First Sunday "Smyrna, Georgia: Civil War Battlefield" Lecture

Yesterday Dr. Marchione, Ph.D., the author of the recently published A Brief History of Smyrna, Georgia presented a slide / lecture on "Smyrna, Georgia: Civil War Battlefield" that demonstrated that the battles and troop movements in and around Smyrna (at Smyrna Camp Ground, Ruff's Mill, and at the River Line fortifications) were far more important and decisive than is generally recognized.

His talk dealt with such facets of the Atlanta campaign as General Francis Asbury Shoup's two defensive barriers constructed in South Cobb---the Smyrna Line and the River Line (the latter dubbed by historians "The Maginot Line of the Confederacy"; the near death experience of General William Tecumseh Sherman, not once, but twice here in Smyrna and the likely consequences had Sherman been killed on our home turf; the critical importance of the W&A railroad in the Atlanta Campaign as a line of supply for the federal army; and finally, how the conquest of Atlanta and the collapse of the Confederacy were virtual certainties once Sherman's federal juggernaut breached that last great physical barrier on the road to Atlanta, the Chattahoochee River.

The "First Sunday" lecture series is held in the Smyrna Public Library Meeting Room and is sponsored by the Friends of Smyrna Library.