WAR!

When Georgia seceded on 19 January 1861 from the Union of States with which it had been confederated, it was not at war with anyone. It was an independent sovereign Republic with a total population of less than 1.1 million inhabitants, forty-four percent of which were slaves owned by just eight percent of the Republic's white citizens. It simply wanted to be self-governed and left alone in peace, but some three months later, it would become involved in a war that would last four long years and kill some 30,000 Georgia Confederate soldiers defending their homeland and families against an invading army with unlimited resources.

News about Fort Sumter's surrender on 13 April 1861 and President Lincoln's call two days later for 75,000 troops to invade the South and "end the rebellion" spread like wildfire across Georgia and the rest of the South. Public gatherings, patriotic rallies, picnics, and inflammatory speeches became commonplace in most Southern hamlets, villages, towns, and cities. Talk about war, an easy victory, and independence dominated conversations around hearths, shops in the marketplace, and everywhere else that two or more Southerners gathered. States' Rights, the Constitutional right of secession, and the unwarranted expansion of Federal authority replaced talk about the weather, preparations for planting crops, and everything else that was normally important to Southerners in the spring. Everyone's attention was focused on the coming war and the organization of military units to protect the state against an anticipated invasion by Lincoln's troops.

The Provisional Confederate Congress had earlier passed a number of laws to create a national army of volunteer citizen-soldiers and authorized President Jefferson Davis to muster State Militias to defend the South. State militias began forming throughout Georgia and James Byrd Foote of Paulding County, who had celebrated his eighteenth birthday in January, enlisted as a Private in Company A of the 1st Regiment, Georgia Regulars on 26 April 1861, just thirteen days after the surrender of Fort Sumter. Like thousands of other recruits across the South, he must have been full of patriotism and anxious to fight the Yankee invaders and drive them out of the South. He probably thought that the war would soon be over and had no idea that he would become involved in twenty-two separate engagements against the Yankees and would spend three hundred and sixty-six days in a Yankee prison before the war would finally end in the spring of 1865.

Union Brigadier General Irvin McDowell marched his Army of Northern Virginia out of Washington on 16 July 1861 in response to President Lincoln's relentless pressure for him to mount an offensive campaign in Northern Virginia and advance against the Confederate Capitol at Richmond, Virginia. McDowell moved his forces westward to advance against Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard's Army of the Potomac along the south bank of Bull Run Creek, four miles north of the railroad junction at Manassas, Virginia.

When the Confederates learned that McClellan's army was moving west, it began concentrating its forces at Manassas. In just two days, some 9,000 soldiers of General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah traveled fifty miles by rail from the Shenandoah Valley to Manassas Junction and reinforced Beauregard's forces along Bull Run Creek on 20 July 1863. The battle began at 9:30 a.m. the next morning and raged back and forth with charges and countercharges between the two armies. Either side could have won the battle, but in the end, the Confederates were victorious. The Union army began leaving the field in great disorder around 4:30 p.m. and its retreat soon became a rout.

The Confederates were worn out after the battle and General Beauregard did not launch a full-scale pursuit of the battered, humiliated, and panic-stricken Union army. He lost an opportunity to destroy or capture the entire army — and perhaps Washington as well. President Lincoln had been confident that he would receive news of a great Union victory at Manassas, but instead received a telegraph stating "General McDowell's army in full retreat through Centreville. The day is lost. Save Washington and the remnants of this army." General McDowell was blamed for the defeat and lost his command. On 25 July 1861, George B. McClellan was named commander of the Union armies around Washington.

The 1st Regiment, Georgia Regulars had been ordered to Richmond on 16 July 1861, but didn't arrive at Manassas Junction until 24 July 1861, three days after the battle ended. James Byrd Foote missed the first great battle of the war with its 4,700 casualties. The Union lost 2,950 men while Confederate losses totaled 1,750. It was a great victory for the South and demoralized the North. People throughout the North and the South were shocked by the battle's casualties and many began to realize that the war would not end soon and would be brutal. They were right. The war would last four long years and one out of every four Southern white males would be counted among its casualties.

Six days after the Battle, Confederate War Correspondent Peter W. Alexander wrote in the Savannah Republican that the Confederacy "won one of the most brilliant victories that any race of people ever achieved. It was the greatest battle ever fought on this continent and will take its place in history by the side of the most memorable engagements." He said that the 7th and 8th Georgia Infantry Regiments "were among the earliest on the field and in the thickest of the fight and their praise is upon the lips of the whole army from General Beauregard on down. Even the Yankees captured during the battle paid the highest tribute to the two Georgia regiments, saying "they never saw men fight as they did" and when told that there were only two regiments of them, they were utterly astonished and said "judging by the terrible execution of [their] muskets, they had supposed them to number four times as many."

