| Unpopular and nasty Union soldier Jefferson C. Davis (this Davis was NOT the Confederate President Jefferson Davis) had already gotten away with murder once. On September 29, 1862, Davis got into an argument with his superior officer, Maj. Gen. William "Bull" Nelson, in Louisville, Kentucky and Davis shot and killed him. He was arrested for murder and imprisoned, but Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright came to his aid, pulled some strings and got Davis extricated from prison because there was a desperate need for experienced field commanders in the Union Army. Thus, this killer would become Union Brigadier General Jefferson C. Davis During the time of Sherman's march, his large army was accompanied by black "refugees", former slaves who had been "liberated" along the way and had no where else to go. Every day, more would join the procession until their numbers grew into the thousands at various times. The army used some of the able bodied ones to cook, clear roads or do grunt work, but Davis was becoming increasingly annoyed by them. Davis was eager to reach Savannah, Sherman's destination, and was being provoked by constant attacks by Major General Joseph Wheeler's Confederate cavalry corps. The wandering, confused blacks not only got in the way and slowed the army down, there was only enough food to feed the few who worked. When Davis and his troops arrived at the deep, ice cold Ebenezer Creek on December 8, 1864, its banks were swollen. Only twenty miles from his final destination of Savannah, they had to make a pontoon crossing, and after his XIV Corps prepared the Creek for crossing, Davis ordered that the crowds of blacks be held back to "protect" them. They were ordered not to go up on the pontoon bridge until his men and wagons had all crossed. Guards were put in place to enforce the order. From most accounts, once the troops had all crossed the creek, the pontoon bridge was quickly dismantled by Davis' last regiment, the 58th Indiana, who followed his orders and blocked the former slaves from getting on the pontoon and then cut it loose, leaving from several hundred to a couple thousand (depending on which account one reads) of the freed black slaves abandoned and stranded on the wrong side of the creek: women, children, babies and old men with their old carts, mules and worldly possessions. Meanwhile, Wheeler’s cavalry suddenly came flying up from behind in pursuit of the Yankees and ran straight into the huge crowd of former slaves. Some were trampled in the confusion. Some of the excited slaves thought the Confederates were there to capture them and fighting broke out with shots fired and blows exchanged. The others panicked even more, screamed in terror and rushed into the wildly rushing stream where they went to their watery graves trying in vain to get across the forty yard wide creek. The Confederate cavalrymen quickly left to find another way around the river so as to continue their pursuit. After the incident, Major James A. Connolly of Illinois sent a letter to his congressman "relative to General Davis’ treatment of the negroes at Ebenezer Creek". The congressman in turn leaked it to the press and it caused a sensation. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton himself went to Savannah to investigate the matter and do damage control. Stanton demanded an explanation from Sherman and, satisfied that the matter had been explained to his "entire satisfaction", went home. In subsequent reporting on the event northern papers dutifully glossed over the whole affair, describing it as "a massacre by large numbers by Wheeler’s cavalry". Union authorities justified the actions of Davis at Ebenezer Creek as a ‘military necessity.’ Sherman later stated in his memoirs that Davis was "just being a soldier". None of the officers involved was ever reprimanded, in fact a great many of them were promoted. Davis was later made a brevet major general and his commander went on to found Howard University for blacks in Washington, D.C. As for Wheeler, 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. The bodies of the dead floated out of the creek for years after. When it rains, some superstitious locals say Ebenezer Creek echoes the cries of the victims. |
| The Incident at Ebenezer Creek |