In 1929, Henry Ford sent a questionnaire across the country to men and women aged 75 years or older that asked about their childhoods in the early 19th century. Over 100 people responded with detailed accounts of their lives and so collectively created a wealth of memories of one of the most transformative periods of American history.

Historical Resources intern Christine Driscoll has written a series of guest posts on the 1929 questionnaire.

The last two years I was in the army there was a price placed on my head.

This statement came from W. A. Floyd, one of the respondents to the questionnaire Henry Ford sent across the country to men and women over seventy-five in 1929. The men and women who wrote back were all born before the Civil War, but few were old enough to serve in the army at the time. Floyd was one of the few men who did and his stories of his time as a scout for the Union Army in Georgia are the sort of war – adventure tales that have provided material for books and movies for nearly a century.

The duty of a scout is to survey the enemy’s location, strength, and size. Any information that could be attained to ensure victory was worthwhile. In this case, Floyd rode around Northern Georgia to gather information about the Confederate Army’s status. At other times, he searched for train robbers and other Confederate spies.

After enlisting in the Union Army, Floyd arrived in Dalton, Georgia and partnered with another scout called Woody. Of Woody Floyd said:

I rode many a day with Woody when he had a man’s ear in his pocket. He was the worst man I ever saw – he would kill a man but if he took him prisoner he would treat him like a brother, but he took very few prisoners.

It was with Woody that Floyd went to capture a band of Confederate men camped in Ellijay, Georgia.

With the knowledge that the Confederate company was far larger than their own, they stopped to gather more men at the home of an acquaintance named Wheeler. One of the young women boarding at Wheeler’s home inquired where the men were headed. Wheeler told her that he and eight hundred men were going to take the Confederate company in Ellijay. Immediately upon their departure, the young woman “went over mountains that mountain goats couldn’t climb” to reach Ellijay before Wheeler and warned her sweetheart camped at Ellijay of the coming troops. Of course, Wheeler lied – there were never more than fifty men with him, but the Ellijay Company, otherwise well-prepared, and seemingly outnumbered, evacuated the camp only minutes before Floyd and his men arrived. Floyd wrote: “We could hear the men hitting the water of a nearby river in their efforts to escape.”

Soon enough, Floyd experienced the other side of the chase from August 14th to 15th in 1864 in Dalton, Georgia, when Confederate troops closed in on a makeshift fort that held a small party of men including the Union General Wheeler. At first it seemed like another thrilling episode in Floyd’s service but the battle quickly and ominously intensified:

I took a long range gun and went up in the garret of the house, pushed off a few slates and was having a nice time up there shooting those fellows down town. I was having a pic-nic. Finally I saw their artillery pick up and move west. Just west of the town was a high hill and I was interested in them going this way. I watched them and they went up on the hill. While I was watching them I saw a puff of blue smoke and a shell came into the right garret where I was and it busted and three pieces of the shell hit my right leg. Then I thought my leg was shot off. I felt of my leg and I felt of my foot. It was all right but I couldn’t handle it.

The siege lasted only a day, for in the morning United States Colored Troops arrived and saved the men trapped in the “fort”- a small brick house protected by logs:

They fired on us all night long and the next morning just before sunup [sic] I saw a mile or two away negro soldiers, reinforcements, coming to help us out.

As the reinforcements arrived, the Confederate troops pulled out and so the battle at Dalton was considered a Union victory.

Many of the events Floyd witnessed are difficult to research or find other accounts of because he did not provide dates, or they were part of unrecorded reconnaissance missions. The exception is Floyd’s experiences during the Atlanta Campaign, an effort led by Confederate General John Bell Hood to prevent the Union Army from taking Atlanta. Floyd was typically active in the Northern part of Georgia, and was in Dalton again at the start of the Campaign.

We knew Hood was coming, had known it several days. I took four men and went out to meet Hood, saw him coming in, came back and reported to my commanding officer that he had a regiment of negroes with him and I told him if he was going to fight I would stay and if not, I wanted to leave.

As Floyd makes clear, scouts were instrumental to officer’s planning, only scouts could provide invaluable information like the enemy’s size and location.  “The regiment of negroes” to which Floyd refers was not part of Hood’s troops, but Colonel Lewis Johnson’s, to whom he reported. Floyd pointed this out to Johnson because if Hood were victorious in battle, it would mean certain tragedy for the 44th US Colored Infantry. The following scene from the Atlanta Campaign took place on October 13, 1864. As Hood approached the troops he demanded surrender. The Union Army’s official report reads:

When the Confederates approached the city they sent a summons to surrender, which was refused.  Hood then began skirmishing while he posted his artillery of 30 pieces and deployed his troops to surround the town. Col. Lewis Johnson, commanding the post, then sent 3 officers under flag of truce to Hood and arranged terms of surrender.  Nine of the enemy were killed and 20 wounded in the skirmishing.

Floyd remembered not only the summons to surrender, but its conditions and the aftermath; as Hood’s troops approached and prior to receiving the summons, he asked Johnson whether he would fight or surrender:

He said “I am going to fight.” but Hood’s army came up and made demand on him to surrender and they told him “if you do not put up a fight, I will parole every Officer, but if you do fight, I will kill every man and burn the town.” And he surrendered, and while I do not know it positively, but I think they killed every negro any-how.”

Floyd may have been correct – the Union Army reported 400 men as captured and missing after this battle, and undoubtedly the 44th U.S. Colored Infantry that Floyd had worried about represented a significant proportion of that number. As soon as Johnson decided to surrender, Floyd went south to Resaca, Georgia, and continued to work as a scout.

Although we never learn why a price was placed on Floyd’s head for the last two years of his service, we do have a more interesting view of the Atlanta Campaign than many other sources could provide, and briefly, the conflict and consequences of surrender in the South.

Floyd closed his letter, and his account of battles, gory scenes, and adventure with: “I am just sending you the above for what it is worth, it if is worth anything use it, if not throw it in the wastebasket.” Appropriately, it was saved for posterity.

This response to the 1929 Questionnaire and others are accessible in the Benson Ford Research Center at The Henry Ford.