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In June of 1864, Major  General William T. Sherman was leading his army on a campaign from Chattanooga, Tennessee on the march across the South that would eventually see the destruction of Atlanta.

Interestingly, Sherman’s initial objective was not Atlanta, per se, but rather the destruction of Confederate  General Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee.

Sortieing from Chattanooga, Sherman’s Military Division of the Mississippi would attempt to engage the  Army of Tennessee along the mountainous route from Chattanooga to Atlanta.

Johnston was sorely aware that his outnumbered army could be destroyed by Sherman’s more powerful forces, and so fell back on a series of strongly fortified positions. 

Sherman was aware that his strength advantage could be easily squandered by frontal assaults upon such works, and repeatedly sought to unhinge Johnston’s positions by turning the flanks. The hope was to catch Johnston as he fell back from such a position, but before he could establish another.  But Johnston succeeded each time in avoiding a decisive engagement.

Finally,  in late June, as Johnston held strong positions around Kennesaw Mountain, just outside Marietta, some 17 miles northwest of Atlanta, Sherman attempted a direct assault upon a position. His forces were repulsed with significant losses.

However, a demonstration by one of his subordinate units again managed to turn Johnston’s flank, and Johnston again, seeing his defenses unhinged, fell back once again.  Sherman’s tactical defeat at Kennesaw quickly became an operational level victory. Johnston fell back across the Chattahoochee River.

With the last significant defensible terrain on the route to Atlanta abandoned, Confederate President Jefferson Davis relieved Johnston of command, replacing him with John Bell Hood. Hood’s task, the defense of Atlanta, was, however, an impossible one, and the city would fall to Sherman in about two months.

In 1850, in the shadow of Kennesaw Mountain, 14 Presbyterian men formed Midway Presbyterian Church, serving the rural farming community of the western part of Cobb County, Georgia.  Almost a century later, about a mile up the road from the church, my father would grow  up on a small farm, and attend Midway each Sunday.

He grew up, and left Cobb County, and spent a lifetime traveling the nation and the world. He married an Alabama girl,and for over 50 years, they were man and wife, best friends, lovers, and a team that while often separated by many miles, were inseparable in love. Upon his passing in 2007, my father was laid to rest in the small cemetery behind the sanctuary, near his father and mother, and his firstborn daughter, who died in infancy.

Yesterday, my father’s wife, my mother, Mae “Pogo” Barie was laid to rest beside her husband and best friend. The rain poured upon us, briefly, like the tears of the mourners. And then, when the moment came to commit her remains to the earth, the sun broke through, shining with the promise of hope and life everlasting.

Someday, I too will grow old, and pass from this mortal coil. And I too will be laid to rest in this small, old cemetery.

And I can think of no better spot for my final repose.