Thank you for the response.

From what I have been able to discern, after Wofford was wounded and returned to Georgia to recuperate he saw the condition of Cassville and began efforts to restore law and order to North Georgia which was at the time totally out of control. The Federals had inconsistent control of limited areas and the state of Georgia had no control. They were fighting insurgency activity even into the summer of 1865.

I have the book "One of the Most Daring of Men: The Life of Confederate General William Tatum Wofford" by Gerald J. Smith and according to the bibliography his papers are in private hands. The book was published in 1997 and the publisher, Southern Heritage Press, has been bought out. Given that was fourteen years ago and that the person in possess of the papers may have been elderly, we may have a custody issue. I am following the lead and trying to find out where they are at but it will take time. The Confederate authorities were suppose to get a copy but what the "give a crap level" was at that point to maintain a registry book with 10,000 names for a government that was known to no longer exists at that time is questionable. I am ruling nothing out. It may still be buried someplace in the NARA but I'll continue to dig. The problem with the Georgia state archives is that they recently had a huge lay off of some of their most experienced people and their hours have been drastically curtailed. As a result, you have inexperienced people trying to deal with a limited number of hours and a heavy traffic flow when they are open. I am no longer in the Atlanta, Georgia area so my ready access that I had a few years ago no longer exists.

I will humbly disagree about this group of people being a cohesive command. He really did not begin to get some of these groups pried out of the mountains until March 1865. Some of these men may have had legitimate reasons for being where they were, when they were, however, when I look at their CSR for the units they were previously in it reveals a wholly different story. That is the reason why I want to find as many of these men as possible and to do a statistically analysis of their units, reasons why, etc.

This will take a while but I believe it will be worth the effort. It is definitely one of those very difficult tasks that a lot of historians do not want to do because it does not give relatively quick gratification, it will likely be controversial, and it is really into a level of detail that some just do not want to do.

We'll keep digging.

Respectfully,

Gerald D. Hodge, Jr.
M.A. Military History - Civil War Concentration
Research - Preservation
Historian: 39th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment