After battles at Chattanooga in November 1863, and before the Atlanta Campaign the following May, southern Bradley County lay between Union and Confederate lines at Cleveland, Tennessee, and Dalton, Georgia. Both armies scouted the area. Soldiers and guerrillas looted farms and businesses. Here in February 1864 elderly Unionist Joseph Lusk II fought off rebels trying to steal his mules. One rebel was killed. Lusk's home was burned in retaliation.