Ebenezer Creek is in Effingham County, Georgia. Why in the Effingham they would call it that, I don’t even know. It’s just Effingham crazy… anyway, our story begins there. So, let’s get some historical perspective before we continue. The time is just a few months before the end of the Civil War and General Tecumseh Sherman is on his famous march through the South. It’s famous because Sherman practiced a type of warfare known as “total war.” Now, in this day and age, we think of total war as dropping that thang on a Moe and coming back and telling everybody they made me do it…
Reporter: “So, what did it feel like dropping that thang on a Moe, Captain?”
Captain: “Well, it was pretty rough… we dropped that thang on them from about 30,000 ft up and we still had to get out of the way of all that stuff…”
Reporter: “All that stuff?”
Captain: “Yeah… the boys didn’t tell us about that. We could fly around the arms and legs… but once a head gets caught in your propellers… it can get pretty scary…”
Reporter: “Wait… what? That’s okay Captain… tell me about the Major K. Nine. They said he refused to do the mission on ethical reasons. Why did you do it?”
Captain: “Well, they made me do it… they said they would drop that thang anyway and then parachute me down right after they dropped it with a Captain America uniform on and a sign which read, “Now I’m Getting Ready To Whip Some Azz…”
(Captain thinking about floating down toward the crowd…)
Crowd: AWW NIGRA!!!
Captain: So I said, “You can count on me sir…”
So yeah… they made him do it…
Anyway, Sherman’s idea of total war was to destroy anything that could provide material assistance to the enemy. They burned everything… well almost everything. Sherman had a large army, and he didn’t want to be held down by having to protect a supply line supporting it. You had to feed your army, so he confiscated everyone’s food to do it. If it was edible, they took it. As they marched through the south burning and eating up everything, they also liberated the enslaved people they crossed path with. These people followed his army because it provided them protection, but also because they were the only ones with food. They named these freed black folks’ contraband. Now normally, if somebody addressed you as contraband as in “Contraband go fetch me a cup of water…” you might reply with “Yo’ mamma is a contraband…” but there was a legal reason for it. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (FSA) remain a federal law until 1864, so technically fugitives had to be returned. In 1860, Congress passed a law that forbade military personnel from returning slaves, but that law had no effect on bounty hunters who roamed the free states looking for escaped black men and women. So why didn’t they fix that loophole when the war began? Well, the southern states still had representatives and sympathizers in Congress. Now there were a whole bunch of people who hated the FSA, but their hands were tied. One of the people who hated the law was a union general named Benjamin Butler. Benjamin Butler was one of my main men in the Civil War!! He was stationed in New Orleans, and they hated him so much that his picture was engraved on the bottom of chamber pots and rewards for his demise were posted all over the Confederacy. They wanted his natural azz hanging from the tallest tree they could find! For those who are not familiar with chamber pots, it was used instead of an indoor bathroom. If you want to know more about Butler, you can check out my article here.
Anyway, it was Benjamin Butler who came up with the idea of calling escaped enslaved black people contraband. That wasn’t the reason they hated him so much, but in hindsight it probably contributed to it. By referring to enslaved black folks as contraband, it circumvented the FSA. Enslaved folks were deemed as confiscated property and as such belonged to the U.S government. It was ugly, but it was effective. Congress passed a law called the First Confiscation Act in 1861 which gave it the power to seize property, including enslaved property that was used to support the Confederate rebellion.
Knocking On Heavens Door…
So, you have enslaved black folks following Shermans army and you got the Confederate army following everybody. The confederate’s main aim was to hinder Sherman from achieving his objective to “burn baby burn,” but also to capture any “contraband” that somehow got left behind…
Blackman 1: Damn… I know they went this way… come on, we got to hurry!
Blackman 2: Naw man… telling that reb colonel to kiss it was one thing… but when you smacked him across the lips and then told him to go tell his momma that… you went too far! Now he done escaped from our boys and they said they saw him and his momma across the battlefield holding up a noose and pointing over here!!…
Meanwhile…
Colonel: Yes Sargent… that nigra smacked me across my lips and talked about my momma…
Sargent: Well sir we caught the yanks off guard this morning and they had to leave in a hurry… Our boys are reporting some of the contrabands were left behind.
Colonel: Break off the attack immediately and search the woods!! I want everything darker than the bottom of my feet and walks on two legs in front of me in 30 minutes!!
Sargent: Yes Colonel!! Men you heard the Colonel!! Move out!!
Later on…
Blackman 1: Quiet… you hear that?
