Solivagant USA

Jasper Newton Bare, my first cousin 4th removed from our grandparents Samuel Fry and Nancy Blythe, died in the first Battle of Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign: Battle of the Resaca. Jasper was one of 158,787 soldiers, including his younger brother James., on what became the second bloodiest battle of Sherman’s march to the sea. I found his grave yesterday at Chattanooga National Cemetery.

General “Rock” Thomas chose the site of the cemetery during the Battle of Missionary Ridge. He selected the same hill used by Grant in the Battle of Lookout Mountain. The site faces Missionary Ridge, the Tennessee River and Lookout Mountain. For an excellent description of the cemetery see Chattanooga National Cemetery–Civil War Era National Cemeteries: A Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary (nps.gov)

Today at Resaca Battlefield Historic Site I was serenaded by the roar of I-75, and a couple complaining that their Wendy’s hamburger was too dry. I admit that while extremely grateful to visit either on foot or by car these many civil war battlefields, I know that I tread where others lay wounded and dead. I find my experiences both humbling, and surreal.

By mid-May, 1864 when this battle was fought, the Confederates had lost Port Hudson, Vicksburg, and Shilo. Their success 40 miles north at Chickamauga was short lived as General Bragg could not maintain the siege of Chattanooga, and Grant defeated him at the Battle of Missionary Ridge. Several historians suggest that Grant telling Sherman to make trouble for Johnston by blowing up the nearby railroad and to create havoc for Johnston to supply his army was a delay tactic in the face of the upcoming Presidential election. Johnston was doing likewise, using skirmishes and back-door tactics to inflict damage with fewer losses of men and equipment. Lincoln had fired his General George B. McClellan early in the war because of his timid approach in fighting the Confederacy–especially after Antietam. McClellan ran on an anti-war campaign, and promised the Confederate States they could co-exist as their own nation.

But on this day, twenty-one-year-old CPL Jasper Bare, of the 5th TN Infantry, led his men through the hills, rivers, rocks, trees, and mud to his death. The report of his death officially came a month later: “Report of Col. James T. Shelley, Fifth Tennessee Infantry, of operations May 14.
CAMP IN FIELD, June 14, 1864.
I have just received your note, and contents noted. I beg leave to report the following facts concerning the Resaca battle: We (the Second Brigade) were ordered at between 10 and 11 o’clock to advance through an open field, which we did, and drove the enemy from their first line of rifle-pits, where we engaged the enemy for three hours and forty minutes, when we were relieved by the Fourth Army Corps. I lost in killed, 16 men; wounded, 92; commissioned officers, 6; missing, 14; total, 128.
Respectfully,
JAS. T. SHELLEY,
Colonel Fifth Tennessee Volunteers.
Lieut. C. D. RHODES,
Acting Assistant Adjutant-General, Second Brigade.

The NPS site Battle Unit Details – The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov) reports that the 5th TN Infantry lost only one officer.

The above photo is from the 10 Facts: Resaca | American Battlefield Trust (battlefields.org) website.

Jasper’s brother James, two years younger, had enlisted with him March 2, 1862 He returned from the war on June 1865, a twenty-year old ready to return to farming. He moved to the county of Butler, Kansas in 1871 where he lived until his death at age 80 in 1925. Jasper’s son Seth was four months old when his Dad and Uncle joined the Union. He died at his home in Wiley, Texas in 1952, living a long life as a successful farmer who could read, write, and speak English. Jasper’s wife Mary drew a civil war pension and died in Texas in 1912.

As a final note to my thoughts on the Battle of Resaca I turn to Mary S. Green. I did not have any confederate family in this battle, but I am grateful that Mary persuaded her father to give her 2-1/2 acres (and presumably helpers) to collect the remains of the confederates who were left on the battlefield. She established the first confederate cemetery in Georgia, at Resaca. See Civil War anniversary: Mary Green and the first Confederate Cemetery in Georgia | News | dailycitizen.news

Undoubtedly, some of the men she and others re-buried in her cemetery were some who had just spend their winter quarters in nearby Dalton, Georgia.