English artist Steve Noon painted this for the cover of Atlanta 1864 by James Donnell. John Fritz, whose ancestor fought at the fort, bought the original and asked to have a copy posted here. Later I will put it in a page of its own. Steven Noon corrected the flags and added a Spencer rifle after some Resaca folks offered more information about them. More difficult to correct, and left alone, was Benjamin Harrison’s horse. Mr. Noon had seen the lithograph and web sites showing Harrison on horseback, though not in a scene of the fort. The setting is quite realistic–the fort looks just like that. And the soldiers are set about as one would expect from the stories.

Yes, the 102nd Illinois had roughly 200+ men who were armed with Spencer rifles. Having been issued the Spencers the previous year at Lavergne, Tennessee. The Illinois men were to patrol the Railroad in that area. They were ordered to turn them in for Springfield rifles just as the Atlanta Campaign was starting. But it was said that “Want of time prevented the execution of this order”. Many of the Spencer shell casings were recovered in front of the Battery years ago.