The Macon Volunteers: 1825-2025: The Macon Volunteers, Macon Guards, and the Mexican American War, 1836-1847

By Major William Carraway

Historian, Georgia National Guard

 

Prelude

With their battle laurels earned in Florida in 1836, the Georgia Militia resumed the practice of annual training encampments. The Macon Volunteers and Bibb Cavalry encamped May 24-27, 1838, on an elevation west of Macon known as Encampment Hill.[1] From May 7-11, 1839, the Macon Volunteers encamped at Garrett Springs near Milledgeville, Ga.[2]

 

The 1840 encampment was held in Savannah, Ga. from April 30-May 5. The Volunteers were joined in camp by the Clinch Riflemen, Augusta Artillery Guards, Metropolitan Greys, and Liberty Independent Troop. Savannah-based units included the Republican Blues, Volunteer Guards, Phoenix Riflemen, Chatham Artillery and Georgia Hussars.[3]

 

After traveling by rail on May 22, 1843, to attend a training camp in Savannah, the Macon Volunteers were received by the Savannah Volunteer Guards. Joining the companies already in Savannah, the Volunteers paraded through the city. The Savannah Republic was prompted to observe that the Volunteers “in their light and elegant uniforms and white drooping plumes, carried themselves admirably. Their military deportment and good discipline reflect high honor upon them.”[4]

 

The deportment and honor of the Volunteers would soon be put to the test. The American annexation of Texas in 1845 would swiftly lead the Volunteers to war.

 

From Macon Volunteers to Macon Guards

Roster of the Macon Guards (Volunteers),
Weekly Columbus Enquirer, July 7, 1846, 1.

During their September 7, 1845, drill, the Macon Volunteers unanimously approved a
resolution officering their services should the United States declare war on Mexico. Captain Isaac Holmes, commander of the Macon Volunteers, communicated the company’s resolve to the Secretary of War.[5]

 

Holmes was born in Liberty County in 1814. He served as first sergeant of the Macon Volunteers in 1836. In 1846 he was elected Mayor of Macon, becoming the fourth Macon Volunteer to serve as the city’s chief executive following Robert Birdsong, W. J. Dannelly and Isaac Seymour.[6]

 

Following a series of cross border engagements with Mexican forces, the United States declared War on Mexico on May 13, 1846. Accordingly, the War Department called on states to fill allotments of volunteer troops. Whereas the Volunteers tendered their services for six months of service, the War Department required 12-month enlistments. Meeting to discuss the matter, the Volunteers found that while the plurality were prepared to serve for 12 months, there were those who, due to family or business considerations, could not commit to the longer enlistment period. Rather than allow those members to suffer the discomfort of watching their company march off without them, the Soldiers resolved to form a new company for the purpose of mobilization for Mexican War service.[7] Resigning as mayor, Capt. Holmes assumed command of the new company, designated the Macon Guards, with Elisha Shelton and Edmund Rogers as lieutenants.[8] The plurality of the Volunteers immediately joined the ranks of the Guards while those who could not do so would remain behind, effectively as a rear detachment.

 

The Macon Guards were among the first ten companies of Georgia Militia to meet the enlistment stipulations of the War Department.[9]

 

On To Texas

Assembling in Columbus, Ga. June 20, 1846, the companies, with an aggregate strength of 910 Soldiers, were assembled into two battalions of five companies each forming the 1^st Regiment of Georgia Volunteers. The Soldiers elected Capt. Henry Rootes Jackson of the Savannah-based Irish Jasper Greens to serve as colonel of the new regiment.[10] Captain Isaac Holmes, served as first sergeant of the Macon Volunteers during the Second Seminole War, finished second in the election with 298 votes just 12 short of the 310 votes tendered for Jackson.[11]

 

The Macon Guards were assigned as Company C, 1^st Battalion, 1^st Georgia Regiment with the Columbus Guards, Richmond Blues, Canton Volunteers and Crawford Guards. [12] The 2^nd Battalion consisted of the Georgia Light Infantry, Fanin Avengers, Kennesaw Rangers, Sumter County Volunteers and Jasper Greens.

 

The 1st Regiment marched from Columbus to Chehaw, Ala. where they entrained for Montgomery. Proceeding to Mobile, the Soldiers embarked on the steamer James L Day July 9, bound for Brazos Island, Texas at the mouth of the Rio Grande.[13] After bivouacking for two weeks, the regiment marched to Camp Belknap east of Brownsville. Its ranks thinned by debility and hardship, the regiment proceeded west and crossed the border into Mexico before encamping at Carmargo where the Soldiers suffered from disease and temperatures soaring above 100 degrees. By the first day of August, 160 men were sick or debilitated due to dysentery and exposure. Just two months later, at Camp Allen near Monterrey, only 600 of the 910 Soldiers who set out from Columbus were fit for duty. Among the seventy Soldiers lost to disease at Monterrey was Capt. Isaac Holmes, who died December 1, 1846.[14] He was eulogized by a resolution adopted by the officers of the Georgia Regiment at Camp Allen December 13, 1946.[15]

 

That the loss of Captain Holmes, the Georgia Regiment has sustained a blow from which it cannot hope to recover – the accomplished officer, the fascinating gentlemen, the gallant soldier – ever prompt in the discharge of duty and full of all the lofty impulses which lead to distinction – enlightening all around him by the display of military knowledge, and diffusing the sunshine of a most amiable character over our social horizon, death has selected him as a most conspicuous victim.

