The Bonfire_The Siege and Burning of Atlanta

by Marc Wortman

  107 “form a Southern Republic, a ‘ White Man’s Republic’”: Richards’s emphasis (italics in typescript). Richards, Diary (typescript), Atlanta History Center, November 17, 1860, 5; December 8, 1860, 8; November 25, 1860, 6.

  107 “aid and comfort to the Abolitionists”: Richards, Diary, January 19, 1861, 13.

  108 Now, Sherman paced about and sputtered: Exchange between W. T. Sherman and Prof. David F. Boyd, December 24, 1860. Lloyd Lewis, Sherman: Fighting Prophet (1932; rpt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 137-38, 143. On the psychology of irrational executive decision-making processes marked by excessive optimism, which closely parallels the excessive optimism in Southern views on the outcome of secession, see Dan Lovallo and Daniel Kahnemann, “Delusions of Success: How Optimism Undermines Executives’ Decisions,” Harvard Business Review, July 2003, rpt. R0307D.

  108 A minor earthquake lasting ten seconds: Daily Intelligencer, January 4, 1861, 3. A much more powerful earthquake, the largest on record for the region, struck Atlanta, along with nearly the entire Southeast, early on the morning of August 31, 1861, startling sleeping soldiers to their feet, cracking walls, and toppling chimneys. Three years to the day after that quake shook the city, the Union army would launch its final assault on the Atlanta region’s Confederate forces. See Gerald R. MacCarthy, “Three Forgotten Earthquakes,” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 53, no. 3 (April 1963): 687-92. Additional information on southeastern earthquakes is based on e-mail correspondence with Timothy Long, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Jeffrey W. Munsey, Tennessee Valley Authority.

  CHAPTER 9: NEVER! NEVER!! NEVER!!!

  111 “could not express any opinion at all”: Deposition of Julius A. Hayden, March 10, 1869, Hayden v. U.S. (case file no. 2543), Court of Claims, RG 123, National Archives, Washington, D.C., quoted in Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 46.

  111 Whitaker won the office he had long had his eyes on: Ralph Benjamin Singer Jr., “Confederate Atlanta,” PhD diss., University of Georgia, 1973, 58-59. Whitaker resigned as mayor the following November 25 to accept an appointment from Governor Brown as commissary general of the Georgia army. He set up his headquarters in Atlanta, helping to consolidate its position as one of the manufacturing and supply centers for the Confederacy.

  112 “The man and the hour have met”: Quoted in Eric H. Walther, William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 295.

  112 “including . . . goobers, an indispensable article for a Southern Legislator”: Council Minutes, February 15, 1861, 519-20. Gate City Guardian, February 16, 1861, 1.

  112 “it was my duty to go with the South”: James M. Calhoun affidavit, Timothy D. Lynes v. United States, Southern Claims Commission, CD 12658, box 1452.

  112 “defining treason . . . to obey [to] which every citizen was bound”: “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.

  113 The new government should wield its power to exile or punish: Southern Confederacy , March 28, 1861, 3.

  113 “Every Union man they could find”: Quoted in Dyer, Secret Yankees, 46-47.

  113 “see him go off like he did to fight against the Union”: Harrison Baswell vs. U.S., Southern Claims Commission, Affidavits of J. T. Baswell, Nancy Spinks (daughter), Jefferson Baswell (nephew), CD 12668, National Archives, Washington, D.C. One of Baswell’s brothers fought for the Union and died in the war.

  114 Not long after that, his flour mill won a rich contract: Daily Intelligencer, March 4, March 9, 11, 20, 1861, 3. See also Dyer, Secret Yankees, 47-50. On hardtack production by the Stewart and Austin flour mill, see Singer, “Confederate Atlanta,” 101.

  115 Those who remained in Atlanta: Southern Confederacy, March 28, 1861, 1.

  115 Little Alec had dropped his long-standing opposition: On the selection of the Confederate States president, see Walther, William Lowndes Yancey, 293-95, and James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 258-59.

  116 “They were attempting to make things equal”: Henry Cleveland, Alexander H. Stephens, in Public and Private: With Letters and Speeches, before, during, and since the War (Philadelphia: National Publishing Co., 1886), 721-22.

