Civilian Life In Atlanta

ON NEW YEAR'S Day 1864 Atlanta was throbbing with all the manifold activities of an industrial cen­ter in a wartime economy that had not yet felt the direct pressure of invasion. The city's population, much of it temporary and transient, had increased nearly 50 percent since 1860 to more than 20,000. But by the summer of 1864 the teeming thousands were about to be swept away, the business and industrial sections of the city de­stroyed, and the railroads-lusty seeds from which the metropolis had grown-subjected to a thorough program of destruction.

In June, as the contending armies maneuvered for positions less than 30 miles away, Atlanta's mayor set aside a day for fasting and prayer. The churches were crowded, and a widespread religions re­vival helped stimulate an increased rate of enlistment among men of military age.

Mayor James M. Calhoun, recognizing the seriousness of Atlanta's position, issued a proclamation on May 23, the terms of which were clear and urgent:

In view of the dangers which threaten us, and in pursuance of a call made by General Wright and General Wayne, I re­quire all male citizens of Atlanta, capable of bearing arms, without regard to occupation, who are not in the Confederate or State service, to report by 12 M., on Thursday, the 26th inst. to O. H. Jones, marshal of the city, to be organized into companies and armed, and to report to General Marcus J. Wright when organized. And all male citizens who are not willing to defend their homes and families are requested to leave the city at their earliest convenience, as their presence only embarrasses the authorities and tends to the demoraliza­tion of others.

On the fateful Sunday of July 10, as Johnston's army completed its Chattahoochee River crossings, S. P. Richards, an English-born stationer, recorded in his diary:

This has been a sad day in our city, for it has been quite evident for some days past th;it there is a great probability of Atlanta falling into the hands of the enemy, and the city has been in a complete swarm all day and for several days. All the Govt. stores and Hospitals are ordered away and, of course, the citizens are alarmed, and many have left and others are leaving.

MOMENTOUS EVENTS followed. In mid-July the Federal armies crossed the Chattahoochee; on the 17th Johnston was relieved and Hood installed as Confederate commander; the Battle of Peaclrtree Creek was fought on the 20th and the Battle of Atlanta on the 22d, the former on the northern outskirts of the city, the latter on the east. Within the city Richards w^rrote:

Friday July 22. All last night our city was a complete hub­bub with army wagons and soldiers and marauders, as though

the whole army was passing through. A lot of cavalry robbers broke into the store and stole everything they took a fancy to. They stripped our store of the paper and other stationery that we had there and about thirty dollars in money. Today our last newspaper departed, the Appeal; also the Post Office, and every other establishment and individual that intended to go, as the enemy was confidently expected to take possession to­night. But about four o'clock we heard heavy firing and rapid discharges of musketry to the eastward [Battle of Atlanta], and before dark crowds of prisoners began to come in that our forces had taken in a successful flank movement by General Hardee. It then began to appear likely that Gen. Hood in­tended to hold the city if he could.

Saturday 23. We have had a considerable taste of the beau­ties of bombardment today. The enemy have thrown a great many shells into the city and scared the women and children and some of the men pretty badly. One shell fell in the street just below our house and threw gravel in our windows. This seems to me to be a very barbarous mode of carrying on war, throwing shells among women and children. The city authori­ties required me to do police duty and ... I had to carry a musket for the first time in my life. My wife and children had to put their beds on the floor behind the chimney to be secure from shells which were thrown into the city all night long. No more fell near our house, however, and but little damage was done anywhere.

Sunday 24. The foe is still outside and continues to pop shells at us. No church in the city open.

ATLANTA was an uncomfortable spot during August 1864. To those citizens who remained throughout the bombardment and siege it was doubtless the nearest thing to hell on earth they ever ex­perienced. The first shell struck at the corner of Ellis and Ivy Streets on Wednesday, July 20, the day of the Battle of Peachtree Creek. It resulted in the death of a little child. From then until August 9 the city was subject to only light shelling. Citizens went about their daily affairs with little precaution against the ever-present danger, though the prudent kept away from the railroads, church spires, and tall chimneys, all of which served as prime targets for the Fed­eral gunners.

BY AUGUST 9, when Sherman's troops were stalled on the west side in their effort to reach the railroads, the tempo of the bom­bardment was markedly increased. Most of the inhabited buildings had dugouts in their yards, similar to cyclone cellars in the Midwest, and it was a foolhardy person who ventured far from this protection. Sherman, a former artilleryman, in a message to Thomas stepped down from army group commander to battery officer (as generals sometimes do), by assigning specific targets and directions of fire to two of Thomas' batteries. No detail of tactical operation was too small to escape his attention. The subsequent great artillery duel was described by an early Atlanta historian, Wallace P. Reed:

If any one day of the siege was worse than all the others, it was that red day in August, when all the fires of hell, and all the thunders of the universe seemed to be blazing and roaring over Atlanta. It was about the middle of the month and every­thing had been comparatively quiet for a few days, when one fine morning about breakfast time, a big siege gun belched forth a sheet of flame with a sullen boom from a Federal bat­tery on the north side of the city.

