The Bonfire

by Marc Wortman

  225 “The Yankees . . . had got breeches hold on us”: Sam Watkins, Company Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1882; rpt. New York: Plume, 1999), 120.

  225 “He could have walked into Resaca”: For quotes, see William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2001), 410 (see also back matter), and Castel, Decision in the West, 150. For a defense of McPherson’s actions at Resaca by an officer in the field, see Henry Stone, “Opening of the Campaign,” The Atlanta Papers, comp. Sydney C. Kerkis (Dayton, OH: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1980), 357-70.

  226 What Neal called “a rich scene”: “Dear Pa,” May 15, 1864, in the field near Resaca, GA.

  227 He despised as a dangerous weight upon his army: On Sherman’s attitude regarding the black camp followers in Georgia, see Clarence H. Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 191ff., and on their role as soldiers, see, for instance, his letter to Gen. Lorenzo Thomas, June 26, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 657-58.

  227 “a thicket almost impenetrable”: Castel, Decision in the West, 177.

  227 For the mayor of Atlanta’s son, the Civil War fighting was over: Calhoun, History of the 42nd Regiment, 38.

  227 “When we awoke in the morning”: Watkins, Company Aytch, 122.

  227 “only give us a fair fight”: “Dear Ma,” May 20, 1864, in the field, Etowah River, GA.

  228 “a terrific battle” near that river was inevitable: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, Kingston, Ga., May 22, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 639.

  228 “Atlanta is evidently our destination”: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Boston: T. R. Marvin & Sons, Printers, 1898), 167.

  CHAPTER 19: ROMAN RUNAGEES

  230 “flying in every direction in ruinous confusion”: B. G. Ellis, The Moving Appeal: Mr. McClanahan, Mrs. Dill, and the Civil War’s Great Newspaper Run (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), 283.

  230 “you might as well reason with a thunderstorm”: To John Sherman, January 25, 1864, quoted in Stephen E. Bower, “The Theology of the Battlefield: William Tecumseh Sherman and the U.S. Civil War,” Journal of Military History 64, no. 4 (October 2000): 1020; to James Guthrie, August 14, 1864, in the field near Atlanta, 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), 694.

  230 The supposedly faithful black people were voting with their feet: “Bill Arp, the Roman Runagee,” Atlanta, Ga., May 22, 1864, in (Charles H. Smith) Bill Arp, So Called: A Sideshow of the Southern Side of the War (New York: Metropolitan Record Office, 1866), 84-92.

  230 Refugees were now “constantly arriving”: Samuel Richards, Diary (typescript), May 29, 1864, 231. See also Eliza Frances Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865 (Atlanta: Cherokee Publishing Co., 1976), 149.

  230 With boardinghouses and extra rooms in private homes already full: Mary Elizabeth Massey, Refugee Life in the Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964; new material 2001), 83-84.

  231 “the report of the artillery at the front”: Richards, Diary, May 29, 1864, 231.

  231 “To realize what war is one should follow in our tracks”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, in the field near Marietta, Ga., June 26, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 657.

  231 “to keep close up to the enemy”: Quoted in Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 247.

  232 “to stand in the trenches and mow down their lines”: “Dear Emma,” June 2, 1864, in the field near New Hope Church.

  232 “Such piles of dead men were seldom or never seen”: Quoted in Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 90.

  232 “ This is surely not war; it is butcher y”: Richard M. McMurry, The Road Past Kennesaw: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Publications, National Park Service, 1972), 21.

  232 “so cautious that I can find no opportunity to attack him”: See McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 95.

  232 “Sherman knew that it was no child’s play”: Sam Watkins, Company Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1882; rpt. New York: Plume, 1999), 122.

  233 “It is . . . a Big Indian War”: To John Sherman, Acworth, Ga., June 9, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 645-46.

  233 “is still at my front and can fight or fall back as he pleases”: To John Sherman, Acworth, Ga., June 9, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 646.

  233 “the busiest people in town were speculators and rumor mongers”: May 25, 1864; quoted in Ellis, The Moving Appeal, 293.

  233 “On the street, every minute”: Quoted in Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1954), 1:585.

  233 “that Atlanta will be defended to the last extremity”: May 24, 1864, quoted in Ellis, The Moving Appeal, 294.

  234 “as cheerfully as though nothing had happened”: Mary Mallard to Mary Jones, May 19, 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), 463- 64.

  234 “when limbs are amputated and the clothing cut off ”: To Susan M. Cumming, May 20, 1864, in Myers, The Children of Pride, 465.

  234 “‘the light fantastic toe’ was tipped”: Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” May 6, 1864, 301.

  234 The truth would eventually come out, she trusted: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” May 9, 1864, 302-3.

  234 “It stands to reason that our folks ain’t whipping”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” May 19, 1864, 306.

  235 The Confederate grip on Atlanta: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” May 21, 1864, 307.

  235 Despite Lee’s ill health, he went to Macon: Robert Scott Davis, “Guarding the Gate City from Itself: George W. Lee and the Conflict in Civil War Atlanta” (manuscript in progress), 43-44.

  235 The governor might not swing from a tree: Daily Intelligencer, February 12, 1864, 2.

  235 “Atlanta is to the Confederacy”: Allen D. Candler, ed., The Confederate Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta: Charles P. Byrd, State Printer, 1909), 3:582.

  236 The anti-Brown faction derisively called the Georgia militia “Joe Brown’s Pets”: On Gov. Joseph Brown and the Georgia militia, see William R. Scaife and William Harris Bragg, Joe Brown’s Pets: The Georgia Militia, 1861-1865 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004).

  236 “only embarrasses the authorities”: May 23, 1864, quoted in Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1954), 1:589.

  236 “use all force necessary . . . to take life”: “Militia Broadside,” in Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, 23.

  236 “all the shirks and skulks in Georgia”: For quote, see Garrett, Atlanta and Environs , 29.

  236 “clothes sufficient for two or three men”: Quoted in Ellis, The Moving Appeal, 294.

  236 “I trust . . . we may never be called into action”: Richards, Diary, May 29, 1864, 231.

  CHAPTER 20: PRAYERS

  237 “I’d much rather fight the people”: Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” June 1, 1864, 314.

  237 “We are here without a gun”: “To Dearest Lizzie,” May 26, 1864, MSS 116, box 1, folder 1, Atlanta History Center.

  238 “Come on! We’re waiting for you!”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B,
“Miss Abby’s Diary,” May 27, 28, June 1, 6, 1864, 311-16.

  238 “ever y able-bodied negro man that can be found”: Quoted in Clarence H. Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 126.

  239 “This way with your axes”: Lt. Col. L. B. Faulkner to Captain Speed, June 22, 1864, quoted in Clarence L. Mohr, “The Atlanta Campaign and the African American Experience in Civil War Georgia,” in Lesley J. Gordon and John C. Inscoe, eds., Inside the Confederate Nation: Essays in Honor of Emory M. Thomas (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 280.

  239 “cannot stay where he is long”: “Dear Emma,” June 2, 1864, in the field near New Hope Church.

  239 They were wrong on all counts: Letter to Ellen Ewing Sherman, Acworth, Ga., June 9, 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), note 1, 644, and 643.

  240 “from foul and putrid stock”: Quoted in Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 268- 69.

  240 “an armistice, with a view to final separation”: (Memphis) Daily Appeal, June 24, 1864, quoted in B. G. Ellis, The Moving Appeal: Mr. McClanahan, Mrs. Dill, and the Civil War’s Great Newspaper Run (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), 303.

  240 if Sherman’s efforts “prove[d] abortive”: Samuel Richards, Diary (typescript), Vol. 10, July 3, 1864, 1.

  240 War, so long a source of prosperity, took over the life of Atlanta: “Atlanta,” New York Times, June 22, 1864, n.p.

  241 A wounded soldier convalescing in the home: Sarah Huff, My Eighty Years in Atlanta (n.p., 1937), ch. 3.

  241 “gentlemen . . . consider it unsafe to be much out at night”: Mrs. Mary S. Mallard to Mrs. Mary Jones, Atlanta, Thursday, March 24 and 31, 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, Abridged Edition, 1984), 448-49, 453.

  241 His motion was defeated: City Council Minutes, June 10, 1864, Vol. 4, January 17, 1862, to June 1, 1866, 281.

  241 “Can you, in this hour of peril”: Daily Intelligencer, May 29, 1864, quoted in “From Atlanta,” New York Times, June 14, 1864.

  242 “insanity, in some instances, came to the relief of sufferings”: (Memphis) Daily Appeal, June 23, 1864, quoted in Ellis, The Moving Appeal, 303.

  242 “My answer is invariably”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” June 1, 1864, 313.

  242 “General Johnston will be successful”: Mary Mallard to Mary Jones, May 27, 1864, in Myers, The Children of Pride, 467.

  243 Her wealthy slave Prince Ponder stayed: Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieut. Henry Ossian Flipper (1878; rpt. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 5.

  243 insisted that he be called by his full name: On Bob Yancey’s insistence that his name was Robert Webster, see, for instance, Robert Webster, “What Bob Says,” Daily Constitution, July 18, 1879, 4.

  243 “The men is all out of heart ”: Quoted in Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 130.

  244 “You must do the work with your present force”: Quoted in McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 135.

  245 On the same day the city council offered up its disapproval: City Council Minutes, June 1, 1864, Vol. 4, January 17, 1862, to June 1, 1866, 279.

  245 “I trust the prayers offered yesterday will be answered”: To Mary Jones, June 11, 1864, in Myers, The Children of Pride, 474.

  245 “all will yet be well”: (Memphis) Daily Appeal, May 24, 1864, quoted in Ellis, The Moving Appeal, 294.

  245 “this suspense and anxiety [will] take away our reason”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” July 5, 1864, 319; June 10, 1864, 317-18.

  245 “would attempt deliberately to shoot”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 306.

  246 “a party of us began to make preparations”: 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), 113.

