In the early 1860s, Rutledge was a community of about 200 citizens named for a local family whose property the Georgia Railroad crossed, surrounded by farms and plantations and once serving briefly as the railroad's terminal before the line was completed in 1845 from Augusta to Atlanta, then called Marthasville. Federal soldiers first entered Rutledge late on August 1, 1864, when several hundred cavalrymen under Colonel Horace Capron, remnants of Major General George Stoneman's cavalry division after defeat and escape at Sunshine Church north of Macon, rode quickly through town without burning the railroad depot, and only a small number later reached the safety of Major General William T. Sherman's army besieging Atlanta. More than three months later, at noon on November 18, during the March to the Sea, the first of three infantry divisions in Union Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams's 20th Corps marched into Rutledge. Brigadier General John W. Geary recalled that his division passed through Rutledge Station and halted nearby for dinner. The approximately 14,000 men of the 20th Corps, along with hundreds of wagons, horses, mules, and cattle, stretched for miles on the march, and as Geary's lead division entered Rutledge, Brigadier General Nathaniel J. Jackson's division was still a two-hour march west of Social Circle, more than ten miles behind. The 20th Corps, accompanied by Major General Henry W. Slocum, commander of the Left Wing in Sherman's army, heavily damaged the town when Colonel John Flynn's 28th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment burned much of Rutledge, destroying the depot, water tank, other railroad buildings, the track, and warehouses containing bales of cotton. Foraging on nearby farms and plantations brought in abundant food, including fresh pork, sheep, cattle, sweet potatoes, and syrup. The principal loss to the 20th Corps that day came when a detachment of 44 men from the 107th New York Infantry Regiment went beyond the prescribed one-half mile from the main column in search of whiskey and was ambushed by Confederate cavalry, with most killed or captured. Before sunset on November 18, the last Federal regiment left Rutledge, Major Patrick Griffith's 46th Pennsylvania Infantry, and the entire 20th Corps continued east on Hightower Trail to camp for the night just west of Madison.