Sargent: …and the colonel said the nigra smacked him across his lips, talked about his momma and then said as soon as he got to Alabama, he was going to sleep with a white woman!!
Soldier: HOT DIGGITY DOG!!! YAHOO!! YAHOO!!
Sargent: Quiet boy… you hear that?
Soldier: Yeah Sargent… it’s over there… I’ll go this way…
Blackman 2: Omg…!! omg…!! omg…!! In the name of the holy….
Blackman 1: Quiet… I have an idea… “Gobble gobble gobble…” “Gobble gobble gobble…”
Soldier: Naw nigra…!! Naw!! Come on out of there… you too preacher…
Later at camp…
Colonel: AWW NIGRA!!!
Blackman 1: Massa Colonel Suh… I hope you didn’t take what I said about yo’ momma…
Colonel: QUIET NIGRA!! I wasn’t even thinking about that. Sargent did you find it?
Sargent: Yes suh Colonel… It’s right on that hill over there… the tallest one we can find…
Colonel: Good… escort the prisoners… Mamma lets go…
Later at the top of Heavens Peak…
Colonel: Ooh Wee!! That’s a tall one!! Sargent proceed!!
Sargent: Give the prisoners their sunglasses!!
Colonel: One moment Sargent… that’s a tall one… Ima needs binoculars…
Sargent: Yes suh!!
150 years later…
Park Ranger: And if you look over there on Heavens Peak, you can see one of the tallest trees on earth!
Sam: Magnificent!! Martha let me see your binoculars!! “OMG!!! WHAT IN THE WORLD??!!!! ARE THEY WEARING SUNGLASSES??!!”
So yeah, everything was okay as long as you stayed with the Union army.
Oh No, He Didn’t…
Now, Sherman’s army consisted of a number of Corps. A Corp was usually 2-3 divisions and could have as many as 30,000 men. One of Sherman’s Corp’s was commanded by Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis. This is not the same Jefferson Davis that was president of the Confederacy, he just had the same name. He commanded the XIV Corp. With that many men you can imagine the number of enslaved people that followed them. Now it wasn’t that Davis wasn’t getting any benefit from the people following him. Who do you think was doing all the work that the Union soldiers didn’t want to do? Those black people were building roads, removing obstacles put in his way by confederate troops, digging latrines, cooking, taking care of the wounded and burying the dead and some more stuff. Davis was just annoyed because there were so many who weren’t of any benefit. Everyday hundreds of women, children and older men wondered into camp begging for food and shelter. They started following the army right after Sherman burned Atlanta and set them free from their captors. It wasn’t so bad when they were in that part of Georgia where the picking was good, but now they were headed toward the coast and food was getting scarce. Those who assisted the army were fed and those did not assist were not fed. Mostly their diet consisted of rice, which was plentiful, however that was a pain in the backside too because they lacked the machinery to take the husks off of it. Rice has a protective husk around each grain and eating it with the husk on was like eating a mouth full of toenails… Anyway, guess who had to take the husk off? But besides the food problem, Davis was pissed off because the freed African Americans slowed down his march. Now Sherman had already turned Atlanta into burnt popcorn and was heading to Savannah, Georgia for an encore. Davis wanted to meet him down there. However, like I said earlier, we were following him and so was the confederate army. He was only 25 miles from Savannah, but at every step, General Joesph Wheeler’s confederate calvary would be faquing with him…
Calvary: Sir we are getting ready to go and faque with Davis some more… any orders?
Wheeler: Yeah… leave some fried chicken on the road for the Nigras, so they can slow him down…
Anyway, Davis thought that if he didn’t have to protect the black folks following him, he could easily evade Wheeler’s calvary and get to Savannah in time. On December 3rd, Davis and his Corp approached the 165-feet-wide, 10-feet deep, icy Ebenezer Creek. This was his chance to finally rid himself of those Nigras. He would build a pontoon bridge across the creek and leave the Nigras on the other side. He knew that was shat wasn’t cool, but he decided to do it anyway.
Oh Yes, He Did…
Davis wasn’t any stranger to controversy. He was known as a level ten a**hole who cussed constantly, so much so that every other word out of his mouth was unholy. The only reason he was put in charge was because he was an experienced commander having spent the years before the Civil War in the regular army. Besides having a nasty reputation, he had a ferocious temper. In August 1862, he got into a beef with Major General William Nelson over the defense of Louisville, Kentucky, where Nelson was in command. Nelson said something about his father should have left the bar earlier and Davis was like… “I’m getting ready to kick yo’ azz…” Okay, that’s not how it happened, but they exchanged some words and Nelson who outranked Davis, told him to get to stepping. The two ran into each other a few weeks later at a hotel in Cincinnati and Davis demanded an apology. Nelson said okay…. “I’m sorry you’re an a**hole…” and it went downhill from there. Now… that’s just supposition on my part on what was said, but moments later Davis shot and killed Nelson at point blank range! Davis was arrested, but later released. There were a lot of questions, but Davis was never charged.