  116 Alexander Stephens told his Atlanta listeners: On description of Stephens, see “Letter of Georgia King to Henry Lord Page King,” November 15, 1860, quoted in William W. Freehling and Craig M. Simpson, eds., Secession Debated: Georgia’s Showdown in 1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), xvi. 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), 110-11. Walter G. Cooper, Official History of Fulton County (Atlanta: History Commission, 1934), 109-10.

  117 he placed Major Yancey in command of his famous legion: On Ben Yancey’s service, see Walther, William Lowndes Yancey, 429n58; see also 338 and 345.

  117 Fulton County had provided the Confederacy with 2,660 soldiers: Reed, History of Atlanta, 114-17; Singer, “Confederate Atlanta,” 70, 71, 73; Cooper, Official History of Fulton County, 110. Soldier total cited in James Michael Russell, Atlanta 1847-1890: City Building in the Old South and the New (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 94.

  117 An Atlanta mother beamed with pride: Memoirs of Mrs. R. M. Massey, Atlanta Pioneer Women’s Society Papers Collection, Atlanta Historical Society.

  118 Soon, they and other women formed associations to make bandages: Sarah Huff, “My Eighty Years in Atlanta” (no publication information, 1937), ch. 1, n.p.

  118 The Neal family had moved just the year before: For the description of the Neal family, see “Dear Pa,” May 18, 1861, Camp Magnolia, Andrew Jackson Neal Papers, Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, MSS218.

  119 “how affairs stand . . . and what are the prospects of war”: 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), 35-36.

  119 “Ever ything seemed to be preparing for active ser vice”: Southern Confederacy, June 29, 1861, 3. Clayton, Requiem, 44-45; Clayton quote is from 40.

  119 She and her more than two hundred fellow students from the Atlanta Female Institute: On the Atlanta Female Institute, see Clayton, Requiem, ch. 2. Quotes are from 60 and 66.

  119 The Female Institute’s dome atop what came to be known as College Hill: Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1954), 1:456-57.

  120 After many hours packed together on trains: Clayton, Requiem, 80-81.

  120 “with the utmost difficulty”: Clayton, Requiem, 79-80.

  121 “the booming of cannon”: Southern Confederacy, April 1, 1861, 3.

  121 “too powerful to be suppressed”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 250; Lincoln’s proclamation quote is from 274.

  121 “be accommodated to a coat of tar and feathers”: Quoted in Russell, Atlanta 1847-1890, 94.

  122 “the house with stamping feet”: Atlanta Commonwealth, May 2, 1861, quoted in Dyer, Secret Yankees, 55.

  122 With many of Atlanta’s leading citizens on hand: On the founding of the Atlanta Female Institute, see Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:456-57.

  122 “our country, so long the boast”: Holly, “The Spring of 1861,” quoted in Dyer, Secret Yankees, 51.

  122 “ner v[ing] ourselves against despair”: Quoted in Dyer, Secret Yankees, appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” January 1, 1864, 284.

  122 “sad to think that our country”: Richards, Diary, April 14, 1861, 21-22.

  123 “Our family hitherto has been united”: Richards, Dia
ry, October 1 and 7, 1861, 49 and 51.

  123 “a strong Union man”: Richards, Diary, May 10, 1861, 28.

  123 His longtime clerk Asa Sher wood: Richards, Diary, April 20 and 25, 1861, 23, 24; May 31, 1861, 30.

  123 “We will teach Mr. Lincoln and his cohorts”: City Council Minutes, April 26, 1861, 550.

  123 “the people of the Slaves States”: City Council Minutes, May 31, 1861, 568.

  124 “We are now cut off from them”: Southern Confederacy, June 29, 1861, 3.

  124 “our cause is a just one in His sight ”: Richards, Diary, June 23, 1861, 34; July 27, 1861, 42.

  124 “covered themselves with glory”: “Dear Ma,” July 28, 1861, Camp Magnolia.

  124 The victory heartened the town: Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:516-17.

  CHAPTER 10: SPECULATION

  125 No place in the South was more prepared: War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 3, Vol. 4, 883.

  126 “Atlanta . . . is destined to be a great manufacturing city”: See James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 91, 94-95, 318, and Robert C. Black, The Railroads of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 4. Quote from Daily Intelligencer, January 25, 1863, 3.

