The Bonfire

by Marc Wortman

  263 “The news . . . comes in shoals of falsehood”: Grape, “Letters from the Front, July 17th and 19th, 1864,” (Augusta) Daily Constitutionalist, July 22 and 20, 1864, 1.

  263 His store was “stripped” of all its paper and cash on hand: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, July 22, 1864, 4.

  263 “If Soddom [sic] deserved the fate that befell it”: “Dear Ma,” in the field before Atlanta, July 23, 1864.

  264 “Atlanta will not be given up without a fight ”: Grape, “Letters from the Front, July 17th and 19th, 1864,” (Augusta) Daily Constitutionalist, July 22 and 20, 1864, 1.

  264 “They were negroes” . . . so his appeals for help: Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” July 21, 1864, Midnight, 324.

  265 “wait until breastworks are erected”: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” July 19, 1864, 321.

  267 He raced past the federal skirmish line: George A. Newton, “Battle of Peach Tree Creek,” G. A. R. War Papers, Papers Read Before Fred. C. Jones Post, No. 401, Department of Ohio G. A. R., Vol. 1 (Cincinnati: Fred. C. Jones Post, 1891), 153-54.

  267 “could have taken them”: “Dear Pa,” in the field near Chattahoochee, July 20, 1864.

  268 Atlanta was under fire: Stephen Davis, “How Many Civilians Died in Sherman’s Bombardment of Atlanta?” Atlanta History 45, no. 4 (2003): 5-6. Stephen Davis, “‘A Very Barbarous Mode of Carrying on War’: Sherman’s Artillery Bombardment of Atlanta, July 20-August 24, 1864,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 89, no. 1 (spring 1995): 61-62. Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, July 20, 1864, 4.

  268 “It seems almost impossible”: July 22, 1864, Civil War Diary Henry D. Stanley, 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.

  268 “within easy cannon-range of the buildings in Atlanta”: Quoted in Davis, “‘A Very Barbarous Mode of Carrying on War,’” 63.

  269 “carr ying a musket for the first time in my life”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, July 23, 1864, 4-5.

  CHAPTER 22: THE BATTLE OF ATLANTA

  271 Soon, everyone in town knew the cause for the alarm: Florence W. Brine, “Central Presbyterian Church,” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 3, no. 14 (July 1938): 183.

  271 “found the city in a wild state of excitement ”: J. P. Austin, The Blue and the Gray: Sketches of a Portion of the Unwritten History of the Great American Civil War, a Truthful Narrative of Adventure, with Thrilling Reminiscences of the Great Struggle on Land and Sea (Atlanta: Franklin Printing and Publishing Co., 1899), 131.

  272 She was ordered to take the bomb back outside: Noble C. Williams, Echoes from the Battlefield; or, Southern Life During the War (Atlanta: Franklin Printing and Publishing Co., 1902), 32-33.

  273 She hoped to see Union forces march in tomorrow: Thomas Dyer, Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” July 21, 1864, 322-23.

  274 As the women walked their separate ways: Mary A. H. Gay, Life in Dixie During the War (1892; rpt. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2001), 158-63.

  274 “How could we run over those things”: Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, Vol. 2 (New York: Baker & Taylor Co., 1908), 3.

  275 “Atlanta and its connections are worth a battle”: (Atlanta) Daily Appeal, July 20, 1864, quoted in “The War in Georgia,” New York Times, July 29, 1864, 2.

  275 “entered the stores by force, robbing them of ever ything”: Grape, “The Siege of Atlanta,” (Augusta) Daily Constitutionalist, July 29, 1864, 3.

  276 residents from the countryside came in to grab their share: Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 389.

  277 continued in the saddle a few feet and then slumped to the ground: Sam Watkins, Company Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1882; rpt. New York: Plume, 1999), 154-57. On the death of McPherson, see William E. Strong, “The Death of General James B. McPherson,” The Atlanta Papers, comp. Sydney C. Kerkis (Dayton, OH: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1980), 505-39.

  277 he saw his horse lying dead beside him: “Dear Ma,” in the field before Atlanta, July 23, 1864.

  278 “Atlanta will not be given up”: 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), 125-28; “My Dear Sallie & Caro,” Atlanta, July 25, 1864, in Clayton, Requiem for a Lost City, 175-76.

