The Bonfire_The Siege and Burning of Atlanta

by Marc Wortman

  175 Ten men, including eight of the raiders, managed to elude Lee’s men: On the Union, or Andrews, raiders’ daring and ultimately successful escape, see Pittenger, Daring and Suffering, 316ff, for a participant’s version, and Bonds, Stealing the General, 279ff, for a modern history. Quotes are from Pittenger, Daring and Suffering, 320, 323.

  175 He insisted “sympathizers outside” must have hid the men: G. W. Lee to Clifton H. Smith, November 18, 1862, quoted in Pittenger, Daring and Suffering , 324.

  177 A man of means now, he had no trouble bribing his way back: Deposition of Robert Webster, Webster v. U.S., CD 13502, folders 1 and 3. See Dyer, Secret Yankees, 88-89.

  177 Hill advocated a negotiated end to the war: “James M. Calhoun, Atlanta, Ga, Rebellion, Filed July 19, 1865, Pardoned July 24, 1865,” Case Files of Applications from Former Confederates for Presidential Pardons (“Amnesty Papers”), 1865-1867, National Archives M1003, Washington, D.C.

  177 Georgia voted to fight on: Joshua Hill to George W. Adair, J. J. Thrasher, and James M. Calhoun of Atlanta, Ga., in Southern Recorder, September 8, 1863, quoted in Lucien E. Roberts, “The Political Career of Joshua Hill, Georgia Unionist,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 21 (March 1937): 58-59.

  177 “ We have heard one or two names mentioned”: Daily Intelligencer, December 6, 1863, 3.

  178 “Our company from Mississippi is here”: Wallace Putnam Reed, “Atlanta’s War Days Forty Years Ago,” Atlanta Constitution, July 9, 1902, 6.

  178 Livestock and poultry, always in danger of being stolen: See Singer, “Confederate Atlanta,” 220-21; Mary Mallard to Mary Jones, January 6, 14, 1864, in Robert Manson Myers, The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, abr. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984); Richards, Diary, January 2, 1864, 217-18.

  179 The notion never advanced far in the council’s deliberations: City Council Minutes, January 1, 1864, Vol. 4, January 17, 1862, to June 1, 1866, 230. For salaries, see City Council Minutes, April 1, 1864, Vol. 4, 263.

  179 “God save us from evil in the year to come”: Richards, Diary, December 31, 1863, 217.

  CHAPTER 14: RIVER OF DEATH

  182 The surviving prisoners were paroled just two days later: Mike “Doc” Kinstler, “The Soldier’s Handbook, 42nd Regiment—Georgia Volunteer Infantry,” 42nd Georgia, www.42ndgeorgia.com/42nd_georgia_history.htm.

  182 It wasn’t long before Calhoun: For the description of Vicksburg battles and siege, quotes, etc., see William Lowndes Calhoun, History of the 42nd Regiment, Georgia Volunteers, Confederate States Army, Infantry (n.p., 1900), 29-36.

  183 “the fate of the Confederacy was sealed when Vicksburg fell”: Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 303.

  183 Not long after, Grant would give him those men and more: Letter to Philemon B. Ewing, July 28, 1863, Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860-1865, ed. Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 508.

  183 “in which to pack up the City Records”: City Council Minutes, August 28, 1863, Vol. 4, January 17, 1862, to June 1, 1866, 184.

  184 “ever y male negro that can possibly be impressed”: Quoted in Clarence H. Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 126.

  185 When and if a federal force came to storm the city: On the planning and building of the fortifications, see Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1954), 1:567-69.

  185 “of the most inferior character”: Quoted in Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom, 177.

  186 “ We don’t want to make no fortifications”: Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” Sabbath (date uncertain), 1864, 317.

  186 “The whole country round Chattanooga was just blue”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” March 24, 1864, 300-1.

  186 “rushed to a slave market ”: Sarah Huff, “My Eighty Years in Atlanta” (n.p., 1937), ch. 1, n.p.

