HistoricSiteMarkers
Civil War

Baker's Brigade

Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia

Marker Inscription

Baker's Brigade. July 22, 1864. Baker's Alabama brigade (Col. J.H. Higley comdg.), Clayton's div., Cheatham's A.C., [CSA] was diverted N.E. in Clayton's attack on the 15th A.C. eastward, thus forming the extreme left of the line extending S. to Glenwood Ave. Higley's troops faced the right sector of the 15th A.C. held by 2 brigades of Woods' div. on the S. slope of Copenhill. A gap of 250 yds. in the swampy area of Clear Creek valley, separated Woods from the right of Morgan Smith's div. where the DeGress battery was posted. Woods' flank attack on Manigault's line at the Troup Hurt house not only retrieved the battery, but forced Baker's brigade to withdraw. 060-101 GEORGIA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 1956

Erected by Georgia Historical Commission

The Story

On July 22, 1864, during the Battle of Atlanta, Baker's Alabama brigade of Clayton's division was drawn northeast to form the far left of the Confederate attack against the Union 15th Corps. Facing Woods's Federal division across a swampy gap in the Clear Creek valley, the assault at first threatened the Union line and the DeGress battery near the Troup Hurt house. But a Federal counterattack retook the guns and forced Baker's Alabamians to withdraw.

Why it matters

This sharp local action was part of the desperate Confederate effort to break Sherman's grip on Atlanta — an effort that ultimately failed.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

By the summer of 1864, the Civil War had ground into its fourth exhausting year, and the fate of Atlanta had become one of its central questions. The city was a railroad hub and manufacturing center for the Confederacy, and Union General William T. Sherman had spent months maneuvering his armies south through the mountains of north Georgia to reach its outskirts. Whoever held Atlanta held a linchpin of the Southern war effort — and, that election year, a symbol whose loss or survival could sway Northern voters weighing whether the war was worth finishing.

The ground this marker describes was, in July 1864, the ragged eastern edge of a besieged city. What is now a settled Atlanta neighborhood was then a landscape of low ridges, wooded slopes, and the swampy bottomland of Clear Creek — the kind of broken terrain that turns a battle plan into improvisation. Copenhill and the valley below it were not famous places; they became briefly, violently important because of where the armies happened to meet.

The Confederate command under John Bell Hood had abandoned the cautious, defensive approach of his predecessor. Hood believed in attacking, and on July 22 he launched a bold flanking assault meant to roll up the Union line east of the city. Baker's Alabama brigade was one small gear in that large and desperate machine.

People & events

The marker fixes a single afternoon — July 22, 1864 — and a single unit within the sprawling Battle of Atlanta: the Alabama brigade led on that day by Colonel J. H. Higley, part of Henry D. Clayton's division. The brigade carried the name of Alpheus Baker, the Alabama officer who commanded it, though a brigade's namesake and its acting commander in a given fight were often not the same man; on this day it was Higley who led the troops into the fire.

As Clayton's division drove eastward against the Union Fifteenth Corps, Baker's brigade was pulled to the northeast, ending up on the far left of the attacking line. Ahead of them, across the boggy valley of Clear Creek, stood Federal troops of Woods's division holding the southern slope of Copenhill. A gap of some 250 yards yawned in the swampy ground — the sort of seam in a defensive line that an attacker dreams of exploiting.

For a moment the Confederate assault carried real promise. Nearby, Manigault's men briefly overran the Union position around the Troup Hurt house and seized the guns of the DeGress battery — a prize that could have unhinged the Federal defense. But war rewards the counterpunch as often as the charge. A Federal flank attack struck Manigault's line, retook the captured guns, and in the collapse that followed, Baker's Alabamians were forced to give up the ground they had gained and fall back.

Its place in the American story

The Battle of Atlanta was one of the hinges of the entire war, and this marker preserves a single tooth of that hinge. Hood's repeated attacks in and around the city that summer were gambles to break Sherman's grip before the noose closed. Each failed, and each failure spent Confederate lives and strength the South could not replace.

When Atlanta finally fell that September, the effect rippled all the way to the ballot box in the North. The capture of the city revived flagging Union morale and helped secure Abraham Lincoln's reelection, which in turn ensured the war would be pressed to its conclusion rather than settled by negotiation. Small actions like the one Baker's brigade fought were the raw material of that outcome — the reason the campaign added up the way it did.

There is also a quieter significance in how precisely this marker records the fight: which brigade, which division, which slope, which gap of yards. It reflects the painstaking work of veterans and historians to map the Atlanta battlefield after the fact, before a growing city buried its contours. To read it is to see how a nation chose to remember even the small, failed charges of its costliest war.

If you visit

Stand here and the first thing to do is imagine the ground stripped of the modern city. The neighborhood streets and houses sit on what was, in 1864, a tangle of ridges, wooded slopes, and the marshy bottom of Clear Creek. The marker's language — Copenhill, the valley, the 250-yard gap — is a map to a landscape that is mostly gone but not entirely; the rise and fall of the terrain still hints at why soldiers fought for these particular slopes.

Read the text slowly and let it orient you. It is precise about direction — the brigade pulled northeast, the line extending south — so try to face the way the attack moved and picture the DeGress battery and the Troup Hurt house off toward the Union right. Part of the pleasure of a marker like this is the detective work of matching its careful compass points to the ground under your feet.

This is a good stop for anyone tracing the Battle of Atlanta across the modern city, where the fighting is remembered in a scatter of markers rather than a single preserved field. Pair it with the other Atlanta Campaign sites nearby to assemble, marker by marker, the shape of a battle that helped decide the war — and keep in mind that what looks today like an ordinary corner was, for one July afternoon, the extreme left of a desperate line.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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Related people

  • · Alpheus Baker
  • · J. H. Higley
  • · Henry D. Clayton

Related events

  • · Battle of Atlanta

Themes & tags

Civil WarLandmark

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