Category Archives: Civil War

New Book Captured Freedom

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Now available through retailers nationwide.


In Captured Freedom is the epic true story of nine Union prisoners-of-war who escaped from a Confederate Prison known as Camp Sorghum in Columbia, South Carolina in November 1864. They scrambled north on foot in rags that had once been uniforms of blue. Traveling in brutal winter conditions more than 300 miles with search parties and bloodhounds hot on their trail. On the difficult journey they relied on the help of enslaved men and women, as well as Southerners who sympathized with the North, before finally reaching Union lines on New Years Day 1865.

After arriving in Knoxville, Tennessee, and checking in with Union authorities, one of the men had a wonderful idea. The nine officers and their three mountain guides found a local photographer, hoping to commemorate what they had accomplished by posing together for a photograph. The instant, frozen in time, showed twelve ragged men with determination strong on their faces. It was a Civil War selfie. A moment that Captured Freedom.

Author Steve Procko, an Emmy-award winning documentarian, received a copy of the more than 150-year-old photograph from a descendant of one of the mountain guides. Upon identifying and researching the men in the photograph, he realized their remarkable story had never been told.

They say every picture tells a story. This one tells many.

 

Rebel Correspondent

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We’d like to introduce Rebel Correspondent.

Our first book in the There’s History Around Every Bend Book Series.

Now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Rebel Correspondent by Steve Procko is the true story about a young man who joined the Confederate army seven days after his eighteenth birthday and served bravely for more than two and a half years until the war ended. He emerged as changed person. 950 days of his life ticked by during his service and survival as a Cavalry Private. Then he returned to the peaceful farm life of his youth, before all the madness. But he wasn’t just a farmer, he was also a writer.

A little over thirty-six-years later, he decided to tell the world about his experiences. His autobiography was serialized in the Walker County Messenger, the weekly northwest Georgia newspaper published in the town of LaFayette, Georgia, between 1901 and 1903.

And then it was all but forgotten.

Steve Procko, an Emmy-award winning documentarian stumbled upon Arba F. Shaw’s account of his life as a private in Company F of the 4th Georgia Cavalry under the command of Colonel Isaac W. Avery while searching for information for a documentary series, “There’s History Around Every Bend.” The down-to-earth accounts of the everyday life of a lowly private just struggling to survive one of the greatest events in American history fascinated Procko. As he read the series of articles, he began to realize that this was a remarkable cache of history.

Shaw’s memories of the events are rich in details of the names, places, and events that he personally experienced during the Civil War. He was a son of the South, just a lowly cavalry private, one of hundreds in his regiment trying to survive day-to-day life, trying to understand the purpose of the turmoil he suddenly found himself thrown into.

He was there as the 4th Georgia rode into Tennessee in early 1863, and during the brutally cold winter campaign at Knoxville and Eastern Tennessee. He was seriously wounded at the Battle of New Hope Church and witness to the wounding of his commanding officer Colonel Isaac W. Avery (who would one day become the editor of The Constitution (today known as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) on the very same day. Recovering from his wounds, he returned to the war, and was wounded seriously again just five months later. He would suffer from the effects from these wounds for the rest of his life.

His eyewitness accounts are perhaps the only written record of some of the day-to-day activities of the 4th Georgia Cavalry (Avery) that survive today.

In Rebel Correspondent, Procko, brings us Arba Shaw’s complete, original account and enhances it with meticulous research of his own, uncovering the backstories of many of his Rebel comrades and offering historical perspective on places and events Shaw described so richly.

The book introduces to its 21st-century audience an important in-depth first-person account of one enlisted man’s experiences in the bloodiest and most controversial war in our country’s history.

The RebelCorrespondent.com website will also be used as a clearinghouse for information on the 4th Georgia Cavalry. This will eventually include a soldiers database with biographies and whatever photographs can be found for all the soldiers and companies of the 4th Georgia Cavalry. The rolls database will be added in the coming months.

Rebel Correspondent is book one of the History Around Every Bend Book Series available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, BooksAMillion.com and other retailer websites.