So yeah, he knew he was going to get some flak for leaving those black people behind, but he didn’t care. As his men prepared to cross the Ebenezer Creek, he ordered that the black folks be held back for their own safety because he said Wheeler’s men were on the other side and he didn’t want them to be in the line of fire in case fighting broke out. He would let all of his men and their wagons cross first and then the black folks could follow. According to Colonel Charles D. Kerr of the 126th Illinois Cavalry, which was at the rear of the XIV Corps, a guard was put at the end to enforce the order. Now from this point it is not exactly known what happened next, by that I mean did our folks figure there was some shenanigans going on and was like “WTF!!” or was it they didn’t suspect Davis was getting ready to betray them. In any event, after the troops crossed, Davis had the engineers dismantle the bridge, leaving the black folks on the other side of the bank. Kerr said that as he sat on his horse, he witnessed a scene the likes of which he prayed his eyes would never see again. Kerr estimated there were at the very least, five thousand people left behind on the banks of the Ebenezer Creek. Another witness said in all about ten thousand people were following Davis’s army. So, as I said earlier, some of the black folks were helping Davis’s army. Those were the able-bodied men. They went with his army to the other side. Most of those left behind were women, children, and old men. As Kerr watched Wheelers calvary bearing down on the hapless souls, there came to his ears a great sound of anguish, as the abandoned cried out for help. By the thousands they rushed into the icy waters of Ebenezer Creek and by the multitudes they drowned before his eyes. Those who stayed on shore were left to the mercy of Wheelers calvary, who’s men shot, slashed and killed the hundreds who stood their ground. The ones not killed were returned to their enslavers and captivity.
Bless You…
A couple of weeks after the massacre, Kerr told his story. Now you would think that with all the dead bodies on the shore of Ebenzer Creek, his word would not be questioned… however…
Racist: “YOU LIE!!”
I think I mentioned “you lie'” in my last article. It was a vulgar catcall from a congressman during a State of the Union Address aimed at Obama in 2008. The good thing is that his own constituents made him apologize… in writing and on camera. So, although he is still representing them, you can’t get that Moe to say anything no more. They smacked that little bottom hard… he won’t even say “Amen” after a prayer…
Host: “Thank you Lord….” Congressman, did you say something?
Congressman: Puts his hand over his mouth and shakes his head “no…”
Anyway, they didn’t believe Kerr. However, informing everyone about the massacre was not the main reason Kerr stepped forward. Davis was getting ready to be promoted to the rank of Brevet Major General and Kerr thought the military needed to know about what had happened at Ebenezer Creek. So, history said Kerr left it up to a Major James Connolly to report it to the Military Commitee of the Senate. I suspect Kerr didn’t want Davis to put holes in that dome like he had did to Nelson back in Louisville. Remember Davis was a mean little cuss and had already killed one General and nobody said a word about it. If he found out a little “piss ant” like Kerr had ratted him out and cost him a promotion, well let’s just say, most likely there was going to be a twenty-one-gun salute in somebody’s future. Anyway, he told Connolly and Connelly sent a letter to his congressman. The congressman leaked the letter to the press and all hell broke loose.
Secretary of War, Edward M. Stanton got on the first ferry to Savanah, Georgia, to get the low down in person. Stanton was put in charge of the hunt for John Wilkes Booth after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He was later made Secretary of War under Andrew Johnson. but was dismissed because he didn’t like how Johnson treated the Confederate traitors as heroes. I’m telling this part because I want you to know the kind of cloth Stanton came from. Dead nigras to him was the same as dead white men. Stanton was playing around. As a matter of fact, it was Stanton that had the first woman hanged in American history for her part in Lincoln’s assassination. She didn’t participate in it but knew the folks who did. Anyway, Stanton went down there and started asking questions…
Stanton: “I just finished hanging twelve Moe’s and a skirt yesterday… and I don’t mind hanging twelve more today… Now somebody had better tell me something!!”
Stanton had come to Savanah, to get it right from the horse’s mouth… General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman was prepared. He had been given notice that Stanton was on his way down there by Lincoln’s chief of staff. Seems as though somebody had laid the blame at his feet.
