Civil War
Before the [[American Civil War[[, Grant gave land on Jenkins Street for Atlanta's first black church, Bethel Church (now Big Bethel Baptist Church), and defended the church's right to the property after the war.
The beginning of the war saw Grant still in Louisiana. In February 1861, Fannin, Grant & Co sold out to the Southern Pacific, and Grant returned to Atlanta. After the Vicksburg Campaign, Confederate Chief of the Engineer Bureau Jeremy Gilmer contacted him to survey possible enemy crossings of the Chattahoochee River, and defensive works were begun in August, 1863. Grant explained that the fortification of Atlanta would be as difficult as that of Richmond, Virginia. Grant planned a series of 17 redoubts forming a 10-mile (16 km) circle over 1 mile (1.6 km) out from the center of town. It was bounded on the north on high ground (present location of the Fox Theatre), on the west by Ashby Street, on the south by McDonough Drive and on the east by Grant Park. Gilmer inspected the completed work in December 1863. Because of how the Battle of Atlanta unfolded, these fortifications were never really put to the test, the city's Mayor Calhoun capitulating to the siege after the railways to Macon were seized by Union forces and an untimely "accident" ignited and blew up the primary ammo dump within the city, leaving them practically defenseless.
Read more about this topic: Lemuel Grant
Famous quotes related to civil war:
“To the cry of ‘follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,’ Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)