17th Georgia Infantry Regiment
military unit
The 17th Georgia Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Organization
The regiment was raised from eight different counties in Georgia (mostly in the western part of the state) and officially organized in Atlanta from August 12 to August 15, 1861, and armed with British Enfield pattern rifles. The regiment's first commander was Col. Henry L. Benning, a prominent lawyer and judge in Muscogee County (Columbus area).
The 17th Georgia was composed of ten companies, each initially with roughly one hundred men.
Company A: Webster County—"Webster Rifles"
Company B: Schley County—"Schley Volunteers"
Company C: Muscogee County—"Columbus Volunteers"
Company D: Decatur County—"Decatur Guards"
Company E: Mitchell County—"Stephens Infantry"
Company F: Muscogee County
Company G: Dougherty County
Company H: Harris County—"Harris Bartows"
Company I: Stewart County
Company K: Stewart and Webster counties—"Webster Confederate Guards"
Initial deployment and service
The 17th Georgia was sent to northern Virginia via railroad through Tennessee and Lynchburg. It was brigaded with the 1st, 2nd, 15th, and 20th Georgia regiments. The 1st Georgia transferred out in October 1861 when the army was being restructured. The 17th Georgia eventually became part of Toombs' brigade, D.R. Jones' Division, Army of the Potomac. It saw its first combat in May 1862 on the Peninsula, serving in the wing of Maj.
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This entry incorporates text from “17th Georgia Infantry Regiment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.