The 7th Georgia Infantry Regiment had been accepted in state service at Paulding County, Georgia in April 1861 and mustered into Confederate service in May 1861 at Atlanta, Georgia as part of Colonel Francis S. Bartow's Second Brigade of General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah. It had been among the first units to be engaged in the battle and was in the worst of the fighting all day long. Colonel Bartow was killed and his brigade lost one hundred and fifty-three soldiers killed, wounded, or missing during the battle, representing twenty-six percent of the regiment's five hundred and eighty soldiers in the engagement. After Bartow's death, his brigade was commanded by Colonel Samuel Jones for some seven months until command of the brigade was given to Colonel George T. Anderson of the 11th Georgia Infantry Regiment. Jones' Brigade became part of the Army of the Potomac when the Army of the Shenandoah and the Army of the Potomac were consolidated into a single army on 20 July 1861 and the brigade's reputation as a fierce fighting unit gained during the battle at Manassas continued to grow in its subsequent battles.

James Byrd Foote became part of Colonel Samuel Jones' Brigade when he transferred from the 1st Regiment Georgia Regulars and enlisted with Company C, 7th Georgia Infantry Regiment at Dallas, Georgia on 17 August 1861. He would remain part of the 7th Georgia Infantry Regiment and its brigade for the rest of the war and would become a battle-hardened Veteran in a brigade of battle-hardened Veterans with an unequalled determination to defend their homeland against the invading Yankees.

James Byrd Foote would spend the fall and winter months with the 7th Georgia Infantry Regiment and the rest of the Confederate Army of the Potomac in Northern Virginia less than twenty-five miles from Washington, but would not be involved in his first engagement with the Yankees until the following spring along the Warwick River at Yorktown on the Virginia Peninsula.

YORKTOWN

James Byrd Foote spent the winter of 1861-1862 encamped with the 7th Georgia Infantry Regiment and the rest of the Confederate Army of the Potomac near Manassas Junction. The army was reviewed by Generals Joseph E. Johnston, Pierre G. T. Beauregard, and Gustavas W. Smith on 20 December 1861 and was assigned to camps on the day after Christmas to begin building winter quarters. The winter quarters were completed before the end of January and the army was reorganized by General Joseph E. Johnston's General Orders No. 22 on 5 February 1862.

The brigades commanded by Colonel George T. Anderson and Brigadier Generals Robert Toombs and Cadmus M. Wilcox were designated the First Division of the Army of the Potomac under command of Major General Gustavus W. Smith; Major General James Longstreet's Division became the Second Division; Major General Edmund K. Smith's Division became the Third Division; and the Division commanded by Brigadier General Jubal A. Early became the Fourth Division. Some five weeks later on 14 March 1862, the Army of the Potomac would be renamed the Army of Northern Virginia.

The Confederate military authorities in Richmond anticipated that Union General George B. McClellan would go on the offensive when roads became passable in the spring, leave Washington with his army of well over 100,000 men, and move against General Joseph E. Johnston's much-smaller Army of the Potomac with 42,200 troops then encamped at Manassas. President Jefferson Davis ordered General Johnston to leave Manassas and fall back to a much-stronger defensive position behind the Rappahannock River to enable him to more effectively protect Richmond from an anticipated attack by the Union army. On 7 March 1862, General Johnston ordered three days' rations issued to his army and the next day left his outpost at Leesburg, began withdrawing from Centreville and Manassas, and started his army south towards the Rappahannock River.

The same day that General Johnston began moving his army south, President Lincoln approved General McClellan's Urbanna Plan to move his base of operations from Washington to Urbanna on the Rappahannock River and advance against Richmond. When General McClellan learned on 9 March that the Confederate army had abandoned its outpost at Leesburg and was seen leaving Centreville and Manassas, he told Lincoln that he would leave Washington the next morning, pursue the Confederate army, and engage it on a battlefield of his choosing. He left Washington the next morning, but did not engage the Confederate army. By the time McClellan got to Manassas, there was nothing there but the still-smoldering remains of supplies and war material that had been torched by the Confederates. Johnston's army had been gone for a full day and was then busy constructing a new defensive line behind the Rappahannock River within easy reach of Richmond by railroad. McClellan's Urbanna Plan for capturing the Confederate Capitol was over before it ever began. Instead of moving against the new Confederate line on the Rappahannock, General McClellan returned to his field headquarters at Fairfax Court House.

