As the Right Wing of Union Major General William T. Sherman's army marched from Atlanta to Savannah, it encountered the Ocmulgee, Oconee, and Ogeechee Rivers, with the Ocmulgee, about six miles east of Indian Springs, reached first by the Federal 17th Corps and two divisions of the 15th Corps moving through nearby Jackson and other communities farther north, while the 15th Corps divisions of Brigadier Generals Charles R. Woods and William B. Hazen marched farther south, feinting toward Macon to deceive Confederates before turning east, camping at Liberty Church on November 17, 1864, and arriving at Indian Springs on Friday, November 18th; their immediate goal was to reach and cross the Ocmulgee at Seven Islands, but cold, soaking rain turned roads and river banks to mud and briefly delayed about 8,000 Federal infantrymen and their animals at Indian Springs. For centuries, the natural artesian spring and its mineral water had attracted Native Americans, and seven stagecoach trails crossed there. William McIntosh, a half-Scottish and half-Muscogee (Creek) chief, built the Indian Spring Hotel in 1823, and two years later signed a treaty there ceding all Creek land east of the Chattahoochee River, after which he and other signatories were executed by Creek leaders who opposed it. The hotel later passed to the Varner family and hosted several prominent future Confederate leaders, including Benjamin H. Hill, Alexander H. Stephens, and Robert Toombs. During the Civil War, it served as a boarding house, dining hall, and ballroom, and according to Amanda Varner's diary, she and her sister Josephine had been nursing sick and wounded soldiers since the beginning of the war. Confederate soldiers sought refuge at the hotel and the adjacent healing waters before Federal soldiers arrived in November 1864, and because of pounding rain and occasional snow, the hotel then became a Federal hospital, kitchen, and dining hall, supplied by fresh spring water, while the Varners gave over its rooms, gardens, baths, and saloon for military use; their cooking and nursing helped spare the hotel from burning. A newlywed couple present when Federal soldiers arrived had to exchange their fine carriage horses for two footsore nags. After the war, the Varners sought $2,000 in reparations from the Federal government but were denied. On Saturday, November 19th, the divisions of Woods and Hazen left Indian Springs and crossed the Ocmulgee on a pontoon bridge, and all other Right Wing units crossed by the 20th on the way toward Monticello and Hillsboro. Indian Spring Hotel still stands, and the spring still flows through what became Georgia's first state park, Indian Springs State Park, in 1927.