

Experts: Taking River City fort wouldn’t have changed war’s end

By Deangelo McDaniel
Staff Writer

At 2 p.m. today, the smell of gunpowder will blow across the River City and cannons will fire as they did in October 1864.

Civil War re-enactors on both sides will relive a part of Decatur’s history that tested the resolve of the Confederate Army and showcased the strength of the Union. Neither side will declare victory, but in 1864, Union fortifications around the old State Bank forced Gen. John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee farther west to cross the Tennessee River.

Experts

Civil War historian Robert Parham and re-enactor Clay Turner agree that the war’s outcome would have been the same if Hood’s Army had attacked and taken Decatur.

Turner said it’s possible that the Confederate surrender may have come later if Hood’s men could have reached Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and helped him fight Union forces under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s command.

“But the outcome would have been the same because the Confederate Army was running low on supplies and morale was bad,” Turner said.

Parham, who owns Parham’s Civil War Relics and Memorabilia on Bank Street, said the end was going to happen when it did no matter what happened in Decatur.

For more than two decades, he has argued that there was skirmishing but no battle for Decatur in October 1864 and that the evidence is clear that Hood had no plans to attack the Union fort.

As to what would have changed if Hood’s 35,000-member Army of Tennessee had attacked, Parham said: “Not one damn thing. It wouldn’t have made one smidgen of difference in the war’s end.”

To support his positions, Parham has copies of letters, diaries and memoirs soldiers on both sides wrote while they were stationed in Decatur.

He also refers to the official records of the war that generals on both sides wrote.

But even if he concedes Decatur to Confederate forces in 1864, Parham said, Hood’s Army wouldn’t have been able to cross the Tennessee River because its pontoon bridge wasn’t long enough.

22 days of food

“Before he crossed the river for Nashville, Hood wrote himself that he wanted 22 days of supplies for each man,” Parham said.

“There wasn’t much of anything in Northern Alabama, and it would have been difficult to get them by train to Decatur because the railroad was destroyed.”

Confederate Lt. Col. John W. Estes wrote about conditions in the Tennessee Valley in 1864.

“In a word, this district is almost destitute of subsistence for man or beast,” he wrote. “There is not corn enough in this valley to support the citizens if there were no troops here.”

Gen. Alexander P. Stewart, Sgt. William O. Sowell of Athens and John P. Frances of Tennessee were among the first Confederate troops to enter Decatur over the Flint River.

Sowell, a doctor who joined the 35th Alabama in 1861, wrote about the skirmish that took place near Point Mallard.

He said they drew some of the Union men from the fort into an ambush, but failed to kill or capture them because their guns were wet and wouldn’t fire.

Sowell said Confederate forces came close to the fort but were “ordered to lie down and wait further orders.”

As for Frances, he was with Stewart’s Corps, which surrounded Decatur from Central Parkway to Point Mallard.

Frances died in 1911 and is buried in Gurley. Parham recently acquired Frances’ Confederate uniform and medals.

Stewart, an educator and U.S. Military Academy graduate, commanded more than 10,000 men in Decatur.