Volume III MARCH, 1919 Number I Columbus, Ga., and General Henry L. Benning By HENRY R. GOETCHIUS The following article was written for the Columbus Evening Ledger, but with the kind consent of the author, we are permitted to use it here, feeling assured that it will prove of interest to our readers on account of the historical facts contained in it.-EDITOR. War telegrams, memorial days and patriotic women are not the only reminders of martial days "then and now." There are other reminders when war news is coming and our streets are full of soldiers and I want this afternoon to tell your readers whom I do not know something about the war notes sounding in Columbus before and in 1861. Before doing this I may tell something about the origin of this old town and briefly the part she took in other wars. Columbus is one of the most historic places in America. This is not generally known, but it is a fact. Long before 1827 and long before 1733, when Yamacraw Bluff was settled by General Oglethorpe, Columbus was right here on the Chattahoochee river at the foot of its Coweta falls, and was the most important Indian town in all this country between the Mississippi river and the Atlantic ocean. How long it had been so regarded by the Southern states no one knows, but Oglethorpe and his handful of followers found it that way in 1739, when white men, for the first time, so far as anybody knows, saw it. This was only six years after Oglethorpe landed at Savannah (Yamacraw Bluff). He found here, where Columbus now is, the famous and very important place known as Cowetah-afterwards Coweta Town-and changed in name |