President Lincoln couldn't believe that McClellan had allowed Johnston's army to escape from Manassas. McClellan had left Washington two days earlier as general-in-chief of all of the Union armies, but Lincoln stripped him of all of his command except the Union Army of the Potomac. McClellan convinced Lincoln that he should change his base of operations from Washington to Fort Monroe–the largest coastal fortress in America–on the tip of the Virginia Peninsula just seventy-five miles southeast of Richmond, advance his army up the Virginia Peninsula, and move against the Confederate Capitol. Lincoln approved McClellan's plans and McClellan began moving his 121,500-man army from Alexandria to Fort Monroe on 17 March. In less than three weeks, 389 vessels moved McClellan's army, equipment, and supplies down the Rappahannock River and Chesapeake Bay to the fort. McClellan's grand campaign to capture Richmond and end the war was finally underway!

Major General John B. Magruder, commander of the Confederate Army of the Peninsula, had established two defensive lines across the Virginia Peninsula. The first line was just twelve miles north of Fort Monroe and contained infantry outposts and artillery redoubts. The second and more formidable line of defense was some six miles further north along the Warwick River. The Warwick River rises very near the York River about a mile and a half from Yorktown. At that point the river is a sluggish and boggy stream some twenty or thirty yards wide and running through dense woods fringed by swamps. Five dams along the river back up water along its course and for nearly three-fourths of its length and the river was unlikely to be crossed by either artillery or infantry. Each dam was defended by artillery and extensive earthworks for infantry. The line was protected by eighty-five heavy artillery pieces and fifty-five field guns. It was an impressive thirteen-mile defensive line anchored by heavy batteries on the west at Mulberry Island on the James River and on the east at Yorktown and Gloucester Point on the York River. Magruder had built an impressive defensive line across the entire Peninsula, but his small Army of the Peninsula of some 15,000 men was no match for the much-larger Union army that had landed at Fort Monroe.

Just thirty-six hours after his arrival at Fort Monroe, General McClellan began his advance up the Peninsula. Major General Magruder knew that his forces were too weak to defend his first line of defense against McClellan's army so he prepared to make a stand against the Yankees at his second line of defense along the Warwick River. He garrisoned six thousand men at Gloucester Point, Yorktown, and Mulberry Island, leaving only 5,000 men to defend the almost fourteen-mile long Warwick line.

McClellan's army crossed the Confederate's first line of defense twelve miles from Fort Monroe uncontested on 3 April, advanced towards the Warwick River, and appeared simultaneously in front of the entire Confederate line from Minor's Farm to Yorktown two days later on 5 April. The Yankees opened fire all along the Confederate line with furious cannonading and musketry, but Magruder's 5,000 man force repulsed the Union attack. General Magruder had divided his troops and marched them up and down behind his line for twenty-four hours, creating the illusion of a much-larger force occupying the Warwick line and General McClellan was mistakenly convinced that he was facing a much-larger army than his own and did not renew his attack against the Confederates.

Meanwhile, reinforcements began to arrive at Yorktown. President Jefferson Davis ordered General Johnston to move his Army of Northern Virginia from its position along the Rappahannock River to Richmond then to Yorktown to provide much-needed reinforcements for Magruder's Army of the Peninsula. Colonel George T. Anderson's Brigade, with the rest of Major General Gustavus A. Smith's Division, crossed the Rappahannock and Hazel Rivers by way of Warrenton, went into camp at Culpepper, and boarded cars for Richmond at Orange Court House on 11 April. The brigade arrived in Richmond that evening and two days later boarded steamers and sailed down the James River for Yorktown. It landed at Yorktown near the Warwick River on 14 April and went into bivouacs some two miles from Dam No. 1.

On 16 April, McClellan ordered Brigadier General William F. Smith to stop the Confederates from strengthening their defensive position behind Dam No. 1 and his forces attempted to break through the center of the Confederate line at the dam. A furious artillery attack began about eight o'clock that morning and continued until 3:00 p.m. when four companies of the Third Vermont Infantry Regiment launched an attack, waded across the waist-deep pond below the dam, scattered the Confederate pickets, and occupied their lower rifle pits at the edge of the river. Colonel George T. Anderson's Brigade had been earlier ordered by General Magruder to support General Howell Cobb and arrived at Dam No. 1 right after the Yankees had occupied the rifle pits. The 7th and 8th Georgia Infantry Regiments, assisted by several other regiments, came forward, charged the rifle pits with fixed bayonets, and drove the enemy back across the water with great slaughter. In his after battle report, General Magruder said that "Colonel Anderson commanding his brigade, and the commanding officers of the troops above mentioned, deserve great praise for the promptness with which they rushed to the conflict and repelled this serious attempt by the enemy."