Battle of South Mountain • Turner’s Gap • Fox’s Gap • Crampton’s Gap
The “Wiregrass” Georgians wayside marker is at the start of the trail from the parking area to the North Carolina monument at Fox’s Gap on the South Mountain battlefield.
From the marker:
The “Wiregrass” Georgians
50th Georgia Infantry Regiment, C.S.A.
A few hundred feet north of this site, the 50th Georgia Infantry Regiment, of Brig, Gen. Thomas F. Drayton’s Brigade, was decimated by elements of Brig. Gen. Orlando B. Wilcox’s 3,600-man Federal division on the late afternoon of September 14, 1862.
The Wiregrass Georgians were caught in an exposed position while deploying from behind the protection of a stone wall into the Old Sharpsburg Road and cut to pieces when Wilcox’s division launched a simultaneous assault against the confederate lines.
The dead and wounded piled up in the sunken road as volley after volley raked the huddled 50th Georgians. After about thirty minutes of horrific enemy fire, the Georgian’s resistance broke and the survivors retreated out of the road to the west through the gauntlet of enemy rifles.
Of the estimated 225 officers and enlisted men engaged, 47 were killed, and 112 wounded, 22 mortally. Many of the wounded had to be left on the field and were captured.