The Confederates had an immense gun on Peachtree Street, one so large and heavy that it had taken three days to drag it to its position. This monster lost no time in replying to its

noisy challenger, and then the duel opened up all along the lines on the north and west. Ten Confederate and eleven Fed­eral batteries took part in the engagement. On Peachtree, where Ponce de Leon intersects, the big gun of the Confeder­ates put in its best work, but only to draw a hot fire from the enemy. Shot and shell rained in every direction. Great volumes of sulphurous smoke rolled over the town, trailing down to the ground, and through this stifling gloom the sun glared down like a great red eye peering through a bronze-colored cloud.

It was on this day of horrors that the destruction of human life was greatest among the citizens. A shell crashed into a house on the corner of Elliott and Rhodes Streets, killing the superintendent of the Gas Company and his six-year-old daughter. Their bodies were frightfully mangled and they died instantly. A woman who was ironing some clothes in a house on Pryor Street was struck by a shell and killed. Solomon Luckie, a well-known Negro barber, was standing on the James Bank corner at Whitehall and Alabama, when a shell struck a lamp-post, ricocheted and exploded. A fragment hit Luckie, fatally wounding him. [The shell-scarred post still stands, per­manently lighted with gas as an Eternal Flame of the Con­federacy.]

A young lady, who was on her way to the car shed, was struck in the back and fatally wounded. On Forsyth Street a Confederate officer was standing in the front yard, taking leave of the lady of the house, when a bursting shell mortally wounded him and the lady's little boy. The two victims were laid side by side on the grass under the trees and in a few minutes they both bled to death.

Atlanta's volunteer fire department had a perilous time during the siege. Although they were exempt from conscription, the firemen found it as dangerous to go to a fire as to be at the front. Many larger fires started by shells occurred at night, when the flames and glare formed easy targets for the Federal gunners. Though the fire­men had to do their work under bombardment, none was killed.

GENERAL Hood protested to Sherman the shelling of Atlanta, pointing out that there were thousands of noncombatants in the city who had not been able to or would not flee the city. He told Sherman that the defense line was a mile from town, on all sides, and that the destruction of Atlanta ought not to involve the taking of innocent lives. Further, he contended that the shelling of the city was unwarranted by the usages of civilized warfare and barbarous in the extreme.

Sherman replied harshly that an object of war was to desolate and devastate the enemy's country. He stated that Atlanta could not be classed as a peaceable community peopled by noncombatants, but was one of the enemy's chief military depots and manufactories of the equipments of war. He accused Hood of knowing that he was conducting an unjustifiable and hopeless struggle, and that Atlanta could not be successfully defended.

The bombardment continued, as described by Richards:

Another week of anxiety and suspense has passed and the fate of Atlanta is still undecided. We have had but one severe shelling on our side of town and that was on Wed. night and kept us awake from 12 o'clock until daylight. Our humane foes allowed us to get well to sleep before they began their work of destruction. Another shell entered our store, or rather the rooms above, while I was there examining the premises. I was enveloped in the dust made by it. ...

Sunday 21. It is said that about twenty lives have been destroyed by these terrible missiles since the enemy began to throw them into the city. It is like living in the midst of a pestilence. No one can tell but he may be the next victim.

Sat. 27. The first three days of this week the shells rained heavily upon our city. On Thursday (Aug. 25) the shelling ceased altogether and it is rumored that the enemy was re­treating, and it is now known that they have deserted their camps around the city and are going somewhere, but what is their design it is hard to tell. I fear that we have not yet got rid of them.

Monday 29. Sallie and I walked out Marietta Street this morning to see the devastation caused by the bombardment, and truly that part of the city is badly cut up.

ON AUGUST 25 the bombardment ceased, and Sherman withdrew his forces to the south of the city. He broke the Atlanta & West Point Railroad at Red Oak and Fairburn. There was then much speculation in Atlanta as to his intentions. By the 30th, however, General Hood was convinced that Sherman's next move would be against the Macon & Western. Cavalry scouts reported that Jones-boro was the point threatened. Hood sent two corps to that point.

The Battle of Jonesboro took place on August 31 and September 1. In this defeat for the Confederacy the last rail line to Atlanta was ruptured. Preparations to evacuate the city were made.

Atlanta was now almost in a state of anarchy. Throughout Sep­tember 1 troops were bustling about in every direction. Citizens noticed that they were no longer halted on the streets to show their papers. Crowds of strange Negroes appeared, but they acted with great caution, and spent most of their time in cellars and abandoned houses. The people could not believe that the city was to be given up.

By 5 p.m. Hood's evacuation of the city was under way. Com­missary stores which could not be moved were distributed among the citizens. By midnight all except a few cavalrymen had departed. These detachments blew up Hood's ammunition trains-seven loco­motives and 81 loaded cars. It was as if a volcano were erupting on the Georgia Railroad opposite the city cemetery (now Oakland Cemetery).

Then, for the people of Atlanta, came the awful hours of waiting for the unknown. