Battling Time

We waited at the motel until 9:05 a.m. in order to avoid the morning commute in Atlanta.
Gliding down the entry ramp to I-285, we had our first glimpse of the highway--bumper-to-bumper, seven lanes across going north. Little Red's clock read 9:10 a.m.
"This is after work starting time and we are outside of Atlanta, probably 15 miles from downtown," said Andy, "but Atlanta has several major business areas. This road actually goes around the city and was intended to ease traffic. Just look a it!"
We inched forward in silence for a time.
"I'm glad I don't own a gun," said Andy, as we exited the highway to Kennesaw National Battlefield Park. "Until I drove around this country, I never realized how discourteous people on the road could be. If I had a gun, it would make me want to shoot some drivers. At least it would be a temptation."
Our first stop at the museum provided an educational overview of Kennesaw Mountain Civil War history at National Battlefield Park. We watched the film to learn about the 1864 Campaign for Atlanta.
The museum provided interesting perspectives. "I never realized how political this was," said Andy, after reading about Abraham Lincoln's maneuvers for reelection. With his popularity waning in the North, he needed a decisive victory to assure a second term in office. Responding to his Presidential commander-in-chief, General Ulysses S. Grant, recently promoted to military commander-in-chief, ordered an offensive by all Union Army units. Grant, in turn, ordered General William T. Sherman to attack the Confederate army in Georgia. Hence, the campaign at Kennesaw Mountain, where Sherman, with 100,000 men and 254 pieces of artillery, confronted Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston with 65,000 men and 187 cannon. The campaign quickly devolved into a fight for Atlanta--quirky, red-headed, cigar-puffing Sherman against conservative, sedate, aristocratic Johnston.
Sherman wrote, "Atlanta was too important a place in the hands of the enemy to be left undisturbed with its magazines, arsenals, workshops, foundries and more, especially its railroads, which converged there from the four great cardinal points."
I could picture the area as a perfect setting for the short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, with wooded highlands, cutting streams, spacious plantation-style homes, and two opposing armies looking for any edge.
"I guess this is a big biking area, climbing to the top of the mountain," said Andy, as we drove to the lookout. And there is Atlanta again."
It was just as cold and windy as yesterday. I switched my fleece jacket for the winter coat, scarf and gloves. Icicles cascaded from the rocks along the road.
Near the summit, bicyclists completed time trials. "It's really cold for biking," I said.
We climbed the trail to the top earthworks, the strategic heights commanded by Johnston, the southern Confederate General. His prepared defensive position, anchored by the lofty ridges and rocky slopes of Kennesaw Mountain, proved impregnable. We climbed it, checking out the cannon surrounded by neatly placed split rail fences. Sherman ultimately marched around it, unable to penetrate the formidable lines of entrenchment covering every ravine and hollow, even though he suspected the line was thinly held.
An ambulance blocked the road as we left the park section. Apparently, a cyclist had been injured. Everywhere people walked and jogged and biked. Adults here cared about fitness.
South of the peak a steep foot trail at Pigeon Hill led to Confederate entrenchments on a mountain spur. Here one of Sherman's two major attacks was repulsed. We walked across Burnt Hickory Road, the same place 5,500 Union soldiers approached the slope through swampy, heavily wooded terrain. Confederates poured down sheets of fire and rolled huge boulders downhill at them. As I trudged up the steep path, carrying only my camera on the brisk morning, I tried to imagine carrying ammunition and powder and manipulating a heavy musket under fire in the heat of July. War is hell, I thought. No glory in this.

Cheatham Hill was a slaughter, where Union soldiers came within 15 yards of Confederate trenches. The fiercest fighting raged at the Dead Angle, a protruding angle in the Confederate line near a hilltop. Here the soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Union soldiers dug in under the Confederate earthworks, out of range of the cannon that were mounted on top of trenches now 150 years old. Union soldiers started a tunnel, intending to blow up the hillside position with a mine on July 4. The Union entrenchment held for six days, but before the tunnel was complete, the Confederates, under General Benjamin Cheatham, withdrew at night on July 2 and retreated toward Atlanta. Thus, Kennesaw represented the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.

Still farther south the farm of Peter Kolb marked the location of an ill-fated attack by General John Bell Hood in June. Union General Joseph Hooker used the house for his headquarters after he had repulsed the Confederates. Not open to the public, it is restored to its original appearance. We walked to the split rail fence, unable to imagine the horrors of war in this tranquil, pastoral countryside.

The GPS and college roommate Andi's emailed instructions directed us to Andi and Chick's home in Marietta. Six hours wasn't nearly enough to catch up on 40 years of history, but we tried. Relaxing in an environment of gracious southern hospitality, we shared stories about children, mutual friends and travels, nibbled on chips and Chick's homemade jalapeno salsa and stayed for Andi's homemade Italian soup, our first home-cooked meal in a month.

Our days on the road ticked away, and we realized that before long, this too would be history.