The Bonfire_The Siege and Burning of Atlanta

by Marc Wortman

  SHERMAN HAD BEEN GENERAL in chief of the U.S. Army since 1869. Ever convinced of the value of “statesmanship” in the actions of the military, he believed there would come a right time for him to make his first extended return visit to the South since the war. By 1879 President Rutherford B. Hayes was making good on his preelection pledge to end Reconstruction. Hayes accepted white Southern legislators’ promises to protect the civil rights of their black citizens by upholding the Fourteenth Amendment and its companion Fifteenth Amendment’s ban on race-based restriction of voting rights. Those promises proved empty. The president ignored the swift dissolution of black political power and the passage of state laws effectively ending African Americans’ briefly held political rights.

  General Sherman was fine with that turn. He had opposed the imposition of harsh reconstruction measures on the South in the first place; he thought that previous white Southern leaders should return to power and that blacks, though no longer enslaved, should play a lesser role in society. Sherman retained his love for the South where he had spent his first, and many of his most fulfilling, years in active duty service, as well as a treasured sojourn living and teaching in Louisiana, and passed the test of the Civil War years, which won him enduring worldwide fame. Moreover, he had another brutal race war on his hands, again carrying out a fight against Indians tragically unwilling to accept their race’s U.S.-determined removal from their ancient—and treaty-based—tribal lands in the far West. With fewer troops needed now to enforce Washington’s authority in the South, he could devote the military’s attention to “operations against the hostile Sioux.”

  STOUTER THAN HIS FATHER and sporting a thick brush mustache, Lowndes Calhoun, according to his admirers, followed his father “in form and character.” A good government man, he created Atlanta’s first street paving system. He was devoted to the needs of Confederate veterans, helping build a home for old soldiers and serving as a leader in several veterans’ organizations. He looked down the train to the last car where he caught his first glimpse of General Sherman, his hair still a reddish brown but his beard gray. His squinty eyes darted about within his still-thin, deeply weathered face. He was as talkative and constantly in motion as ever. He bounded off the last car’s platform to where a military delegation from the army’s McPherson Barracks greeted him. A reporter on hand seemed almost surprised to note that “there was no excitement and no demonstration” made by those on hand. The crowd pressed forward “curious to see” the man, but much like during his previous march through Georgia, “a sort of pathway was opened for the party, and the people stood alongside looking on quietly and keeping up a subdued run of comment.”

  Sherman was traveling with his two grown daughters, an aide, and friend Gen. Stewart Van Vliet and his wife, and the rail trip had so far been, as the press reported, a “mixed tour of business and recreation.” Starting in Tennessee, dipping into Alabama, and heading back to Chattanooga, he inspected some military posts and a factory. He climbed Lookout Mountain and surveyed the battlefields where he had fought in 1863. The tour would take the party from Atlanta to Savannah, where he had lived for a period in 1844, on to his Florida Second Seminole War haunts, then to New Orleans and finally up through Mississippi and western Tennessee—scenes of many of his most famous triumphs and his advancing army’s most notorious acts. He never heard one insult during his stops and was most often greeted warmly. Atlanta, however, was the place into which he had etched his name most indelibly with fire. Still, though, the crowds that came out to see him as he went about town were “curious and respectful.” He declared, “We have had nothing but the most courteous treatment everywhere.” He bore a similar attitude toward his Atlanta hosts. He registered his party at the city’s leading Kimball House hotel and, while he did, “expressed wonder at the magnitude of the hotel and the general thrifty look of the city.”

  In the afternoon, the Sherman party took a carriage tour around town. He passed by the former Neal house, where he had headquartered. He was interested to learn it now served as a girl’s high school. The general’s entourage rode through the streets to the principal battle sites around town. Along the way, he expressed his “great admiration” for Atlanta’s “pluck and energy and the marvelous recuperation” it had made. “The growth of the city is wonderful,” he remarked. He paid his respects at a memorial built on the site where his dearest friend in the war, Gen. James McPherson, had fallen during the Battle of Atlanta. Before dark he attended a dress parade at the army barracks and returned there later for a ball where he danced every dance and “seemed,” recounted a reporter on hand, “to enjoy the fun hugely.”

  Chatting with visitors the next day, the voluble Sherman called to mind numerous vivid details about the sites over which his army had marched and fought, even asking about a paper mill and bucket factory that he remembered once stood along Peachtree Creek. He intended to take a stroll up Marietta Street, telling his company, “There are several localities which I wish to see again.”

  WHEN MAYOR CALHOUN MET with Sherman that evening, he told the general he had “fought him hard” at Resaca and reminded Sherman that he had “failed in his efforts” to defeat Johnston there. The general remembered the Mayor’s father well and let the obviously proud son know he was “much attached” to him. “Duty,” he told Calhoun, “compelled [me] to do many harsh things, yet [I] never failed to appreciate the oft-repeated appeals of the then Mayor Calhoun in behalf of the people of Atlanta. He was a noble-hearted, true man.”

