Jim Martin
Easter Sunday - Columbus and West Point, GA (4/16/65)
Sun Apr 15 08:56:37 2001


Seven days after the surrender of Lee's Army at Appomattox, these two battles were fought at Columbus and West Point, GA. I knew of these battles, but did not realize they were fought on Easter Sunday.

Columbus, GA

During the Civil War, Columbus was an important industrial town, second only to Richmond in the amount of goods it provided to the Confederacy. Located at the northernmost navigable point on the Chattahoochee River, this prosperous industrial town of 15,000 at the time of the War had cannon, munitions, and sword factories; many textile mills which produced uniforms; and the second-largest iron works in the Confederacy. A 1,500-bed hospital was located here as well. The energy of falling water powered textile, grist, saw, and paper mills. Its access to the Gulf through the river and proximity to Deep South cotton plantations, made Columbus a major railroad and shipping center. When Sherman marched on Atlanta in 1864, the Atlanta arsenal was moved to Columbus. All these reasons made Columbus a target of the Union, and on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865, forces under Gen. James H. Wilson attacked from the west in a rare night engagement. It was the last significant land battle of the Civil War, occurring a full week after Lee had surrendered to Grant, and after Lincoln was dead at an assassin's hands.

Wilson's Raiders were sweeping through the previously untouched industrial belt of the Deep South, located along the fall line through Alabama and Georgia, and looking for a place to cross the Chattahoochee. Wilson sent a brigade to West Point to capture the river crossing there and sent his main force of 11,000 against Columbus. In an engagement lasting a few hours, the town was defended by a hastily gathered force of less than a few thousand, consisting of old men and boys, but by 1 a.m. on April 17, the town had fallen, with approximately a dozen casualties on each side, and 600 Confederate troops escaping toward Macon, then the capital of Georgia. The next day, Columbus suffered the same fate as Atlanta six months earlier, when Union troopers burned all the property of what was considered the last great Confederate storehouse, including more than 100,000 bales of cotton, the Arsenal, Confederate Naval Iron Works, Confederate Quartermaster Depot, Haiman Sword factory, 15 locomotives and 200 cars, 5,000 rounds of ammunition and 74 cannon, and the gunboat Jackson, also known as the Muscogee.

The Battle of Fort Tyler (West Point, GA)

Fort Tyler and Fort Tyler Cemetery are located in West Point, which was an important railroad town in Georgia during the Civil War. Because the gauges of the rails were different between Alabama and Georgia, train cargo had to be transferred between cars here, which necessitated a large railroad yard. The town had been the scene of raids by Union cavalry, with the most significant resulting in a battle at Fort Tyler on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865, a full week after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, and two days after Lincoln had been assassinated. Word hadn't reached these parts, as Confederate Gen. Robert C. Tyler, and his 120 men held off 3,500 cavalrymen of Wilson's Raiders under Col. O.H. LaGrange, for a full day at Fort Tyler, before surrendering when they ran out of ammunition at dusk.

Fort Tyler, built in the fall of 1863 to protect vital transportation bridges at the Chattahoochee River, was an earthenwork fort approximately 35 feet square. It had three artillery pieces, a stockade on the rear or south and a ditch 10 feet deep and 15 feet wide in front. Tyler, called by some historians the most enigmatic Confederate general of the Civil War, was a veteran of Walker's expedition to Nicaragua; Shiloh; Chickamauga; and had lost his left leg at Missionary Ridge at Chattanooga. The disabled Tyler was posted at West Point, where he was in command of Fort Tyler and 128 men, made up of convalescents from Confederate hospitals, young boys in the town, and a garrison of old me numbered 10 to 1, surrendered just before dusk, making the fort the last to fall in the Civil War. Eighteen Confederates were killed along with seven Federals and 29 wounded. In a cemetery in West Point, Tyler was buried in a joint grave with his second in command, Captain C. Gonzales, who was also killed during the battle. From West Point, Wilson's Raiders destroyed 19 locomotives and burned 340 cars, and moved east up the tracks to LaGrange and eventually to Macon. A living history event is held annually in mid-April to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of West Point.

Jim Martin