Tag: General Kilpatrick

August 16th, 1864

August 16th, 1864:

Sherman has sent Kilpatrick’s Cavalry to the south of Atlanta on a reconnaissance mission.  On the morning of the 16th, Kilpatrick reaches Fairburn, where he destroys three miles of railroad track and the depot.  He has been operating without any real opposition from Jackson’s Cavalry.  Sherman begins to think that Kilpatrick, along with a couple Brigades of Garrad’s Cavalry, could swing far south of Atlanta and destroy the railroad without needing to move the entire army.  Sherman ask Kilpatrick if he thinks it is possible, to which he replies that it would be possible to damage the tracks bad enough to be out of service and not put his command in any danger.

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Fairburn, Georgia.  Located south west of Atlanta along the railroad lines.  As Kilpatrick came through on his raid he destroyed the original Depot.  The marker here is for the raising of the first Confederate flag in Georgia.  Wives of men that had been at the Confederate Congress, stopped on their home in Grantville to purchase fabric and by the time they made it to Fairburn, they had created the flag.
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Looking north towards East Point along the railroad that leads to Atlanta.  This one of the vital supply lines the fed the city while it was under siege.  Kilpatrick destroyed roughly three miles of track here.