The Bonfire_The Siege and Burning of Atlanta

by Marc Wortman

  74 “thousands of fine, substantial and costly houses”: Quotes from Daily Intelligencer , September 25, 1860, 3; May 28, 1859, 3.

  75 “rough and unpolished [the town] may be”: Mayor Luther J. Glenn, inaugural speech, City Council Minutes, January 28, 1859.

  75 “The Gate City: The only tribute she levies”: Quoted in Russell, Atlanta 1847- 1890, 24.

  75 In Atlanta, only 44 slaveholders bothered to possess: For regional population figures, see Carey, Parties, Slavery, and the Union, 3-4. For Atlanta slave ownership and population figures, see Russell, Atlanta 1847-1890, 71. Although Atlanta had a relatively small slave population and ownership, human chattel nonetheless represented the largest source of taxable property in the city. The 1859 state census for Fulton County, including Atlanta, tabulated the population as 11,572 free citizens and around 3,850 people in bondage. See Garrett, Atlanta and Its Environs, 1:488. The number of slave traders from city marshal’s occupations list of 1860 is reprinted in Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:489-91.

  76 Atlanta’s urban bondsmen worked alongside whites: For a discussion of the nonagricultural black population on the eve of the war, see Clarence H. Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 160-61, and Robert S. Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 11.

  76 Buchanan appointed W. L.’s brother: Eric H. Walther, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 204.

  77 “Owing to the existence of African slaver y”: “Gentlemen of the Philomathic Societies,” quoted in Walther, William Lowndes Yancey, 196-97.

  77 “I gave him practical freedom”: Ben Yancey quotes are from Deposition of Benjamin C. Yancey, Webster v. U.S., CD 13502, folder 2, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  77 He and his wife moved into a four-room house: Bob ( Webster) Yancey’s ownership of the Houston Street house is mentioned in a report in the Daily Intelligencer on the properties spared by General Sherman’s forces, December 23, 1864, 1. See also Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 17-19.

  77 Yancey, who could not write and probably could not read: In his deposition of Robert Webster, Webster v. U.S., CD 13502, folder 1, National Archives, Washington, D.C., Webster (Yancey) signed his statements with an X.

  78 “about a foolish bet”: Daily Intelligencer, March 8, 1864, 3.

  78 A slave became one of Atlanta’s wealthier men: Deposition of Robert Webster.

  78 His father could do little for him: Henry S. Robinson, “Robert and Roderick Badger, Pioneer Georgia Dentists: Their Heritage and Descendants,” typescript, Atlanta History Center, September 1987, 1-2.

  78 Joshua educated his slave sons: “Reminiscences of Patrick H. Calhoun,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 1, no. 6 (February 1932): 42.

  78 anyone caught teaching a slave or freeman to read or write: Georgia Laws, 1833, Vol. 1, 289, Sequential #133. William Henry Heard, From Slavery to the Bishopric in the A. M. E. Church: An Autobiography (Philadelphia: A. M. E. Book Concern, 1928), 31. On the punishment for learning to read and write, see also “Slavery as Seen through the Eyes of Henry Wright—Ex-Slave,” in Born in Slavery: Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938, Georgia Narratives , IV, Part 4, typescript, 8 (201).

  79 The skills greatly increased their market value: For sale price of Festus Flipper, see William Warren Rogers, Ante-Bellum Thomas County 1825-1861 (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1963), 63; for value of land, see Clara Mildred Thompson, Reconstruction in Georgia: Economic, Social, Political, 1865- 1872 (1915; rpt. Manchester, NH: Ayer Publishing, 1971), 284, and author’s telephone conversation, January 18, 2008, with Tom Hill, Thomas County Historical Museum.

  79 “the intolerant bigotry of New England hypocrites”: J. D. Ponder, “Rise of Lieut. Henry O. Flipper from Slavery to Be One of Most Respected Men, Reads Like Novel,” El Paso Morning Times, September 13, 1917, 4. The 1855 lynching in Thomasville is cited in Jane Eppinga, Henry Ossian Flipper: West Point’s First Black Graduate (Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing, 1996), 2.

