In a suit filed in Rome's federal court, David Fowler Jr., on whose property much of the fort's surviving two acres is located, and the Fort Attaway Preservation Society, which wants to eventually turn the location into a heritage site, blasted state/federal plans to widen U.S. 27 (Martha Berry Boulevard).

That widening requires the moving of the existing Norfolk Southern railroad bridge a bit southward and the laying of new track. Fort Attaway's small but persistent band of admirers - Fowler and the society have been waging this battle for years in traditional channels before taking it to court - contend this would peel about half of the earthen-work fort's northern face away.

Just for the record, the northern face was the one that would have confronted the advancing Yankee army. In the ensuing engagement on May 17, 1864, which could be described as a stalemate, there were an estimated 150 casualties. It was to be the biggest combat engagement in Rome during the Civil War as, on May 18, the Confederate forces left Rome as part of a strategic retreat.

FORT ATTAWAY was the smallest of the three forts that, as a group, caused Union Gen. Jeff Davis to call Rome the strongest fortified place he had yet seen in all of Dixie. The remains of the largest, Fort Norton on Jackson Hill, also remain visible and await long-delayed City of Rome action on their permanent preservation and restoration. The other fort, atop Myrtle Hill, was long ago obliterated by the cemetery there now.

The Fort Attaway Preservation Society has amassed considerable dug-up artifacts, as well as surveys and studies by Civil War experts, to support their arguments about the fort's value, ability to be saved and the need for preservation. The lawsuit contends that several federal legal requirements regarding construction in the vicinity of a historical site have been ignored.

Indeed, Fowler and the society even lay out alternative methods on how U.S. 27 can be widened anyway, which they claim bureaucrats have not even acknowledged although they have been used elsewhere. This includes building a new bridge off site that can be rolled into place at the old location with the track only having to be closed for about 48 hours.

The government position apparently does not deny that the fort's remains are there or does it contend they are not important. Richard Cloues of the state Historic Preservation Division says "there was mutual recognition that this was an important historic site."

ALTHOUGH PERHAPS not as important as keeping a railroad running without interruption, for Cloues added that "We never like to see a historic site negatively impacted, but sometimes it's unavoidable."

In any case, the preservation division's are only advisory in nature and, he said, the Federal Highway Administration, Georgia Department of Transportation and others "can take our opinion and do with it as they wish."

It is those "wishes" that Fowler and the Attaway society are challenging. That's because, for the fort and its heritage defenders, this court case is a battle for survival. If present construction plans are permitted to proceed, much of the fort's value as a historical site will have been stripped away and it will be difficult to find anyone enthusiastic about saving the little that is left. A Japanese steakhouse already occupies the back end (away from the action) of the fort's boundaries.

If Fort Attaway wins, that is only the first step in what will remain a long road - finding the public, private and grant money necessary to make it a permanent preserve of history. One can't imagine, for example, a government that gets beaten up by Fort Attaway in court being eager to give it a grant with which to live on.

STILL, THE PUBLIC should be inclined to applaud the long fight against great odds, and with dogged persistence, that Fowler, his wife Cailey, and others in the society have been waging. It is not easy, among other things, to get more than 1,000 signatures on petitions to save what, to the untrained eye, looks like nothing more than some leaf-filled dips in a hillside.

Yet, that never-say-die attitude, and the willingness to fight on and on and on against seemingly overwhelming odds is very much in the tradition of Confederate arms. In that sense, at least, history and heritage already live on.