Civil War Breastworks Commemorated at Lovett Exhibit

Civil War armies nearly 150 years ago encountered each other where the campus now sits.

To commemorate that conflict in the spring and summer of 1864, Lovett recently installed historical markers along a portion of Civil War breastworks remaining on the school's campus. The exhibit stands off Loridans House Drive across from Lovett’s new baseball and softball fields near the Loridans House, the headmaster's residence.

The construction of the baseball and softball fields brought the loss of some Civil War breastworks, resulting in the school carrying out archaeological studies and reaching an agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers and State Historic Preservation Office to develop the historic exhibit to give attention to the remaining trench, according to the school's website.

Chad Wright, a Lovett alumnus who served on the committee that provided historic documentation for the markers, said that about 60 feet of breastworks were lost. The school also has breastworks on the hill behind Denny Field, the web site said.

The committee and the archaeological firm R.S. Webb and Associates carried out months of historical investigation on the site. Based on the resulting report, the site was “determined to be eligble for a spot on the National Register of Historic Places,” according to the Lovett web page.

With the completion of the report, Lovett signed the agreement with the U.S. Army Crops of Engineers and the State Historic Preservation Office that outlined what Lovett was to do to "document, archive and celebrate the trench," including the installation of the exhibit, the website said.

Wright said that during the process, the committee took a Google Earth photo of the Lovett campus and superimposed it upon an 1865 map that showed the breastworks and the old Paces Ferry Road, which then passed through the site. That summer, with Union President Abraham Lincoln's re-election effort looming, Gen. Joe Johnston's Confederate forces and Gen. William T. Sherman's Union soldiers faced off on the banks of the Chattahoochee River. Sherman's Army occupied the Vinings area on one side of the river, and the Confederate forces held the Lovett side. Later, the Union army moved across the river and took control of the Lovett site, digging the breastworks.

“Protecting Paces Ferry and Vinings were essential” for the Union Army, Wright said. Vinings was a rail hub for the army's supply chain, and Sherman's officers established a hospital there. In the subsequent battle of Peachtree Creek, “most of the wounded were taken back up to Vinings and the hospital and sent north on the rail line.” Confederate prisoners were also transported on the rail line.

Wright said that when the two armies were intitially camped on either side of the Chattahoochee, they talked, traded supplies such as tobacco and “played songs across the river to each other.”

During the archaelogical investigation for the historic markers, a search for artifacts was carried out, but none were found. Wright said that he and his cousin, Wright Mitchell, uncovered artifacts along the site when they were students at Lovett, searching with metal detectors. 

“We found a few bullets and buttons and things back in that area,” Wright said. Some of the pictures on the historic markers show artifacts that he and Mitchell, now president of the Buckhead Heritage Society, discovered. Mitchell and Wright are authors of  "An Analysis of Civil War Activity in the Vicinity of the Lovett School Campus" for the Heritage Society.

Wright also has copies of letters written by soldiers when they were camped along the Chatthahoochee, talking about their day to day activities and recording their thoughts about the impending decisive battles that led to Sherman taking Atlanta and ensuring that Lincoln would remain in office and lead the Union to eventual victory.

Now, the historic exhibit at Lovett marks the site where the then-young men spent those climatic days, playing out their roles in the great historical drama. 

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