“They say that you have manifested an almost criminal dislike to the negro…, that you drove them from your ranks, preventing their following you by cutting the bridges in your rear and thus caused the massacre of large numbers by Wheeler’s cavalry.” – Major General Henry W. Halleck.
Yep… somebody had painted Sherman as a low-down racist of the 5th degree with burning cross and white sheet insignia.
Stanton: “Sherman those nigras and abolitionist up north want answers!! They say if they don’t get answers, they want toes dangling… Now you need to tell me something right now!!”
Sherman: “Well Ed… can I call you Ed?”
Stanton: “Sargent… go get my rope…”
Sherman: “Wait a minute…!! Wait a minute…!! Let me tell you something!! Let me tell you something!!”
Stanton: “Take him to that pole over there Sargent…!!”
So, for real, nobody knows what Sherman and Stanton discussed. Later in his memoirs, Sherman said, he told Stanton not to jump to conclusions. He also said that Stanton didn’t come there because he cared so much about what happened, but because he was pressured by the abolitionist. Sherman said they all felt pity for those “poor negroes,” but it was different from what Stanton felt. For Stanton it was political.
Now Sherman for all the hype, wasn’t a “neegrow” lover in the absolute sense of the word. Sure, he freed tens of thousands of us on his march through the south and when he marched down the streets with his army, we gathered around him like he was a god, throwing chicken and biscuits at him, and from what I hear there were a couple of panties thrown at him too… but I don’t know…
Alright… let me stop playing… Anywho, he did not do it for humanitarian reasons, he fought because that was his job. Sherman did not think black men were good enough or intelligent enough to fight alongside white soldiers. He even opposed black suffrage, the right to vote.
“I want soldiers made of the best bone and muscle in the land and won’t attempt military feats with doubtful materials. In our army we have no negro soldiers and, as a rule, we prefer white soldiers.”– General William Tecumseh Sherman
Did I say 5th degree? Make that 1st degree and give him some burning church ribbons…
We Are Not Our Grandparents…
Now, in this day and age, that type of attitude usually ends up with cities burning down and $50 Sanyo TV’s for sale in the alley… but back then, that was the prevalent opinion. They wanted to free us, but they didn’t want us in their armies, and they didn’t want us to vote. It was a crazy time. One of Davis’s commanders who was at the massacre named General Oliver Otis Howard, was none other than the founder of Howard University in Washington D.C, one of the oldest and most prestigious black universities in the United States.
As for Sherman, after the war he was hailed as a war hero and was given a parade through Washington D.C. Later when Ulysses Grant became president, he was put in charge of the army with the title, General-In-Chief. Of course, Sherman would never see the South again after the war… they wish that Moe would come back down there… he was the most hated man in the Confederate. I mean his life was in danger if he even went on the “south” portico of the White House… Because of the events at Ebenezer Creek, Special Order #15 was signed by Sherman, giving the enslaved black folks 40 acres and a mule. Well, the mule part was thrown in there. We didn’t really get a mule… well just some of us got a few old Army mules, but not all of us. President Johnson later took the land and mules back and returned the land to the plantation owners. William Tecumseh Sherman died on February 4, 1891. He was seventy years old.
Joseph Wheelers calvary was widely condemned for the atrocity, but all Wheeler got was dirty stares from the nigras. He was never punished for his crime. He went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1885 to 1900 and as a major general of volunteers in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Wheeler died on January 25, 1906, from a large knife sticking out of his back… okay… I don’t know how he died… but he was 69 years old when he passed away in Brooklyn New York.
As for General Jefferson Davis, he thought he was going to go on and live his best life. He was never punished or reprimanded and was eventually promoted to Brevet Major General. However. it was just a field command, and they took that shat back later. After the war he was reassigned to the Military District of Alaska… yeah that Alaska… and was present when Alaska was transferred to America in 1867. He was the first commander of the Department of Alaska and stayed there until somebody felt sorry for him in 1870. On November 30, 1879, Davis died of a heart attack when they asked him ‘what are you doing here…?’ you supposed to be in Alaska… go get yo’ shat and report to the dock!!
Ima stop playing… there is no cause of death listed for Davis, and he is buried in the Crown Hill Cemetary in Indiana.
Well, that’s the story of Ebenezer Creek. Hundreds of black men, women and children died there, but not a word about it in our history books. It was one of the largest black mass casualty events during the Civil War and not a word… That’s why HIll1News is here…
Thanks for reading © Hill1News.
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