The Battles of Tilton were two one-day skirmishes in the American Civil War. The first of which was during the Atlanta campaign, the second was during Hood's Tennessee Campaign. The battles were fought in Tilton, Georgia, in Whitfield County, located a few miles south of Dalton, Georgia, near the Conasauga River.
The First Battle of Tilton was a skirmish on May 13, 1864. The Confederate side was led by Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler.
The Second Battle of Tilton occurred on October 13, 1864, when soldiers of Maj. Gen. Samuel G. French's Division of Lt. Gen. Stewart's Corps of the Confederate Army of Tennessee besieged a military garrison of 300 soldiers of the 17th Iowa Infantry Regiment commanded by Lt. Col. Simpson M. Archer. The blockhouse had been constructed a few months prior to the battle, to guard the Western and Atlantic Railroad. Commanded by Archer, the 17th Iowa Regiment barricaded themselves in the blockhouse and surrendered upon exhausting their ammunition supply.
A future member of the Iowa General Assembly, Pvt. William Graham Buck, was among those captured at the battle. Union prisoners captured at the battle were sent to Camp Lawton or Camp Sumter in Andersonville.
Civil War anniversary: Capture of the Tilton Block House
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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