During the Civil War, Walden’s Ridge was a natural obstacle to east-west military movement, and in 1862–1863 Confederate authorities ordered three Rhea County cavalry companies to patrol its passes between Emory Gap and Sale Creek to keep Federal forces out of the Tennessee River Valley. In the summer of 1862, thirty young socially prominent women in Rhea County organized a nonmilitary unit called the Spartans. Mary McDonald, age 28, gave herself the rank of captain, and her sister-in-law Caroline McDonald was first lieutenant. The group first met for support and friendship but became more active partisans during periods of Federal occupation. As a mounted soldiers’ aid group, they carried food and clothing to fathers, brothers, and sweethearts in the patrolling cavalry, an unconventional initiative for the time, and some historians believe they also carried out limited espionage for the Confederacy. In April 1865, Rhea County native Capt. John Walker of the 6th Tennessee Infantry, USA, had them arrested, marched them to the Tennessee River to teach them a lesson, and sent them by riverboat to Chattanooga. There, Gen. James B. Steedman ordered their immediate release if they signed oaths of loyalty to the United States and reprimanded Walker for wasting army time and resources. Federal officers escorted the Spartans back but left them at the landing to find their way home. They were not prosecuted, but during Reconstruction they suffered from vengeful Union partisans, and within a few years most of the women had left the county, including five who moved to Texas. Capt. Mary McDonald Sawyer, who died in 1914, is buried in Buttram Cemetery in Dayton.