MILITARY · HISTORICAL MARKER
Second Shoupade
Military
9
This Shoupade faced slightly west of north and was one of five along Fort Drive, whose name came from these forts. For more than five decades, from the 1950s to the early 2000s, it stood in the side yard of a house about 25 yards to the east, and its earthen mound was regularly mowed. At this point on the River Line was the junction of two Confederate divisions, though it is uncertain which division supplied the troops who occupied this position. Cleburne's Division held the line to the west and Bate's Division held the line to the east, and both belonged to Hardee's Corps. Major General Patrick R. Cleburne, born in Ireland in 1828, served as an enlisted soldier in the British Army in his early 20's, immigrated to the U.S., and by 1850 had settled in Helena, Arkansas, where he worked first as a druggist and then as a lawyer. He entered the Confederate army as a private, was soon elected captain, and became one of the Confederacy's best division commanders by the summer of 1864. He quickly recognized the value of the River Line's distinctive fortifications and was killed on 30 November 1864 at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Major General William B. Bate, born in Tennessee in 1826, was also a lawyer before the war and had earlier served as a volunteer soldier in the Mexican War. Although he had performed competently in several battles, he mismanaged an assault at Dallas, Georgia, on 28 May 1864 and was wounded in the leg near Utoy Creek, southwest of Atlanta, on 10 August 1864. After the war, he served as governor of Tennessee from 1883 to 1887 and as a U.S. Senator from 1887 until his death in office in 1905. Another Shoupade, the best preserved of all, stands about 150 yards to the east near the right-of-way fence for I-285.
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