  278 “amounted to more than twice our own”: “Dear Ma,” in the field before Atlanta, July 23, 1864.

  278 Sherman was “badly defeated”: Castel, Decision in the West, 410. Quote on 423.

  278 “who would not be a soldier and fight for his country?”: “Dear Lizzie,” Thursday, July 26, 1864, Sunday morning, July 31, 1864, Allen T. Holliday Papers, MSS 116, box 1, folder 1, Atlanta History Center.

  278 “intended to hold the city”: Samuel P. Richards, Diary (typescript), Vol. 10, July 22, 1864, 4.

  279 The fighting that day very likely destroyed her property: Dyer, Secret Yankees, Appendix B, “Miss Abby’s Diary,” July 21, 1864, Midnight, 324-28.

  279 “the blood trickling down”: Sarah Huff, My Eighty Years in Atlanta (n.p., 1937), ch. 4.

  281 they had dispatched all the wounded men: Affidavits of Thomas G. W. Crussell, William Lewis, John Silvey, James Dunning, Webster v. U.S., Southern Claims Commission, National Archives, CD 13502, folder 1. Testimony of Prince Ponder, Ponder v. U.S., December 20, 1875, box 34, Southern Claims Commission, Record Group 217, National Archives, 9-10.

  281 “for with all the natural advantages of bushes”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, in the field near Atlanta, July 26, 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), 672.

  281 “Let the Army of the Tennessee fight it out!”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 414. Castel and many others have criticized Sherman’s failure to counterattack on July 22. See, for instance, the bitter comments of Henry Stone, a staff officer with the Army of the Cumberland, “The Strategy of the Campaign,” in Kerkis, The Atlanta Papers, 158-59.

  281 “ They can’t take Atlanta unless they make a Vicksburg scrape of it ”: “Dear Lizzie,” 26 July 1864.

  282 “singularly picturesque and startling in effect”: Grape, “The Siege of Atlanta,” (Augusta) Daily Constitutionalist, July 29, 1864, 3.

  282 “a fine house in plain sight”: July 25, 1864, in the trenches one and a half miles from Atlanta, in Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Boston: T. R. Marvin & Sons, Printers, 1898), 181-82.

  282 “A rifle bullet struck the board”: July 31, 1864, near Atlanta, in Morse, Letters, 185.

  282 “gradually destroy the roads which make Atlanta a place worth having”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, in the field near Atlanta, July 26, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 672.

  283 “many of the pensioners we captured”: July 29, 1864, Civil War Diary Henry D. Stanley, 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.

  283 fighting like “Devils & Indians”: To Ellen Ewing Sherman, in the field near Atlanta, August 9, 1864, in Simpson and Berlin, Sherman’s Civil War, 685.

  284 “make the inside of Atlanta too hot to be endured”: Quoted in Stephen Davis, “‘A Very Barbarous Mode of Carrying on War’: Sherman’s Artillery Bombardment of Atlanta, July 20-August 24, 1864,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 89, no. 1 (spring 1995), 68.

  CHAPTER 23: GOODBYE, JOHNNY

  287 “You may take this to heart”: Epsilon, �
��Gen. Sherman’s Division, Near Atlanta, Friday, August 19, 1864,” New York Times, September 1, 1864, 1.

  288 They decided to risk more shelling: Mollie Smith, “Dodging Shells in Atlanta,” Atlanta Constitution, March 24, 1929, 13.

  289 Nobody could calculate what course they would take: William C. Noble, Echoes from the Battlefield, or Southern Life During the War (Atlanta: Franklin Printing and Publishing Co., 1902), 32-33.

  289 “at almost any time numbers of lighted shells”: Noble, Echoes from the Battlefield , 34.

  289 Samuel was not there for that: Samuel Richards, Diary (typescript), Vol. 10, August 1, 7, 14, 21, 1864, 5-8, 10, Atlanta History Center.

  289 “could distinctly hear loud cries”: Quoted in Stephen Davis, “‘A Very Barbarous Mode of Carrying on War’: Sherman’s Artillery Bombardment of Atlanta, July 20-August 24, 1864,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 89, no. 1 (spring 1995): 85.