  246 “to develop the enemy’s position and strength”: Quoted in Henry Stone, “From the Oostanaula to the Chattahoochee,” The Atlanta Papers, comp. Sydney C. Kerkis (Dayton, OH: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1980), 418.

  246 “right arm and passed through his body”: For an account of Polk’s death, see Castel, Decision in the West, 275-76, and William M. Polk, Leonidas Polk: Bishop and General (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1893), 2:349.

  247 For hours mourners filed passed his bloodless, flower-encased body lying in state in Saint Luke’s Church: Clayton, Requiem for a Lost City, 114-15.

  247 He returned to City Hall to do what he could to save his dying city: “Reminiscences of Patrick H. Calhoun,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 1, no. 6 (February 1932): 42.

  248 “never more sanguine and confident of success”: “Dear Pa,” June 20, 1864, in the field two miles above Marietta.

  249 “a stench, so sickening as to nauseate the whole of both armies”: Sam Watkins, Company Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1882; rpt. New York: Plume, 1999), 130-32.

  250 “Some of the boys think”: “Dearest Lizzie,” July 6, 1864, MSS 116, box 1, folder 2, Holliday Papers, Atlanta History Center.

  250 “one or two more such assaults would use up this army”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 315.

  250 “the work [has] progressed and I see no signs of a remission”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 325.

  251 “looking as hard as possible toward A[tlanta]”: July 19, 1864, Civil War Diary, July 16, 1864-November 14, 1864, The Siege & Capture of Atlanta Georgia, Henry D. Stanley, 2nd Lieut., 20th Conn. Vol. Co. H, MSS645, box 2, folder 1, Atlanta History Center.

  251 “Atlanta will not and cannot be abandoned”: Southern Confederacy, July 5, 1864, 2.

  251 “to remain in the city if the enemy gets possession”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, July 10, 1864, 2-3.

  251 Sallie left for the tranquility of an uncle’s Alabama plantation: Clayton, Requiem for a Lost City, 118-19.

  252 “there may be no battle here”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” July 19, 1864, 322.

  CHAPTER 21: A PERFECT SHELL

  256 “the best line of field intrenchments I have ever seen”: Quoted in Richard M. McMurry, Atlanta 1864: Last Chance for the Confederacy (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 115.

  256 “to make a circuit [of Atlanta]”: “To make a circuit,” letter of July 6, 1864, quoted in McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 118.

  256 Ignoring his terrible casualties: Force and casualty numbers drawn from McMurry, Atlanta 1864, Appendix 2, “Numbers and Losses,” 194-97.

  256 “been rather cautious than bold”: Letter of July 12, 1864, quoted in Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 343.

  256 “ These fellows fight like Devils”: Letter to Ellen Ewing Sherman, July 26, 1864, 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), 671.

  257 “There seems to be some property”: “Dearest Lizzie,” Camp Grease Gut, July 7, 11, 12, 14, and 15, 1864, Allen T. Holliday Papers, MSS 116, box 1, folder 2, Atlanta History Center.

  258 “walk[ed together] along the river banks”: “Dear Emma,” in the field, Chattahoochee River, July 13, 1864. Andrew Jackson Neal Papers, 1856-1881, MSS218, Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.

  258 When officers came around and ordered: See Castel, Decision in the West, 351-52.

  258 “When we fight . . . we fight to crush”: July 15, 1864, near Vining’s Stati
on, Ga., in Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Boston: T. R. Marvin & Sons, Printers, 1898), 177.

  259 “pierced through the heart”: Sam Watkins, Company Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1882; rpt. New York: Plume, 1999), 142.

  259 Sarah wondered why several soldiers: Sarah Huff, My Eighty Years in Atlanta (n.p., 1937), ch. 4.

  259 “to arrest the advance of the enemy to the vicinity of Atlanta”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 361.

  260 “watch[ing] for an opportunity to fight to advantage”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 358.

  260 He expected Hood to move promptly to the attack: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 356, 362.

  260 “I do pray . . . we may never move”: “Dear Ma,” Chattahoochee River, July 17, 1864.

  260 two peace advocates from the Union side passed through the battle lines: The peace mission is described in James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 767-68.

  261 “a fight before Atlanta is given up”: Samuel Richards, Diary (typescript), Vol. 10, July 17, 1864, 3.

  261 “exercise . . . a little philosophy and reason”: Quoted in B. G. Ellis, The Moving Appeal: Mr. McClanahan, Mrs. Dill, and the Civil War’s Great Newspaper Run (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), 309.

  261 The members met for the last time: City Council Minutes, July 18, 1864, Vol. 4, January 17, 1862, to June 1, 1866, 291.

  262 He had little else at his command: Ralph Benjamin Singer Jr., “Confederate Atlanta” (PhD diss., University of Georgia, 1973), 257.

  262 In fact, he intended to remain with his brother: Noble C. Williams, Echoes from the Battlefield; or, Southern Life During the War (Atlanta: Franklin Printing and Publishing Co., 1902), 34.

  262 “all was being done that could be”: 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), 125, 175.