Nisbet Plantation

Nisbet Plantation. Chickamauga Campaign Heritage Trail. "Cloverdale" was a successful plantation established by Colonel James Cooper Nisbet and his brother. At the start of the war, James Nisbet raised a company for the 21st Georgia Infantry Regiment and went to Virginia as a Captain. In the spring of 1863, Nisbet was promoted to Colonel and sent back to Macon, Georgia to raise a regiment., Colonel Nisbet's parents were at the plantation when General William Haines Lytle, a Federal brigade commander on his way to Chickamauga stopped at the site. General Lytle who served with distinction during the Mexican War, had later made a name for himself as a lawyer in Ohio and was also a published poet. He was a natural gentleman, and seemed charmed by the social graces of the Nisbet family. When Mrs. Nisbet told him both her sons were in the Confederate Army, he replied: “Madam, I respect your adherence to a principle you think right. On our side there are men fighting who are animated by inherited prejudices; old issues started long since in England … I am fighting to preserve the Union of the States. But I do not make war on women and children, or wantonly destroy private property.", Nevertheless, while General Lytle and his staff had a pleasant dinner in the house, the men of his brigade looted the estate. Two former Confederate soldiers who had served in Virginia with Colonel Nisbet, but had now become "home made Yankees," were serving as guides for the Federal Army. They assured the soldiers that meat, as well as silver and other valuables were hidden on the property and much damage was done by digging., Commanding the 66th Georgia Infantry Regiment, Colonel Nisbet took part in the Atlanta campaign. Captured near Atlanta, he spent the rest of the war in Johnson's Island prison. When he returned home after the war he stated: "Cloverdale, one of the model stock farms of Georgia in 1861, I found in a wrecked condition, stock all gone, and the fencing all destroyed I set to work to rebuild my stock farm … With help if I could get it; without it, if nobody could be hired.", The first man he put to work was James Hawkins, the man who had deserted from his company in Virginia, and later guided the Federal soldiers to his house. Colonel Nisbet informed the man: "'Hawkins, the war is over; let it go at that. But if I had caught you during the war, when you were with your gang out plundering this farm, I would have filled you full of bullets.” Hawkins, still wearing a Federal uniform coat, went to work in the fields., “During the winters of '65 and '66," Colonel Nisbet stated, "business in the South crawled up. The railroads were being rebuilt. The Blacks made contracts to work the plantations on shares, or for wages. Cotton commanded a topping price.” He served several terms in the Georgia Legislature and helped get the state through reconstruction., Captions (left to right) , . Colonel James Cooper Nisbet , . From the map of Col. William E. Merrill, Chief Engineer, Army of the Cumberland , . Soldiers taking a break