  289 Many families, especially the poorer ones: Quoted in Davis, “‘A Very Barbarous Mode of Carrying on War,’” 81.

  290 “Let us destroy Atlanta and make it a desolation”: Quoted in Davis, “‘A Very Barbarous Mode of Carrying on War,’” 68.

  290 His men buried him in a shallow grave: “Dear Ella,” August 4, 1864, in the line before Atlanta, Ga., Andrew Jackson Neal Papers, 1856-1881, MSS218, Emory University Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, MSS218.

  291 James Neal would have his chance at revenge: “Dear Ma,” August 24, 1864, Hd. Qtrs. 19th Ga. Vol.

  291 Most houses along Marietta Street: Pilgrim, (Macon) Daily Intelligencer, August 25, 1864, 1.

  292 He directed that one of the four-and-a-half-inch navy siege guns: Quoted in Davis, “‘A Very Barbarous Mode of Carrying on War,’” 68, 81.

  292 Federal lookouts reported seeing “great commotion”: Davis, “‘A Very Barbarous Mode of Carrying on War,’” 68.

  292 “Large fires were visible in the city”: Quoted in Davis, “‘A Very Barbarous Mode of Carrying on War,’” 81.

  292 blasting him for being, he falsely claimed, “absent ”: Pilgrim, (Macon) Daily Intelligencer, August 26, 1864, 1; August 23, 1864, 2.

  292 “And . . . if the city is to fall”: B, August 24, 1864, Daily Intelligencer, August 27, 1864, 2.

  293 nobody was arrested: Mirglip, Daily Intelligencer, August 18, 1864, 2.

  293 “Our humane foes allowed us to get well to sleep”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, August 14, 1864, 8.

  293 Several passersby picked up the badly wounded man: Wallace Reed, History of Atlanta (Syracuse: D. Mason & Co., Publishers, 1889), 191-92. Reed wrote the first complete history of Atlanta and was present as a boy during the siege. He appears to have been the first to recount, at 175, the since oft-retold killing of an unnamed child in the company of her parents, also unidentified, at the corner of Ellis and Ivy streets by the first shell fired into the city on July 20. The child’s death remains unconfirmed and appears likely not to have occurred. For a refutation of Reed’s original story of the first civilian death, see Stephen Davis, “How Many Civilians Died in Sherman’s Bombardment of Atlanta?” Atlanta History 45, no. 4 (2003): 6-8. The dented lamppost struck by the shell that did kill Solomon Luckie is now kept eternally lit as a memorial flame, presently in place not far from its original location in Underground Atlanta.

  294 “I sat down and wept ”: Emily E. Molineaux, Lifetime Recollections: An Interesting Narrative of Life in the Southern States Before and During the Civil War (1902; rpt. Read Books, 2008), 31-36.

  295 “It is . . . like living in the midst of a pestilence”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, August 21, 1864, 10.

  295 “It is said that about twenty lives have been destroyed”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, August 21, 1864, 10.

  295 107 citizens required amputation of limbs: See Pilgrim, (Macon) Daily Intelligencer , August 25, 1864, 1.

  295 Even those relatively small numbers: Casualty figures are cited in Davis, “How Many Civilians Died?” 19.

  295 “a fine concrete house”: Sam Watkins, Company Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1882; rpt. New York: Plume, 1999), 165.

  295 Those nearby viewed the battered: September 5, 1864, Civil War Diary Henry D. Stanley, 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.

  295 “many a gallant and noble fellow among them”: Watkins, Company Aytch, 168- 69.

  296 “The old men looked sad and desponding”: Letters to Dear Lizzie, Friday morning, July 29, 1864, Sunday morning, July 31, 1864, camp near Atlanta, August 3, 1864. A. (Allen) T. Holliday Papers, MSS 116, box 1, folder 4, Atlanta History Center.

  296 “It was a twenty-pounder”: August 8, 1864, near Atlanta, in Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Boston: T. R. Marvin & Sons, Printers, 1898), 185-86.

  296 “This city has done and contributed more”: Quoted in Henry Hitchcock, Marching with Sherman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1927), 58.

  296 “Any sign of a let up on our part ”: Letter to Lieutenant General Grant, from near Atlanta, 8 p.m., August 7, 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), 684.

  297 “So long as the feeling that all will end well enthuses us”: (Macon) Daily Intelligencer , August 3, 1864, 2.