  80 They purchased one hundred acres: Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:511.

  80 Flipper’s wife and son would have to remain behind: Rogers, Ante-Bellum Thomas County, 98-99.

  81 “The joy of the wife can be conceived”: Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieut. Henry Ossian Flipper (1878; rpt. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 3.

  81 When in search of work: Donald L. Grant, The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1993), 36.

  81 “but two other things to make them like other human beings”: Flipper, The Colored Cadet, 3.

  81 Some open-minded whites: Jonathan D. Martin in his study of slave hiring, Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), explores the contradictions both whites and blacks faced when slaves hired out their time. See, especially, 1-9.

  82 “proper authorities of the City of Atlanta”: Quoted in Garrett, Atlanta and Environs , 1:396.

  82 In 1858, two hundred white “regular citizen mechanics”: City Council Minutes, March 5, 1858. See also Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 35, and Reed, History of Atlanta, 78-79.

  82 The protestors appealed “for justice”: City Council Minutes, July 15, 1859.

  82 In 1861, another protest to the town fathers against Badger: City Council Records, February 8, 1861, Vol. 3, April 9, 1859, to January 10, 1862, 515.

  82 A week later, the council backed down: City Council Records, January 4, 1861.

  83 doled out summary judgment and punishment: On the summary nature of racial law enforcement in the countryside, see “Slavery as Seen through the Eyes of Henry Wright—Ex-Slave,” 8-9 (201-2).

  83 “fix . . . rings and poles on the calaboose”: Quoted in Alton Hornsby Jr., A Short History of Black Atlanta, 1847-1990, 2nd ed. (North Richland Hills, TX: Ivy Halls Academic Press, 2006), 2.

  83 “slave, free person of color or Indian”: Hornsby, A Short History of Black Atlanta , 5.

  83 In the face of such a risk: City Council Minutes, May 20, 1859, cited in Reed, History of Atlanta, 81. In restricting freemen from moving into Atlanta, the city was little different from many municipalities, even in free states. For instance, Illinois voters overwhelmingly passed a state constitutional amendment in 1848 banning entry into the state by freemen. See Eugene H. Berwanger, The Frontier against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 48-51.

  83 “their selections just as they would have a horse or mule at a stockyard”: Quoted in Michael Rose, ed., Atlanta: A Portrait of the Civil War (Charleston, SC: Tempus Publishing, 1999), 100.

  84 “None of the slaves believed in the sermons”: “Slavery as Seen through the Eyes of Henry Wright—Ex-Slave,” 8 (201).

  CHAPTER 8: EARTHQUAKE

  85 Among his many activities to better the growing community: Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal 1 (Atlanta: C. R. Hanleiter & Co., 1856), 56.

  86 “that opposition to the principles”: Quoted in Anthony Gene Carey, Parties, Slavery, and the Union in Antebellum Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 185.

  87 “ We doubt not the[ir] success”: March 29, 1856, and April 4, 1856, quoted in Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1954), 1:411. See also 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), 84-86.

  87 It was not long before open guerilla warfare broke out: On the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and its national consequences, see James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ
ersity Press, 1988), 121-30, and William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Vol. 1, Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1990), 536- 65. On its impact in Georgia, see Carey, Parties, Slavery, and the Union, 184ff.

  87 But the effort put the rest of Georgia on notice: Reed, History of Atlanta, 71-72.

  88 The voting patterns made clear: On the election of 1856, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 153-57.

  89 Whether the abolition Lincoln advocated came sooner or later: “First Debate, Mr. Lincoln’s Reply,” August 21, 1858, in Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1832-1858, ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: Library of America, 1989), 1:512-13, 514. Alexander H. Stephens spoke in Savannah on March 21, 1861, declaring famously, “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.” Henry Cleveland, Alexander H. Stephens, in Public and Private: With Letters and Speeches, before, during, and since the War (Philadelphia: National Publishing Co., 1886), 717-29.

  89 A second conviction led to permanent reenslavement: Acts of Georgia 1859, quoted in Clarence L. Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 14-15.

  89 “tremendous sway . . . over the political arrangements of this State”: Printed in the Daily Intelligencer, April 30, 1864, 1.