  126 “Perpetual motion does exist in this city”: “A Trip to Atlanta,” Southern Confederacy , May 23, 1863, 2.

  126 The Atlanta Sword Manufactory turned out 170 finished swords: See Stephen Mitchell, “Atlanta, the Industrial Heart of the Confederacy,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 3 (May 1930): 20-27; Ralph Benjamin Singer Jr., “Confederate Atlanta,” PhD diss., University of Georgia, 1973, 101-3, 138, 141; Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1954), 1:509, 532-33.

  126 Army of Tennessee: Confederate armies, including Army of Tennessee, were typically named for their state of origin. They can easily be confused with similarly named Union armies which derived their names from rivers around which they operated, such as the Army of the Tennessee.

  127 One hundred cobblers in a government shoe factory: Figures from Singer, “Confederate Atlanta,” 159-61, 174, and Steven Davis, “Civil War: Atlanta Home Front,” The New Georgia Encyclopedia, online at www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-824; Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:532.

  127 “They are daily increasing”: “A Trip to Atlanta,” 2.

  127 “wonderful sight ” of powerful cutting machines: Sarah Huff, “My Eighty Years in Atlanta” (no publication information, 1937), ch. 1, n.p.

  128 The Yankees would remember the name of the town: See Henry Hitchcock, Marching with Sherman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1927), 58.

  128 “ There was no better Confederate than he”: “Reminiscences of Patrick H. Calhoun,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 1, no. 6 (February 1932): 43. Compare Calhoun’s statement in his request for amnesty shortly after 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”), 1865-67, National Archives M1003, Washington, D.C.

  129 “The faces I had usually met ”: “From Our Special Correspondent ‘T. D. W.,’” Southern Confederacy, August 27, 1862, 2.

  129 “all day long and even during night”: “A Trip to Atlanta,” 2.

  129 “scarcely a day or night ”: Quoted in “Old Home Spared by Sherman’s Torch Is Soon to Give Way for Improvement,” Constitution, February 18, 1906.

  130 “want[ed] the freest possible trade with all the world”: Quotes from “A Voice of Southern Commerce,” New York Times, October 20, 1861, n.p.

  130 “Almost everybody who had any money”: See the deposition of Amherst W. Stone, November 9, 1867, in Lynch v. United States, Court of Claims, quoted in Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 116.

  130 Root & Beach ships got through the blockade often enough: Walter McElreath, “Sidney Root: Merchant Prince and Great Citizen,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 7, no. 29 (October 1944): 171-83.

  130 Traders overseas appeared eager: On the blockade trade and the effectiveness of the Union naval blockade, see James Russell Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883), 44-45. See also McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 378-82.

  131 “ The blockade and the high price”: “The Blockade, from the Atlanta (Ga.) Confederacy,” New York Times, July 27, 1862, n.p.

  131 “Atlanta to the South, is Chicago to the Northwest”: New York Times, November 15, 1863, n.p.

  132 “the value of property [was] advancing with railroad velocity”: “A Trip to Atlanta,” 2.

  132 City council officials delegated to assist him: Minutes of City Council, June 27, 1862, cited in Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 1:525.

  132 “I am disappointed in Atlanta”: James H. Burton, Superintendent of Armories, CSA, to Colonel Josiah Gorgas, Confederate Chief of Ordnance, June 25, 1862, Record Group 109, ch. IV, Vol. 20, National Archives, Washington, D.C., and Richard W. Iobst, Civil War Macon: The History of a Confederate City (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999), 176-78.

  133 “I concluded that Atlanta, in point of business, was unchangeable”: “From Our Special Correspondent ‘T. D. W.,’” 2.

  133 “dried up, the stores nearly all closed”: Samuel Richards, Diary (typescript), November 8, 1862, 136-37.

  134 “What I most regret in his case is that he is an alien enemy”: Richards, Diary, August 25 and 24, 1861, 49, 48; October 1, 1861, 57; September 7, 1861, 51; November 2, 1861, 61.

  134 “ We could make a small fortune out of it ”: Richards, Diary, December 31, 1861, 71; November 3, 1861, 62; January 9, 1862, 72.

