Civil War Articles by Julian WilliamsEscaped Union Soldiers On The Ocmulgee Sneak Past Jacksonville
This article was compiled by Julian Williams.
In June of 1862, probably no one around Jacksonville, Georgia, was expecting any escaped Union soldiers to come floating down the Ocmulgee River - right past them and everybody else. After all, Lucius Williams and John McCrimmon and the Georgia 49th had barely gotten out of town that Spring of 1862. But then, the folks didn't realize that there had been hot action at a place called Shiloh and some Federals were captured and made prisoners in the Southland. After shuffling them around through places like Corinth, Mississippi, Mobile, Alabama, and Memphis, Tennessee, they put them away at a little prison called Camp Oglethorpe in Macon, Georgia, several bends away up the Ocmulgee River from Jacksonville, Georgia.
Later on, a favored Northern general named Stoneman was going to Macon and free all those Yankee prisoners from that same prison. He was then going to proceed to Andersonville and do the same there. This plan sounded good to General Sherman and he told him to go to it. What happened next is a story worth telling (and involved some Telfair men), but we will tell that later because it came later. Right now, let's talk about what happened at that Macon prison in 1862.
Those old corn-fed boys from the great state of Iowa just didn't like being penned up there on the old fairgrounds of the Cherry Tree City. For one thing, they didn't like the groceries a whole heap. Oh, they had some bacon but there were maggots in it. And like we said before, there's not much call for maggots. The bread was pretty good if they could get enough of it. But mainly they wanted out of that place because they just didn't want to sit up on that hill and watch the beautiful Ocmulgee River flow by for the next three years (even though at the time they didn't know how long it would be). They wanted to be free so they could return to the action of war (and have a chance every now and then for a furlough).
They noticed the guards of the 10th Georgia were kind of nonchalantly careless about checking the goings and comings of soldiers to and from the river. They also noticed that the last crop of prisoners to be ushered through the gates of Oglethorpe were political prisoners rounded up in the great state of Kentucky. The boys from Iowa were thinking - now if we can swap our blue uniforms for a few pairs of those Kentucky jeans we just might be able to pass as Confederate soldiers. The swapping was done and Sgt. I.N. Rhodes, his brother Sgt. Milton Rhodes, Lt. G.H. Logan, and Lt. J.S. Agey, just ambled on down to the river. One guard stopped two of them but they told them they were with the 10th Georgia and just moseying down to the river to do a bit of fishing. He let them pass.
Once down to the river bank, they pushed off in an old boat which had previously been discovered by one of their group. It didn't look so hot, but it was all they had and they set out downstream for Darien and the Atlantic Ocean. They had a long way to go and a lot of Confederates, or at least Confederate supporters, between them and there.
After a short piece, they ran up with three more Union soldiers who had escaped the night before so they combined forces and continued on in the larger old boat. These added men were Lt. H.W. Mays, Lt. N.J. Camp, and Lt. George W. Brown. They all decided, wisely probably, to row at night and hide in the willows in the daylight hours.
As they neared Hawkinsville, they saw two old steamers tied up. They passed unhindered. A good ways on down the river, they came into contact with a ferryman at an old rope ferry. After showing him their carefully counterfeited identification papers, he let them have the $2.10 bacon for two bucks and a $1.25 jar of whiskey for $1.00. If this particular place wasn't Jacksonville, it sure sounded like the merchandise fit. Anyway, they proceeded on down to the Gulf and Savannah Railroad Crossing and thought the guards at that bridge might pose a problem. They let it get good and dark and silently floated beneath the river rail bridge. They bumped a pier but the man at the front shoved them clear and they floated on unchecked. A little farther down the river, a sentinel on the bank hailed them to come to shore and fired a shot over their bow but they rowed hard and was able to get away from him.
They had been on the river now for six days and were terribly tired but when they saw the lights of Darien, they lit up too. They had made it! Now, if they could only locate those Yankee gunboats.
On inquiring at the home of a family, they could get little information until the family was sure they were Union men. The family was trying to get free also because they were slaves. Once convinced of the common bond they shared and from whence the soldiers came, the information was forthcoming - the Yankee gunboats did come into the area and would probably be returning soon.
With this new hope, the men determined that the old boat, now full of water and requiring constant dipping, had to make it across the water to the lighthouse where the gunboats would dock.
With some rowing and some dipping, they saw the gunboats approaching. Now they had another identification problem. Those identification problems seemed to crop up quite frequently in this War.
Obviously, the third "hail" to the gunboats by the trained voices of the Iowa hog callers was more convincing than the previous two and the men on the boat who had carefully trained their gunsights on the men in the old skiff now brought them aboard for positive identification. This being done, the escaped Union soldiers were treated as kings and had the run of the vessel.
They were later transported North and returned to their fighting units. For years, the old soldiers had a great adventure story to tell - how they made it down the river from Macon and how they passed without fire from the denizens of the country, quietly, but within deadly gun range of Hawkinsville, Hartford, Abbeville, Jacksonville, Lumber City, towns and villages along the Altamaha and on to the safe haven of the gunboats at Darien.
Did the Yankee soldiers present their credentials to the ferryman at Swain's Ferry at Jacksonville or was it at some other place along this strip of the river that bends its crescent ever so lowly, even today being the border between the counties of Telfair and Coffee? We don't know, and probably never will. But one thing is for sure. The lookouts on the river banks were not so sharp during those six days of June of 1862 when seven soldiers from the upper side of the Mason-Dixon Line silently invaded the environs of the people living along the beautiful Ocmulgee River.
Credits: Iowa in the Civil War, information from an interview with Isaac N. Rhodes (old newspaper clipping) of the Des Moines, Iowa, Register.