  186 From one day to the next, it depreciated a third in value: Samuel Richards, Diary (typescript), March 22, 1864, 237.

  187 The grateful recipients of gold and U.S. dollars buried their treasure: Ralph Benjamin Singer Jr., “Confederate Atlanta,” PhD diss., University of Georgia, 181-82.

  187 Among those who had not lost confidence: Robert Scott Davis, “Guarding the Gate City from Itself: George W. Lee and Conflict in Civil War Atlanta,” article in progress (typescript), notes 72, 71.

  188 the hooting rebel army, much less able to withstand heavy losses: On the Battle of Chickamauga, see James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 672-75.

  188 Stunned by the hurricane of violence: A. J. Neal to Dear Pa, Williams Artillery Battalion, Battlefield Eight Miles South of Chattanooga, September 21, 1863, 10 A.M.

  188 “Men . . . were lying where they fell”: Sam Watkins, Company Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1882; rpt. New York: Plume, 1999), 87.

  189 “ They are our mortal enemies”: Cousin Norma, “The Battlefield of Chickamauga,” “Ten Days After the Battle,” Daily Intelligencer, October 6, 1863, 1.

  189 He was too weak even to lift his own dangling arm: Sarah “Sallie” Conley Clayton, Requiem for a Lost City: A Memoir of Civil War Atlanta and the Old South, ed. Robert S. Davis Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999), 92-93.

  189 “The army is confident . . . we will be in Kentucky soon”: A. J. Neal to Dear Pa, September 21, 1863.

  190 “This service is rougher than any I have seen”: A. J. Neal to Dear Pa, Williams Artillery Battalion, Near Chattanooga, Tenn., November 1, 1863.

  190 They lived on parched corn: Watkins, Company Aytch, 91.

  190 General Bragg had seized all shoes and horses: For shoe price, see Singer, “Confederate Atlanta,” 165-66.

  190 While our cause is brightening in its aspect: Daily Intelligencer, October 18, 1863, 2.

  191 In Atlanta, as throughout the South, people fed on hope: On Confederate optimism stoked through rumors and newspaper reporting on Chickamauga and during the Atlanta Campaign, see Jason Phillips, Diehard Rebels: The Confederate Culture of Invincibility (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007), 102-15.

  191 Who knew what a Union army, presently licking its wounds: “The Importance of Atlanta,” Daily Intelligencer, October 18, 1863, 1.

  CHAPTER 15: A DAY’S OUTING

  193 He personally came to Chattanooga to assume overall command: For Grant’s description of the preparation for, and fighting of, the Battle of Chattanooga, also known as Lookout Mountain or Missionary Ridge, see Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 323-52.

  193 The picket lines were close enough for soldiers to converse: On cordial relations across the picket lines, see Grant, Personal Memoirs, 325 and 329.

  194 he hoped soon to receive a ten-day furlough: A. J. Neal to Dear Ma, Williams Artillery Battalion, Camp Before Chattanooga, Tenn., November 20, 1863.

  194 She was the beautiful wife of Adm. Raphael Semmes: On the dashing and incredibly successful Confederate privateer Raphael Semmes, see Stephen Fox, Wolf of the Deep: Raphael Semmes and the Notorious Confederate Raider CSS Alabama (New York: Vintage, 2008).

  196 “had a splendid view of the beautiful light ”: For the description of the trip to Missionary Ridge and all quotes, see Sarah “Sallie” Conley Clayton, Requiem for a Lost City: A Memoir of Civil War Atlanta and the Old South, ed. Robert S. Davis Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999), 101-9.

  197 “But their dead were so piled in their path”: Sam Watkins, Company Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1882; rpt. New York: Plume, 1999), 99-100.

  197 “The foe encroaches upon us so”: Samuel Richa
rds, Diary, December 5, 1863, 213.

  197 Not long after, he appointed Gen. Joseph Johnston: Daily Intelligencer, November 29, 1863, 3.

  198 “We were willing to do and die”: Watkins, Company Aytch, 103.

  198 “ The people’s time has now come”: Quotes are from 290, Daily Intelligencer, December 25, 1863, 2, 3.

  198 Joseph Brown placed the colonel in command: On Lee’s state militia command, see Robert Scott Davis, “Guarding the Gate City from Itself: George W. Lee and Conflict in Civil War Atlanta,” article in progress (typescript), 45.

  199 “Atlanta is our important point now”: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Boston: T. R. Marvin & Sons, Printers, 1898), 159.

  199 “I never want to leave this army”: “Dear Ella,” December 6, 1863, Near Dalton, Ga.

  CHAPTER 16: RAILROAD WAR

  203 Those who served would be guaranteed their freedom: Quoted in Clarence L. Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 275. For a frontline, eyewitness diary account of the debate, see Wirt Armstead Cate, ed., Two Soldiers: The Campaign Diaries of Thomas J. Key, C. S. A., and Robert J. Campbell, U.S.A. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938), December 28, 1863, 16-18.

  203 “sacrifice . . . the principle which is the basis of our social system”: Southern Confederacy, August 23, 1863, 2.

  204 “If needs be, you had better die”: M., “To the Mothers, Wives and Daughters of Soldiers,” Daily Intelligencer, December 29, 1863, 2.

  204 “ostensibly under authority of the War Department ”: David Williams, Teresa Williams, and R. David Carlson, Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002), 178; on selling exemptions, see 107-9.

  204 “Somebody certainly must fight”: Samuel P. Richards, Diary (typescript), March 22, 1864, 227; December 9, 1863, 214.

  205 The enrolling officers left him alone: Richards, Diary, January 16, 1864, 219-20.

  205 it was increasingly a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight: Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” January 20, 1864, 284. For a useful study of the role of class in dissent and resistance to participation in the war in Georgia, see Williams, Williams, and Carlson, Plain Folk in a Rich Man’s War, esp. 161ff.

  206 He brought them food and news about the war: Affidavit of William Lewis, Webster v. U.S., Southern Claims Commission, National Archives, CD 13502, folder 1.

  206 “had any idea how matters stand down here”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” April 9, 1864, 298-99.

  207 “Don’t expect to overrun such a country”: To John Sherman, Memphis, August 13, 1862, in Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860-1865, ed. Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 272-73.

  207 Grant presented him with a plan to attack the Confederate head in Virginia: On Grant’s grand strategy for closing out the war starting in 1864, see Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 12-20.

  207 “to work all parts of the army together”: Quoted in McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 13.

  208 “Grant is my man, and I am his the rest of the war”: Quoted in James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 638.

  208 “we don’t get more than one effective soldier”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom , 720. On Northern conscription and enrollment policies, see 600-6.

  209 “it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be reelected”: August 23, 1864, quoted in McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 204. On Lincoln’s political troubles, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 698-717.

  209 “a manifest ebb in popular feeling”: “The Present Aspect of the War—Causes for Hope,” New York Times, March 16, 1864, 4. Historians have long debated the likelihood of Lincoln’s defeat in the November 1864 elections in the event Atlanta had not fallen. For a cogent summary of the issue and a military historian’s refutation of the notion that the fall of Atlanta determined the election results, see McMurry, Atlanta 1864, appendix 4, “The Atlanta Campaign and the Election of 1864,” 204-8.

  209 “Upon the progress of our arms”: Quoted in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 718.

  209 Even Sherman described himself as Grant ’s “second self ”: Quoted in Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 43.

  210 “General Sherman is the most American man I ever saw”: Roland Gray, “Memoir of John Chipman Gray,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 49 (October 1915-June 1916): 393-94.

  210 “war, pure and simple: to be applied directly to the civilians of the South”: Letter to Roswell M. Sawyer, January 31, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 601.

  210 “The army of the Confederacy is the South”: Letter to John Sherman, December 29, 1863, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 578.

  211 They left behind a scraped-over landscape: Castel, Decision in the West, 52.

  211 “Of course I must fight”: To Maria Boyle Ewing Sherman, January 19, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 587.