  134 “Today Jabez sold a bill of pens”: Richards, Diary, March 21, 1863, 167.

  134 Jabez also bought several bondsmen: Richards, Diary, August 8, 1862, 112; February 23, 1863, 162; May 24, 1862, 99; June 28, 1862, 106; October 22, 1862, 132; December 9, 1862, 145; April 12, 1862, 90; March 22, 1863, 168; August 21, 1863, 196.

  135 “when we come to a successful end to this war”: Richards, Diary, September 30, 1862, 115; May 5, 1862, 95; February 28, 1863, 163; May 2, 1863, 195.

  135 “put in healthy condition all privies”: Singer, “Confederate Atlanta,” 117.

  135 The city government sold lime: See James Russell, Atlanta 1847-1890: City Building in the Old South and the New (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 111.

  135 “exempt me from conscription”: Richards, Diary, November 26, 1862, 141.

  135 “We live now in a state of feverish excitement”: Richards, Diary, September 6, 1862, 117.

  136 The Richmond government passed an impressment statute: On impressments of supplies, see Rebecca Christian, “Georgia and the Confederate Policy of Impressing Supplies,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 28 (March 1944): 2; Russell, Atlanta 1847-1890, 95-97.

  136 “high officials who set the example of lawlessness”: “Rioting Women,” Southern Confederacy, April 16, 1863, 2.

  136 He offered to investigate unauthorized seizures: Singer, “Confederate Atlanta,” 196-97.

  137 Jabez Richards discovered that $1,000 in cash: Richards, Diary, September 13, 1862, 119.

  137 “as thick as the frogs and lice of Egypt ”: “Shinplasters,” Southern Confederacy, August 27, 1862, 2.

  137 Eventually, inflation soared to ninety-two times prewar prices: On inflation, see McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 438-40; Russell, Atlanta 1847-1890, 98; Singer, “Confederate Atlanta,” 193-94. Wholesale price rise figure cited in Teresa Crisp Williams and David Williams, “‘The Women Rising’: Cotton, Class, and Confederate Georgia’s Rioting Women,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 86, no. 1 (spring 2002): 3 (online version). “Markets and Other Matters,” Southern Confederacy, January 27, 1863, 1.

  137 “No purse is larg
e enough”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” March 12, 1864, 289.

  138 Publishers themselves were forced to scramble: On Civil War newspapers in Atlanta, see B. G. Ellis, The Moving Appeal: Mr. McClanahan, Mrs. Dill, and the Civil War’s Great Newspaper Run (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), ch. 11, 222ff. On Georgia newspapers during the Civil War, see Rabun Lee Brantley, Georgia Journalism of the Civil War Period (Nashville, TN: George Peabody College for Teachers, 1929).

  138 “Is it any marvel”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, appendix B, 294; January 20, 1864, 287.

  138 “There are a thousand little plans”: “How to Get the Very Best Coffee at About Ten Cents a Pound,” Southern Confederacy, November 7, 1861, 3; “How to Get Coffee,” Southern Confederacy, August 27, 1861, 1; “A Word to the Ladies,” Southern Confederacy, September 28, 1861, 2.

  139 “Atlanta . . . is now made headquarters”: “Reason,” Daily Intelligencer, April 4, 1862, 3. See rebuttal: “Speculation Again,” Southern Confederacy, April 5, 1862, 3.

  139 “to get it out of reach of the city authorities”: Letter to Gov. Joseph Brown, November 16, 1862, quoted in Mark A. Weitz, A Higher Duty: Desertion among Georgia Troops during the Civil War (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 114.

  139 “These men are greater enemies”: “Reason,” 3.

  139 He came to regret his generosity: State of Georgia, Thomas County Indenture, April 27, 1858, photocopy courtesy of Thomas County Historical Museum.

  139 “only thought or care was to remember when [her slaves’] wages became due”: Quotes from Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieut. Henry Ossian Flipper (1878; rpt. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 4.

  140 With no white overseer on the estate: See Garrett, Atlanta and Its Environs, 1:511-13.

  140 She had no idea how much money he was making: Claim of Prince Ponder, December 20, 1875, box 34, Southern Claims Commission, Record Group 217, National Archives, Washington, D.C., 1, 13-15, 25.