By Larry Felton Johnson

Last month we published a article that included a reprint of a dispatch from the Civil War battlefront at Kennesaw Mountain (click here to visit that article). That battlefield dispatch, from June of 1864, was written about two weeks before the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, and about a month prior to the Battle of Atlanta.

While browsing the Georgia Historic Newspapers database this morning, I came across a good followup to that article. It’s from the April 12, 1926 issue of the Cordele Dispatch, and describes the act of the U.S. Senate that began the process of turning the mountain battlefield into a national park:

SENATE APPROVES MEMORIAL PARK

Washington, April 12 — The appointment of a commission to investigate the possibilities of establishing a national military park on the site of the Kennesaw Mountain battlefield has been authorized by the Secretary of War.

The commission would consist of one member of the Army Engineer Corps and two veterans, one each from the Confederate and Union ranks. The members would visit the site, study the feasibility of creating a national park, and report their findings to Congress by the first of next November.

$5,000 Appropriation

An appropriation of $5,000 is provided to cover the expenses of the commission.

The measure now goes to the House, where members of the Georgia delegation are expected to seek expedited passage. Approval is anticipated.

Sentiment among members of Congress who have been interviewed is unanimously in favor of establishing the Kennesaw Mountain National Military Park. Many have expressed the view that the park should have been created years ago, because of the great struggle that took place on and around the mountain for nearly a month in June and July 1864.

Those days witnessed, perhaps, the greatest contest of military strategies that ever occurred in any war.

To read more articles from the Cobb County Courier based on research on the Georgia Historic Newspapers database, follow this link.

About Georgia Historic Newspapers

Georgia Historic Newspapers is a part of the GALILEO project and is housed at the University of Georgia. It’s an amazing resource for anyone with an interest in the history of Georgia and its regions.

According to the “About” page on its website:

The Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), a part of Georgia’s Virtual Library GALILEO and is based at the University of Georgia Libraries. Since 2007, the DLG has partnered with universities, archives, public libraries, historical societies, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions to digitize historical newspapers from around the state. The archive is free and open for public use and includes over two million Georgia newspaper pages between 1763 and 2021.

Newspaper titles are regularly digitized and added to the archive. If you are interested in including a particular title, you can visit our participation page. A majority of the newspapers on this site were digitized from the microfilm produced by the Georgia Newspaper Project (GNP). For more information about the microfilm available through the GNP, please visit their website.

To read more articles the Courier wrote with help from the Georgia Historic Newspapers database, please follow this link.