Yankees take Marietta

“Hide your silver,” he said, “and your women. The Yankees are coming!”

They’ll be coming from Ohio and Indiana, Pennsylvania and New York and Maine — even from Georgia. They’re gathering in Marietta for the annual Sons of Union Veterans National Encampment Tour.

You read that correctly, dear reader: Sons of Union Veterans. More than 300 have already registered. Word is they're going to set up tents and a cannon at the Hilton Atlanta/Marietta Hotel & Conference Center near downtown. The cannon, according to all reports, will be for show purposes only.

So you can relax. Quinlin feels no antipathy toward the South, though his great-great-grandfather, John James of the 93rd Indiana Infantry Regiment, died at Vicksburg. Strong emotions, like battlefields themselves, lose their edges over time. Also, he lives in Suwanee.

Quinlin is partially responsible for this invas — er, camp, the organization’s 133rd. He and other members of the South Carolina and Georgia chapter of the Union organization proposed having the annual meeting in Georgia. They made a compelling case, noting that this year marks the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Atlanta. The hotel where the Union sons are meeting also happens to be built on the site of a Union hospital, Quinlin said.

“We’re meeting on some very historical ground,” he said.

Bloody ground, too. The Battle of Atlanta was one conflict in several that comprised the Atlanta Campaign, a series of fights waged in North Georgia during 1864. Nearly 70,000 soldiers from both sides were killed, wounded or lost in the four-month campaign.

“After 150 years, no matter whether these men wore blue or gray, we need to honor their memory,” Quinlin said.

That means sharing the stage with men whose ancestors fought on the other side. Griffin resident Charles Kelly Barrow, recently elected commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, is addressing the visitors Saturday.

Any animosities stemming from that long-ago conflict have faded, said Ben Sewell, executive director of the Confederate organization.

“We consider them (Union sons) some of our best recruiters,” Sewell said. “They’re pretty nice fellows.”

A lot of Civil War enthusiasts, Sewell noted, call themselves SOBs — sons of both Union and Confederate soldiers.

Quinlin, for example. In addition to having an Indiana soldier in his past, Quinlin also had a great-great-grandfather, Landrine Eggars, late of the 27th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. A native of Boone, N.C., Eggars died during the war and is buried in Virginia.

Camp highlights include tours of the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, trolley tours around Marietta and the commemoration of a monument to Wisconsin soldiers who fought at Allatoona Pass, now a historic site near Cartersville. People dressed in Civil War-era garb will be on hand at the Hilton throughout the weekend, too.

The participants have no plans to swing by Roswell. History notes that Union Gen. William T. Sherman forced about 400 Roswell mill workers, most of them women, onto trains bound for Indiana. Some returned at war’s end, but most remained.

Then there’s the matter of silver. As Sherman’s minions neared, the pastor at Roswell Presbyterian enlisted a parishioner to do the Lord’s work. He gave the church member the church’s silver Communion set to hide. He took it to the mill he supervised. There, a mill employee smuggled it home, piece by piece, in her lunch basket. When the Union troops hit town, they didn’t look twice for valuables in her modest home.

The silver is used to this day. There are no plans to employ this weekend, though. It will be kept in the church archives — presumably under lock and key.