Evidence such as the Battle of Turner’s Cotton Field, generates questions about the behavior of Monroe County men at times in military service.
The Battle of Turner’s Cotton Field was a confrontation during the Second Creek War on June 16, 1836 between the Culloden Volunteer Cavalry under Captain Enos R. Flewellen and Alabama Creeks who had crossed the Chattahoochee River into Georgia.
Thomas J. Stell and Samuel H. Luckie provide caustic accounts of the behavior of the men in the cavalry unit from Monroe County who would not so much as form a line of battle.
After an initial encounter with some twenty or twenty-five Creeks near Fort Jones in Stewart County, Georgia, Captain Fleewellen ordered a retreat to a nearby bottom. The order was pointless: Most of his men had already fled there before he issued the order to fall back.
When Flewellen himself got to the bottom, he had no control over his insubordinate men. He ordered them to form on foot. Some of them openly objected. He then ordered them to form on horses, to which they also objected. Many began to advise the captain to retreat and form on a hill some forty or fifty yards in their rear, but when they got to the hill, Captain Flewellen was unable to get them to form the line there either.
One of the sources for this incident, Stell, had some experience in battle with the Creeks, but he wrote, “This battle of Turner’s field was decidedly the poorest excuse for a battle I ever saw.” According to Stell, when the Monroe men retreated in confusion, the Indians came out in plain view and followed on along the cross fence through the cotton field and burned the dwelling-house, cotton houses and corn of Mr. Turner, and then burned the new Methodist church.“
The men of the Culloden Cavalry could hardly be said to have acted valiantly at the Battle of Turner’s Cotton Field.
P. S. Captain Flewells defensive account, found in the August 9, 1836 issue of the Federal Union, is significantly different.