Calvin Sego enlisted in a Richmond County, Georgia confederate cavalry troop that
became part of Cobb’s Legion and fought throughout the eastern campaigns. He was
my grandfather’s grandfather. Photo in the author’s collection.

We have all watched the scene dozens of times in TV reruns of the film Gone with the Wind: our fictional and diffident hero, Ashley Wilkes-the love of the teenage Scarlett O’Hara- returns from the war, having walked all the way from North Carolina after serving in Cobb’s Legion, one of the most storied units of the confederacy. My great-great grandfather was a real trooper in Cobb’s Legion. Enlisting when he was barely 17, Calvin grew up helping his father do blacksmith’s work. To be a confederate cavalryman required two essentials: owning your own horse and secondly, having the tools and knowledge to care for and shoe your horse. Southerners seemd better at war on horseback than their northern counterparts. But in the souhern units, Cavalrymen who lost their horse in the fighting had to transfer from the cavalry to the infantry; or, go home and procure another horse.

Calvin’s Richmond County troopers became part of Cobb’s Legion and fought in the eastern campaigns of Gen. Robert E. Lee. The Legion was a “combined arms” unit of artillery, infantry and cavalry organized and equipped by Thomas R.R. Cobb. He was a wealthy legal scholar from a prominent Athens family and had crafted Georgia’s new constitution when the state left the Union. Calvin fought at Brandy Station, the greatest cavalry fight in the history of the entire western hemisphere.

After the war, Calvin came home to Augusta, where he became a store owner, farmer and a policeman. This was before we called such energetic people “multi-taskers.” His home and store were on Butler Creek, just south of Augusta near the village of Gracewood. Like most farmers, he and his wife, Mary Francis, raised poultry, vegetables and kept a a cow. They raised a turkey for the holiday feast every year as Christmas approached and had nurtured a very fat Tom turkey for their growing family.

Calvin was the entire police force for his corner of the county. So, he was often called out in the middle of the night to enforce the law or keep the peace. He kept an oil- burning lamp lit on the dining room table every night to avoid stumbling around in the dark when a caller announced a crime in the middle of the night. The turkey usually roosted in the pear tree just outside the dining room window. On a chilly night in November, the turkey made a great commotion, gobbling loud enough to wake Calvin and his wife, Mary. Calvin rushed from his bed (as in the famous Christmas poem) and, discovered the glass base of the oil lamp had burst and the dining table was in flames.

Calvin grabbed a quilt from his bed and smothered the flames before the house could go up in smoke. The turkey had saved their home, their store and likely their lives as well. Family lore has it that Calvin and Mary decided on the spot that they would spare the turkey’s life and have chicken for Christmas! I know, it would have been better if this had happened at Thanksgiving-in fact, it may have. But the tradition of Thanksgiving and even Thanksgiving itself was just becoming established as a tradition and would not become a national holiday until the 1930’s when President Franklin Roosevelt issued a proclamation making it so.

In the 1870’s Calvin and his fellow confederate veterans formed a chapter of the Confederate Veterans Association. Several times Calvin was elected to travel to Atlanta and elsewhere for the conventions held by these aging men to commemorate their war for independence. When Calvin died, they bore his casket to Magnolia Cemetery, the remarkable old cemetery in Augusta where so many famous Georgians are buried. Calvin never drew a confederate pension-those only went to old soldiers who were so poor or sick they were likely to die soon anyway.  Georgia is historically cheap when it comes to welfare help. He died peacefully at his home in 1921.

I knew Calvin’s son, Thomas (my great grandfather) and attended his fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration held at his son Calvin’s home in Gough, Georgia located not far from Augusta.

Two things impress me in retrospect (aside from the fact that I am not comfortable eating turkey at Thanksgiving).  First, at least three generations of my family were blacksmiths. My grandfather began his career as a mechanic by purchasing and operating a blacksmith’s shop in Gough. Secondly, I never heard the Civil War discussed in my grandfather’s home. I have a strong suspicion that my grandfather was convinced that the war was largely a rich man’s fight to protect the southern aristocracy of slaveowners.

Perhaps more importantly, my ancesters got on with their lives. Like his grandfather and father, my grandfather was a hard working man in an age of great technological change. Like his forebears, Calvin adapted to those changes as best he could and became a productive if not wealthy citizen, devoted to church and family. The last boy to carry our original Calvin’s name was my uncle, Calvin, who served in the mobile artillery of General Patton’s army when it invaded France in 1944. And, he was among those first soldiers to cross the Rhine River into Germany. Like my great-great ancestor, he had been called upon to serve as a soldier in a war far from home. He came home and the patriot became a mechanic.

Battle of Brandy Station. For the first time the Union Cavalry was well trained and
equipped to fight the Confederate Cavalry to a draw. The Confederate horsemen would
finally be bested by an arrogant and courageous Union cavalry commander, Brevet
General George Armstrong Custer, on the final day at Gettysburg. Photo from Wikipedia.