 

The Macon Guards and the 1^st Georgia Regiment were deployed along the Mexican coast as part of the volunteer division of Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson. Colonel Jackson, commanding the 1^st Georgia Regiment, was placed in command of a brigade which included his former regiment. Patterson’s Volunteers marched to Tampico and onward to Vera Cruz with Jackson’s Brigade last in the line of march.[16] Arriving, they were placed in the lines confronting Vera Cruz, but were not engaged during the siege.

 

Map of the Siege of Vera Cruz drawn by Capt. George B. McClellan, 1847. Library of Congress.

The regiment was next dispatched to Alvarado, but the Mexican forces there retreated without an engagement. The Georgians then marched to Cerro Gordo but did not arrive until the battle was over. Despite travelling nearly 800 miles across Mexico, the Georgia Regiment’s only casualties thus far had been to disease.

 

Demobilization

While encamped at Jalapa May 5, 1847, the 1^st Georgia received orders to prepare to return to the United States. The regiment would march to Vera Cruz and embark for New Orleans.[17] Returning to Georgia at the expiration of their 12-month enlistment term in June 1847, the 1^st Regiment, Georgia Volunteers mustered 450 Soldiers out of service having lost 145 to disease and 315 to discharge.[18] Welcoming the Macon Guards home June 17, the city of Macon held a banquet in honor of their Soldiers.[19]

 

Seymour, by then a major, remained in Mexico after the departure of the Georgia Regiment.[20] Promoted to lieutenant colonel in October, he was placed in command of a battalion of Georgia volunteer companies that been raised after the initial muster of the 1^st Georgia Regiment. In December 1847, following a terrifying 72-hour passage through a typhoon aboard the steamer Easton, Seymour landed with his troops near Perote, Mexico where he served as the military governor of Castle Perote in which General Santa Anna was imprisoned.[21]

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[1] Weekly Columbus Enquirer, Columbus, Georgia, May 31, 1838, 2.

 

[2] The Weekly Telegraph, Macon, Georgia, May 14, 1839, 3.

 

[3] Georgia Journal and Messenger, Macon, Georgia, May 7, 1840, 3.

 

[4] The Weekly Telegraph, Macon, Georgia, May 30, 1843, 3.

  [5] The Weekly Telegraph, Macon, Georgia, September 9, 1845, 2.

 

[6] John C. Butler, Historical Record of Macon and Central Georgia, (Macon, Ga. J. W. Burke & Co, 1879), 95, 98, 338.

 

[7] The Weekly Telegraph, Macon, Georgia, June 09, 1846, 3.

 

[8] Gordon Burns Smith, History of the Georgia Militia: 1783-1861 Volume 2: Counties and Commanders Part 1. (Milledgeville, GA: Boyd Publishing, 2000), 264.

 

 [9] Wilbur G. Kurtz, “The First Regiment of Georgia Volunteers in the Mexican War,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1943): 301–323, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40576901, 307.

[10] Wilbur G Kurtz, “The First Regiment of Georgia Volunteers in the Mexican War,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1943): 301–323. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40576901, 308.

 

[11] “Georgia Regiment,” Weekly Columbus Enquirer, June 24, 1846, 2.

 

[12] “Georgia Regiment,” Daily Constitutionalist and Republic, January 6, 1847, 2.

 

[13] Weekly Telegraph, July 14, 1846, 2.

 

[14] Wilbur G. Kurtz, “The First Regiment of Georgia Volunteers in the Mexican War,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1943): 301–323. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40576901, 311.

[15] “[Communicated]” Weekly Telegraph, February 9, 1847, 3.

 

[16] Charles P. Hervey, Adjutant, Georgia Regiment of Volunteers, “8^th July, 1847,” Weekly Columbus Enquirer, July 13, 1847.

[17] Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson, Orders No. 17, May 5, 1847.

 

[18] Wilbur G. Kurtz, “The First Regiment of Georgia Volunteers in the Mexican War,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1943): 301–323. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40576901, 312.

 

[19] John C. Butler, Historical Record of Macon and Central Georgia, (Macon, Ga. J. W. Burke & Co.), 176.

 

[20] “Return of the Military, Georgia Journal and Messenger, June 16, 1847, 2.

 

[21] “Letter from Col. Seymour,” Georgia Journal and Messenger, January 26, 1848, 2.