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The Most Dangerous Man in Georgia

Influential Marietta citizen Henry Greene Cole was "an uncompromising Union man." He was also a notorious Yankee spy.

In September of 1863, a group of Confederate officers sat in a Marietta barber shop. As they waited for their turn in the chair, they discussed the war in Tennessee.

The Union Army of the Cumberland had captured Chattanooga weeks earlier, and the Army of Tennessee, under Gen. Braxton Bragg, had been forced into retreat.

But things were about to change. Bragg, intent on recapturing Chattanooga, was planning a surprise offensive against the Union’s isolated 11th Corps near Chickamauga Creek. More significant still, Bragg would be reinforced by James Longstreet’s 1st Corps of Virginians, which would soon be departing Richmond.

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The men spoke freely, for the only other person present was the Negro barber, a “free man of color,” who often cut hair for officers on furlough in Marietta. His being a Negro made him “invisible” in the minds of the officers sitting in his chair.

But while he may have been “invisible,” he was far from deaf. Nor was he passive. In fact, he used his “invisibility” to his advantage. When the officers had gone, he took his overheard information to his contact, Henry Greene Cole.

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Yankees in Georgia

Cole was part of an often-overlooked population of Georgians: Yankee transplants.

From its beginnings in 1832, Marietta was an attractive place for Northerners seeking cheap land in a warmer climate. By the 1850s, both Atlanta and Marietta were home to a great many Northerners holding respected positions. As talk of secession began, those who maintained Union loyalties were often vocal in their opposition.

Henry Greene Cole was one such vocal Unionist. A civil engineer from New York, Cole had moved to Marietta in 1838 to work for the Western and Atlantic Railroad. By the 1850s, he had moved on to other endeavors. He owned the Marietta Hotel, a magnificent building on Marietta’s square which was said to be “the finest house in Georgia,” as well as a large farm on the outskirts of town and several other lots that he intended to develop.

When war broke out in 1861, most Northerners who had spoken out against secession became silent–but not Cole. Characterized as “an uncompromising and in some respects violent Union man,” Cole wore his Union sympathies on his sleeves. This may have been a way of “hiding in plain sight,” for Cole also became a significant member of a secret network of Union spies stretching from Atlanta to Tennessee.

As such, Cole was particularly dangerous to the Confederacy. Having surveyed land for the Western and Atlantic, he knew the topography and the railroads between Atlanta and Chattanooga better than anyone. He knew how the railroads and bridges had been constructed, and he knew how to bring them down.

A Most Dangerous Man

This knowledge prompted Confederate Gen. Samuel Cooper, a one-time friend of Cole’s, to pronounce that, should Cole choose to act, he could be the “most dangerous man in Georgia.”

And Cole was prepared to act. According to the diary of Carrie King, a Union spy living in Atlanta, Cole said that “any time the Federal Authorities want the railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee burned, he could do so.”

Destroying bridges at a strategic moment had been the intent of the famous , which began in Marietta and resulted in the “” of 1862. But while Cole was conspicuously absent from town the day that Andrews and his men arrived, it is surely no coincidence that the raiders chose to stay at the Marietta Hotel and the Fletcher House, a hotel belonging to Cole’s father-in-law.

Cole also passed information about troop movements to Union Gen. George H. Thomas. In his 1873 testimony before the Southern Claims Commission, Cole said: “I regarded myself as strictly loyal to the government of the United States. I did all in my power to advance the Federal Armies in our section by frequently going to the lines and sending through information.”

Much of this information, according to Carrie King, came from “a very intelligent Negro boy who was a servant for [Confederate] General Cheatham, and that he kept him [Cole] posted regarding the movements of the army.”

One of Cole’s other sources, it seems, was also the Marietta barber.

When Cole received the information from the barber, he recognized its significance immediately. Believing that the Union Army of the Cumberland was in peril, he paid a man $500, a small fortune in those days, to take the information to Gen. Thomas. Although the Union would be defeated at Chickamauga, Thomas credited Cole with saving the Army of the Cumberland from complete destruction.

This would not be Cole’s last attempt. The following spring, in 1864, as Union Gen. William T. Sherman was moving his forces into Georgia, Cole sent a plan of Snake Creek Gap to Thomas, believing that it would be key tactical ground. Union forces took Snake Creek gap on May 9, moving on towards Resaca, but Confederate Gen. Johnston managed to hold them there.

Cole was unaware of this, which proved to be his undoing.

“I became a little exultant that day,” Cole would later say. “I thought the thing was wound up. I had no idea that Johnston would get away. I thought they had him, and I said something, and they got suspicious of me. They always had suspected me.”

According to Dan Cox, director of the Marietta Museum of History, this suspicion resulted in a covert operation to entrap Cole. Confederate agents, posing as Union saboteurs, approached Cole with a false plan to destroy a bridge. Cole agreed to help them and was immediately arrested.

He was briefly held in Atlanta before being transported to Charleston, where his connections would continue to prove beneficial. Cole had befriended the local sheriff before the war and was treated well. Several influential people interceded on Cole’s behalf until, when the South’s defeat was inevitable, Confederate Gen. William J. Hardee decided Cole should be released.

Upon returning to Marietta, Cole found that his hotel had been burned to the ground in what he later called “an act of wantonness,” and that Union troops occupying Marietta had helped themselves to his timber. The hotel alone, in Cole’s estimation, had been worth about $100,000.

Despite being a known spy, Cole and his family continued to live as respected members of Marietta society. To provide burial for the thousands of soldiers killed in the area, Cole donated the land adjacent to his house for use as a cemetery. While it was originally intended as a cemetery for soldiers on both sides of the conflict, the women of Marietta objected to having their sons and husbands buried in the same ground as the invaders, and established a separate Confederate cemetery adjacent to the City Cemetery.

Cole remained prosperous, building a second, grander house near his former one. He died in 1875, before the house could be completed.

Both houses still stand adjacent to the National Cemetery in Marietta, where Henry Greene Cole and his family are buried.

The Marietta Museum of History has a room devoted to Henry Greene Cole, containing many of his personal possessions. Dan Cox, the museum’s founder and director, has also collected considerable information related to Cole which has yet to be published.

For more about the hidden ring of Union spies in and around Atlanta, read Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta, by Thomas G. Dyer.

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