Incident on the Toccoa

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This story is part of an upcoming “History Around Every Bend” episode to be titled “1864: Chaos in the Mountains” which will explore a series of events that started at the beginning of that year and proceeded through November 1864, each of which was a cause-and-effect incident related to the next.

Friday, September 2nd, 1864 dawned as another humid, hot day – the last vestiges of summer held its grip on the peaks and hollows of the North Georgia mountains. Just 100 miles to the south, as September 2nd progressed, the last vestiges of the confederacy released its grasp in the fall of Atlanta, and the critical hub of the south fell to Sherman’s army.

Senses fully engaged, carefully, with stealth, twenty-seven-year-old Edward Callahan O’Kelley, a Union private in Company C of the 10th Tennessee Cavalry[1]Compiled Service Records, Company G, 10th Tennessee Cavalry (Union), Edward Callahan O’Kelley. Age 26, Enlisted 1/18/1864 for a period of 3 years in Nashville, TN. Mustered into service 2/27/1864. … Continue reading and his brother thirty-three-year-old John Pendleton O’Kelley plodded through the maze of mountain laurels near the Toccoa River. John was a rebel private AWOL from Company H of the 42nd Georgia Infantry CSA[2]Compiled Service Records, 42nd Georgia Infantry (Confederate), John Pendleton O’Kelley. Muster Date 3/4/1862;’ 5/15/1862 Disabled/Rheumatism; 10/2/1863 Absent, Unfit for Service.

Copied from
Aska Road – Toccoa Rapids Roadside Marker,
original image owned by
Bob Barton, descendant of Edward O’Kelley

 

Edward Callahan O’Kelley himself had at one time fought for the rebel cause as a private in Company G of the 24th Georgia Infantry[3]Compiled Service Records, 24th Georgia Infantry (Confederate), Edward Callahan O’Kelley. Enlisted 8/24/1862 in Whit Co., GA by Capt. Leonard. Left sick in Winchester, VA. 10/19/1862; Admitted to … Continue reading. He was wounded at 2nd Manassas in August 1862 and in the aftermath had switched sides, joining Federal forces in Nashville in January 1864. “We were always told as was passed down through my aunts and uncles that he was not happy with how his rebel company treated the civilians–pillaging and raping”, said Bob Barton, of Marble, North Carolina, O’Kelley’s 3X grand nephew, “they weren’t raised that way.[4]Bob Barton interview by Steve Procko; June 2018“

Since he was a former soldier in the confederate army, Edward O’Kelley signed a loyalty oath to the United States. There were several variations of this oath, but they all carried the same message–this would have likely been what Edward C. O’Kelley signed when he enlisted in Nashville at the Provost Marshall’s office:

Continue Reading: Incident On The Toccoa

References

References
↑1 Compiled Service Records, Company G, 10th Tennessee Cavalry (Union), Edward Callahan O’Kelley. Age 26, Enlisted 1/18/1864 for a period of 3 years in Nashville, TN. Mustered into service 2/27/1864. Present on muster rolls Mar-Apr, May-June, July-Aug/1864. Last paid April 20, 1864. He is reported as Killed in Action (KIA)A in September 15, 1864 though the place he was killed is incorrectly reported as Lumpkin County. Adjutant General’s Office, Washington, DC. 10/10/1864 officially reports him as Killed in Action.
↑2 Compiled Service Records, 42nd Georgia Infantry (Confederate), John Pendleton O’Kelley. Muster Date 3/4/1862;’ 5/15/1862 Disabled/Rheumatism; 10/2/1863 Absent, Unfit for Service
↑3 Compiled Service Records, 24th Georgia Infantry (Confederate), Edward Callahan O’Kelley. Enlisted 8/24/1862 in Whit Co., GA by Capt. Leonard. Left sick in Winchester, VA. 10/19/1862; Admitted to Richmond Hospital  No. 20 10/31/1862; Appears on receipt roll for clothing 2d Division Hospital; Camp Winder; Richmond, VA 1/15/1863. No further records after that date.
↑4 Bob Barton interview by Steve Procko; June 2018