  211 He answered Grant a month before the campaign commenced: McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 49, 52.

  212 He was convinced that the Army of the Tennessee would soon reverse: “Dear Brother,” April 22, 1864, near Dalton.

  212 “the war closed in behind”: Quoted in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 515.

  212 “All that has gone before is mere skirmishing”: Letter to Ellen Ewing Sherman, March 12, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 609.

  CHAPTER 17: CANDLE ENDS

  213 With Bragg at his elbow, Davis fumed: Quoted in Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 47-48.

  214 “I can see no other mode of taking the offensive here”: Quoted in McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 22.

  214 “Difficulties . . . are in the way”: Quoted in Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 30-32.

  215 “march to the front as soon as possible”: To Jefferson Davis, March 7, 1864, quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 76.

  215 “stronger than [we] had supposed”: “Dear Brother,” April 22, 1864, near Dalton, Georgia.

  216 “having an easier time than ever”: “Dear Ma,” February 3, 1864, near Kingston, Georgia.

  216 “brilliant successes this spring”: “Dear Emma,” March 23, 1864, near Dalton.

  216 “God will fight our battles for us”: Quoted in Mary A. H. Gay, Life in Dixie During the War, 1861-1862-1863-1864-1865 (1892; rpt. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001), 80-83.

  216 “Small it was . . . but yet large enough”: Charles E. Benton, As Seen from the Ranks: A Boy in the Civil War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902), 131-32.

  217 “Hundreds of those poor fellows”: George H. Puntenney, History of the Thirty-seventh Regiment of Indiana Infantry Volunteers: Its Organization, Campaigns, and Battles, Sept., ’61-Oct., ’64 (Rushville, IN: Jacksonian Book and Job Department, 1896), 79-80.

  CHAPTER 18: FIGHTING, FIGHTING, FIGHTING

  219 “nearly the entire population . . . moving off taking their Negroes south”: “Dear Ma,” February 3, 1864, near Kingston, Georgia.

  219 refugees in wagons heading south that “literally blockaded” the roads: Mary A. H. Gay, Life in Dixie During the War (1892; rpt. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001), 95-96.

  220 “a boy to walk on the heads and shoulders of men”: Sarah “Sallie” Conley Clayton, Requiem for a Lost City: A Memoir of Civil War Atlanta and the Old South, ed. Robert S. Davi
s Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999), 92-93.

  220 “large concourse of citizens”: Samuel Richards, Diary (typescript), February 6, 1864, 222.

  221 “and by every kind word and deed”: Daily Intelligencer, February 7, 1864, 2.

  221 Joseph Johnston’s winter camp: William Lowndes Calhoun, History of the 42nd Regiment, Georgia Volunteers, Confederate States Army, Infantry (n.p., 1900), 37-38.

  222 “No event could be more disastrous to the Confederacy”: Daily Intelligencer, April 26, 1864, 2.

  222 “Of the capacity of General Johnston”: Daily Intelligencer, April 26, 1864, 2.

  222 shared the “perfect ecstasies” people felt: Mary Mallard to Mary Jones, February 22, 1864, in Robert Myers, The Children of Pride: A True Story of Georgia and the Civil War, abr. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 439.

  222 “We will be in a dreadful predicament”: To Mary Jones, May 5 and 14, 1864, in Myers, The Children of Pride, 461, 462.

  222 “If we are defeated in these battles”: Richards, Diary, May 7, 1864, 230.

  223 “to which I took such a fancy”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, Kingston, Ga., May 22, 1864, in Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman,

  1860-1865, ed. Brooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 639.

  223 could not pierce their lines “except by flanking”: “Dear Pa,” May 10, 1864, in the field above Dalton.

  224 “the terrible door of death”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, Kingston, Ga., May 22, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 638.

  225 “I’ve got Joe Johnston dead”: Throughout I have drawn for my understanding of the battles of the Atlanta campaign on two extraordinary military histories: Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992), and Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000). For the Sherman quote, see Castel, Decision in the West, 141.