  297 “I feel mortified that he holds us in check”: Quoted in Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 467.

  298 “will end the summer’s campaign”: “A Gleam of Hope,” (Macon) Daily Intelligencer , August 11, 1864, 2.

  298 Holliday penned in wonder: “Dearest Lizzie,” Friday morning, 9 o’clock, August 26, 1864, Holliday Papers, box 1, folder 9.

  298 “the enemy was retreating”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, August 27, 1864, 10.

  298 “I am coming home”: “Dearest Lizzie,” Midnight, August 26, 1864, Holliday Papers, box 1, folder 9.

  299 It was signed, “YANK”: Pilgrim, reports of August 27 and 28, (Macon) Daily Intelligencer, August 30, 1864, 1.

  CHAPTER 24: THE FIRST BONFIRE

  301 “I think we will not be out but a short time now”: For Holliday quotes, see “Dearest Lizzie,” 9 o’clock, August 26, 1864, A. (Allen) T. Holliday Papers, MSS 116, box 1, folder 9, Atlanta History Center. For the Confederate’s quote, see Albert Castel, Decision in the West: The Atlanta Campaign of 1864 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992), 485.

  301 “Last night . . . the enemy abandoned the Augusta railroad”: Quoted in Henry Stone, “The Siege and Capture of Atlanta, July 9 to September 8, 1864,” The Atlanta Papers, comp. Sydney C. Kerkis (Dayton, OH: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1980), 123.

  302 Military bands played in the streets: Castel, Decision in the West, 486. Stephen Davis defends Hood against the frequent charge of befuddlement at Sherman’s movement in this last phase of the campaign in Atlanta Will Fall: Sherman, Joe Johnston, and the Yankee Heavy Battalions (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 190.

  302 “one of the noblest acts of my whole life”: “Dearest Lizzie,” Monday morning, August 29, 1864, Friday morning, 9 o’clock, August 26, 1864.

  302 “the old soldiers . . . have a great anxiety”: “Dearest Lizzie,” Friday morning, 9 o’clock, August 26, 1864.

  302 They “are going somewhere”: Samuel Richards, Diary (typescript), Vol. 10, August 27, 1864, 10-11, Atlanta History Center.

  302 “I wish they were safe in my pocket ”: Richards, Diary, Vol. 10, August 29, 1864, 11.

  302 “Our supplies will soon be exhausted”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 467.

  303 “I rather think . . . today Hood’s army is larger”: To Thomas Ewing Sr., in the field near Atlanta, August 11, 1864, in Sherman’s Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860-1865, ed. Br
ooks D. Simpson and Jean V. Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 690.

  303 The cavalry continued their raid deep into Tennessee: Stone, “The Siege and Capture of Atlanta,” 121.

  304 “a long, hazardous flank march”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 469-70, 474. For a participant’s account of the Kilpatrick raid, see W. L. Curry, “Raid of the Union Cavalry, Commanded by General Judson Kilpatrick, Around the Confederate Army in Atlanta, August, 1864,” in Kerkis, The Atlanta Papers, 597-622.

  304 an eleven-car train of munitions and food chugged into Atlanta: Henry Stone, “The Siege and Capture of Atlanta,” 122. Castel, Decision in the West, 472-74.

  304 “I will have to swing across”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 474.

  305 They found the torn-up earth cluttered: Sam Watkins, Company Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1882; rpt. New York: Plume, 1999), 174.

  306 “ The enemy have drawn back”: Quoted in Stone, “The Siege and Capture of Atlanta,” 123.

  306 “so we may rest perfectly satisfied”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 489.

  306 “success was actually crippling our armies”: William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2001), 479.

  307 “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”: Sherman, Memoirs, 608-9.

  307 Destruction of the railroad was another psychological weapon: Many works analyze Sherman’s total war strategy. For a succinct presentation of it in the Atlanta Campaign context, see James M. McPherson, “Two Strategies of Victory: William T. Sherman in the Civil War,” Atlanta History 33, no. 4 (winter 1989- 1990): 5-17. Quote from 16.

  308 “the necessity would arise to send any troops to Jonesboro today”: Quoted in Castel, Decision in the West, 495.

  308 “A small portion—about a hundred thousand—were nigh about ”: Watkins, Company Aytch, 175.