  Sherman would only stay one night in Atlanta before his party continued on its way, leaving Atlanta on the same Macon railroad line he had finally destroyed in 1864, forcing the besieged Gate City to surrender. After his visit, he expressed his hope that his return symbolized a reunited America and had “done some good, something to make men feel more national, more disposed to labor with zeal and earnestness in the direction of national unity and national progress.” During the evening of his Atlanta visit, someone in the company expressed regret the war had ever taken place. Sherman disagreed. “Yes, it was terrible,” he said, “and yet it had to come. It was inevitable. . . . Here we were claiming to be the freest people in all the world, and offering liberty to all mankind, and yet there was an abnormal state of things. There were 4,000,000 slaves in the United States, and we had in the heart of the country an institution antagonistic to the very principles of our government. So it had to be abolished.”

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1: FLAGS

  6 “I have never seen the city more quiet ”: Kile quotes from Webster v. U.S., CD 13502, folder 4, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  7 The hoof clatter of Mayor James Montgomery Calhoun’s horse: Atlanta’s Civil War mayor James Montgomery Calhoun should not be confused with his distant cousin James Martin Calhoun, a powerful Alabama legislator and secessionist, who was the nephew of John C. Calhoun. On James Martin Calhoun, see Thomas M. Owen and Marie B. Owen, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1921), 3:285-86.

  7 “Our white flag will be our best protection”: Calhoun quote from Wallace Putnam Reed, History of Atlanta, Georgia: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers (Atlanta: D. Mason & Co., 1889), 195.

  CHAPTER 2: VIRGINIANS

  11 The federal Tariff of 1824, which raised cotton import duties: On economic conditions in the Calhoun Settlement and the impact of the Tariff of 1824, see William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 (New York and London: Harper & Row, 1966), 106-8.

  12 While the Spanish, French, and British vied for control of the New World: For a complete history of the relations between Cherokee and Colonial South Carolina settlers, see Tom Hatley, The Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

  13 she hoped to find a permanent home: On the early years of the Calhoun family, see W. Pinkney Sta
rke, “Account of Calhoun’s Early Life Abridged from the Manuscript of Col. W. Pinkney Starke,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1899 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1900), 2:65-9.

  13 As a sideshow to the far greater global war: Edward J. Cashin, ed., A Wilderness Still the Cradle of Nature: Frontier Georgia (Savannah: Library of Georgia, 1994), viii-ix.

  14 With atrocities mounting on both sides: On the Cherokee War of 1759-1761, see Hatley, The Dividing Paths, especially 119ff., and John Oliphant, Peace and War on the Anglo-Cherokee Frontier, 1756-63 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 69ff.

  15 He finally found her: Rebecca, cousin to John C. Calhoun, would live to marry the Revolutionary War hero Gen. Andrew Pickens of Abbeville, who went to the U.S. Congress from South Carolina. Their grandson, Francis W. Pickens, was governor of the state at the time of its secession and gave the order to fire upon Fort Sumter, marking the start of the Civil War. See Starke, “Account of Calhoun’s Early Life,” 68.

  15 So it was that the Calhouns first spilled their blood: On the Long Cane Creek Massacre in the Cherokee War’s context, see Hatley, The Dividing Paths, 127.

  16 In memory of Mrs. Catherine Calhoun: From South Carolina Gazette, February 2-9 and 9-16, 1760, in A. S. Salley Jr., “Calhoun Family of South Carolina,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine (South Carolina Historical Society) 7, no. 1 (January 1906): 81-98.

  16 The surviving Calhoun brothers gradually built thriving farms: On the rise of the Calhouns in and out of the Calhoun Settlement, see John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 7-12.

  17 “the patriarch of the upper country”: On the crucial role played by the South Carolina upstate in antebellum politics and the Calhoun family’s regional and national leadership role, see Lacy K. Ford Jr., Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); for Patrick Calhoun’s nickname, see 8.

  17 The teenaged James barely recalled his few meetings: On the political rise of John C. Calhoun in South Carolina, see Niven, John C. Calhoun, 13-30.

  18 “The despotism founded on combined geographical interest”: Quoted in Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, 154.

  19 “There are thousands of her brave sons”: John C. Calhoun, “On the Revenue Collection Bill (Commonly Called the Force Bill), in Reference to the Ordinance of the South Carolina Convention, Delivered in the Senate, February 15th and 16th, 1833,” in The Works of John C. Calhoun (New York: D. Appleton, 1888), 2:229.

  19 Calhoun, the plantation owner, saw little in the common man he liked: On the differences between Calhoun and Jackson, see William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Vol. 1, Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1990), 263-66.

  19 Jackson mounted a military force and muttered a threat to “hang every leader”: On President Jackson’s threat to impose federal will by force, see Freehling 278ff. On Calhoun’s political evolution through the Nullification Crisis, see The Road to Disunion, 154-66.

  19 At a Washington Jefferson Day dinner: The attempted reconciliation event is recounted in Robert V. Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 335.

  19 Another 140 years would pass: Spiro Agnew’s resignation in 1973 was the second by a vice president following Calhoun’s in 1832.