  89 “no advocates of mob law”: Daily Intelligencer, January 4, 1860, 2.

  90 “well be chary of expressing such opinions”: Daily Intelligencer, January 5, 1860, 3.

  90 “The sooner he treads Northern soil the better it will be for him”: Quoted in Garrett, Atlanta and Its Environs, 1:471.

  90 Clayton’s family soon moved into a large house: Sarah Conley Clayton, Requiem for a Lost City: A Memoir of Civil War Atlanta and the Old South, ed. Robert Scott Davis Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999), 32.

  91 White citizens all along the Western & Atlantic armed themselves: On the Dalton and other black insurrection panics, see Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom , 33-35.

  91 “Ever y negro in Georgia should have a master”: Daily Intelligencer, January 9, 1860, 2.

  92 “slaves . . . are much worse treated”: Harrison Berry, Slavery and Abolitionism as Viewed by a Georgia Slave (Atlanta: Franklin Printing House, 1861), 27 and 16. For my discussion of Harrison Berry, I am indebted to Clarence L. Mohr, “Harrison Berry: A Black Pamphleteer in Georgia during Slavery and Freedom,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 67, no. 2 (summer 1983): 189-205.

  92 “Even now . . . the oppression is commenced”: Berry, Slavery and Abolitionism , 13.

  93 “put manacles on every Slave”: Berry, Slavery and Abolitionism, 19.

  94 “perhaps even now, the pen of the historian is nibbed”: Quoted in Eric H. Walther, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 241. On the Democratic Party’s breakup, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 213-16.

  94 Buchanan’s vice president, Kentucky’s John Breckinridge: On Yancey’s campaign for Breckinridge, see Walther, William Lowndes Yancey, 251-71.

  94 “that arch-enemy of true Democracy”: Quoted in Walther, William Lowndes Yancey, 250 and 257.

  95 “All branches of business are prospering”: Daily Intelligencer, January 5, 1860, 3.

  95 “strike, merchants of Georgia, at the black Republican”: Quoted in Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:471-72.

  95 “the Atlanta ban . . . abjure all that is to be abjured”: “The Index Expurgatorius,” New York Times, February 3, 1860, n.p.

  96 “Unless these people, therefore, want to go naked”: Daily Intelligencer, June 21, 1860, 2. Yancey quote in Walther, William Lowndes Yancey, 259.

  96 Still, he spoke out against those driving a wedge: James M. Calhoun affidavit, Timothy D. Lynes v. United States, Southern Claims Commission, CD 12658, box 1452, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  96 “the Union . . . cannot be preserved”: Quoted in Lucien E. Roberts, “The Political Career of Joshua Hill, Georgia Unionist,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 21 (March 1937): 52.

  97 “to recognize no political principle”: Quoted in Horace Greeley and John Fitch Cleveland, eds., A Political Text-book for 1860: Comprising a Brief View of Presidential Nominations and Elections, Including All the National Platforms Ever Yet Adopted . . . (New York: Tribune Association, 1860), 29.

  97 “shifting, halting, ambiguous, Delphic”: Georgia newspaper editorial quoted in Carey, Parties, Slavery, and the Union, 224.

  97 “That issue must be met and settled”: Kentucky Statesman, May 8, 1860, in Dwight Lowell Dumond, ed., Southern Editorials on Secession (New York: Century Co., 1931), 76.

  97 His hands would be tied: On Lincoln’s nomination, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 216-21.

  97 “Let the consequences be what they may”: Quoted in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 229-30.

  98 Few Northerners, Lincoln included, took the latest threats seriously: “The Question of the Day,” New York Times, October 29, 1860, n.p. On Lincoln’s and other Northern politicians’ discounting of secession warnings, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 230-31.

  98 “take the banner of liberty”: Walther, William Lowndes Yancey, 245; Atlanta National American, August 21, 1860, quoted in Walther, William Lowndes Yancey, 255, 258.

  98 “secession doctrine is revolution”: Quote from Thomas Maguire, an Atlanta-area planter who attended the Douglas speech, in Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:474.

