Griswoldville Battlefield

Griswoldville Battlefield lies on quiet ground east of Macon, where the first serious resistance to Sherman’s March to the Sea unfolded on November 22, 1864. Here, a single Union brigade under Brig. Gen. Charles C. Walcutt, supported by artillery, met repeated assaults by Georgia militia commanded by Brig. Gen. Pleasant J. Philips. The engagement grew out of an armed reconnaissance toward Macon and the previous day’s Federal cavalry strike on the industrial town of Griswoldville, whose factories had supported the Confederate war effort. The open fields, swamps, and tree lines still suggested by the landscape echo the Federal defensive line along the edge of the woods at the Duncan farm, where improvised rail-and-log works and well-sited guns inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking militia. Interpretive markers maintained by Georgia State Parks, aided by preservation efforts that have secured key acreage, allow close study of how terrain, inexperience of the militia, and disciplined firepower combined to produce a lopsided outcome. The battlefield also marks the end of Griswoldville as an industrial community, which was never rebuilt after the war.