  21 Among the men who owned one of the most productive mines: On the Gold Rush of 1829, see David Williams, The Georgia Gold Rush: Twenty-Niners, Cherokees, and Gold Fever (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993); on Calhoun’s mining interests, see 24.

  21 “To move was in the blood of everyone”: James S. Lamar, Recollections of Pioneer Days in Georgia (no publication data, 1900?), 4.

  21 “reared to a belief and faith”: Gideon Lincecum, “Autobiography of Gideon Lincecum,” excerpt, in Cashin, A Wilderness, 13.

  21 derisively calling them “crackers”: On the derivation of the derogatory term cracker, the Oxford English Dictionary offers this passage of a letter from 1766: “I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascals on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.” See OED Online at http://dictionary.oed.com.

  CHAPTER 3: REMOVAL

  24 He had never dared to tell anyone: Thomas H. Martin, Atlanta and Its Builders: A Comprehensive History of the Gate City of the South (Atlanta: Century Memorial, 1902), 2:639-41.

  24 Seven children would follow: William Henry Dabney, Sketch of the Dabneys of Virginia: With Some of Their Family Records (Chicago: S. D. Childs & Co., 1888), 186; Lucian Lamar Knight, A Standard History of Georgia and Georgians (Atlanta: Lewis, 1917), 5:2291.

  24 As he traveled for the court circuit: “He Sleeps,” Atlanta Constitution, October, 5, 1875, 3; Dr. R. J. Massey, “Men Who Made Atlanta,” Atlanta Constitution, October 22, 1905, D2.

  24 From the percentage of the payments he collected: Legal earnings figure from Eric H. Walther, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 146.

  25 his son Patrick would later insist: “Reminiscences of Patrick H. Calhoun,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 1, no. 6 (February 1932): 42.

  25 A quarter of all slave families were separated by sales: Slave family separation figure from James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 38.

  25 The U.S. Army manned a chain of forts: For a general survey of Andrew Jackson’s relations with the Indians of the Southeast, see Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (New York: Viking, 2001); for the purposes of this book, I benefited from 226-72. Remini points out that Jackson took a paternalistic view toward the fate of the southeastern tribes, seeing their voluntary, if possible, and forced, if necessary, removal as the only way to stave off an extinction of the Indians like that which took place in New England following the encounter between natives and colonialists there. On the First Creek War, see James W. Holland, Andrew Jackson and the Creek War: Victory at the Horseshoe (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1968); Joel W. Martin, Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees’ Struggle for a New World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), 1-3. On the impact of the Creek War and the Treaty of Fort Jackson on Andrew Jackson’s later Indian removal policies, see Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1975), 169-78.

  26 Concluded in 1826, the Treaty of Indian Springs: Grace M. Schwartzman and Susan K. Barnard, “A Trail of Broken Promises: Georgians and Muscogee Creek Treaties 1796-1826,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 75 (Winter 1991): 704-5.

  27 “McIntosh . . . has sold the land of his fathers”: Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette in America in 1824 & 1825, quoted in Edward J. Cashin, ed., A Wilderness Still the Cradle of Nature: Frontier Georgia (Savannah: Library of Georgia, 1994), 119.

  27 Not long after Lafayette’s visit: Cashin, A Wilderness, xxv-xxvi.

  27 The Indians complained but had no right: On the defrauding of the Creek land deeds, see Martin, Sacred Revolt, 2, and Kenneth L. Valliere, “The Creek War of 1836: A Military History,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 57, no. 4 (1980): 464- 66.

  28 “I have heard a great many talks from our great father”: Jackson in “Proceedings of the Indian Board in the City of New York,” (n.p., n.d.), 5, quoted, along with Speckled Snake, in Sharyn Kane and Richard Keeton, Fort Benning: The Land and the People (Tallahassee: Southeast Archeological Center, National Park Service, 1998), ch. 11, n.p.

  28 He paid the price for opposing the immensely popular legislation: David Crockett, The Life of David Crockett: The Original Humorist and Irrepressible Backwoodsman; an Autobiography, to Which Is Added an Account of His Glorious Death at the Alamo While Fighting in Defence of
Texas Independence (New York: A. L. Burt, 1902), 160.

  29 By the time the wanderers reached Oklahoma: Kane and Keeton, Fort Benning, ch. 11, n.p.

  29 war erupted between white Americans and Alabama and Georgia Creeks: On the Second Seminole War and its relation to the Creek War of 1836, see John K. Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, 1835-1842 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967), 160-61, 190-91. For history and interpretation of the Second Seminole and Second Creek wars within a wider argument about Jacksonian paternalistic justifications for Indian removal, see Rogin, Fathers and Children, 229-43. For the most complete history of the Second Creek War’s military aspects, see Valliere, “The Creek War of 1836,” 463-85. For a more succinct overview of its causes, major events, and consequences, see Jacob R. Motte, Journey into Wilderness: An Army Surgeon’s Account of Life in Camp and Field during the Creek and Seminole Wars, 1836-1838, ed. James F. Sunderman (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1953), notes, 247-55.