  98 “upon the election of Abraham Lincoln”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 231.

  99 “States’ Rights men of Georgia”: Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:474.

  99 “not as a partisan addressing partisans”: Quoted in Walter G. Cooper, Official History of Fulton County (Atlanta: History Commission, 1934), 95.

  99 The Unionist circle was almost an alternative: For Union Association membership and quotes, see Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 36-37. I am grateful to Dyer for generously sharing portions of his exhaustive research findings on the Union Circle with me and for his correspondence responding to my queries.

  100 While many were Northern transplants: Dyer, Secret Yankees, 12ff.

  100 Had Yancey wished to attend the nighttime gatherings: Affidavit of William Markham, Webster v. U.S., Southern Claims Commission, CD 13502, folder 1, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  100 Most of the men meeting that summer: On the Georgia Air Line Railroad, see Reed, History of Atlanta, 433.

  101 “Clip the telegraph wires”: Daily Intelligencer, June 7, 1860, 3.

  101 “All who are in favor of civil war”: Quoted in “The Question of the Day,” New York Times, October 29, 1860, n.p. The National American did not survive secession.

  102 He failed to win a single slave-state electoral vote: For Georgia vote breakdowns, see Carey, Parties, Slavery, and the Union, 228-29.

  102 “ With the election of the Black Republican Lincoln”: Daily Intelligencer, November 15, 1860, 3.

  102 As he spoke, rumors flared of a slave insurrection: Special Message of Gov. Joseph E. Brown, to Legislature of Georgia, on our Federal Relations, Retaliatory State Legislation, the Right of Secession, etc., November 7th, 1860, quoted in William W. Freehling and Craig M. Simpson, eds., Secession Debated: Georgia’s Showdown in 1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), xi-xii.

  102 Mobs in several communities responded by attacking blacks: On the postelection racial backlash in Georgia, see Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom, 46.

  103 Little imagination was needed to predict that worse lay ahead: Berry, Slavery and Abolitionism, 3.

  103 “all suspected characters, with power to rid the community”: Quoted in Cooper, Official History of Fulton County, 99.
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  103 Adair, a former lawyer and train conductor: On Adair, see Thomas H. Martin, Atlanta and Its Builders: A Comprehensive History of the Gate City of the South (Atlanta: Century Memorial Publishing Co., 1902), 2:627-28.

  103 “dangerous for Union men to express themselves publicly”: Calhoun quotes from the affidavit of James M. Calhoun, Timothy D. Lynes v. U.S., Southern Claims Commission, CD 12658, box 1452, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

  103 “war in every way”: Quoted in Ralph Benjamin Singer Jr., “Confederate Atlanta,” PhD diss., University of Georgia, 1973, 54.

  104 flag came down, and a state flag flew: Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:476. The Georgia flag raising is noted in Samuel P. Richards, Diary, Vol. 9, October 1860-June 1864, typescript, December 19, 1860, 6, Atlanta History Center.

  104 “the shedding of a single drop of blood”: Daily Intelligencer, December 25, 1860, 3.

  104 “If you would hush this quadrennial struggle”: Daily Constitutionalist (Augusta, GA), January 1, 1861, 2.

  104 “no sufficient cause of war, or secession”: “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- 67, National Archives M1003, Washington, D.C.

  105 “There is, perhaps”: Daily Intelligencer, January 4, 1861, 3.

  105 On that historic day, Brown ordered Georgia militiamen: On Gov. Joseph Brown’s actions, see Freehling and Simpson, eds., Secession Debated, xx-xxi.

  105 On January 19, the convention delegates gathered: On the statewide voting and the state convention decision, see Carey, Parties, Slavery, and the Union, 228-29, 249. On the Atlanta vote, see Singer, “Confederate Atlanta,” 55-56.

  105 Little interested in life beyond his family: On Richards’s biographical background, see Frank J. Byrne, “Rebellion and Retail: A Tale of Two Merchants in

  Confederate Atlanta,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 79, no. 1 (spring 1995): 33. For the description of Richards, see Ella Mae Thornton, “Mr. S. P. Richards,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 3 (December 1937): 73-79.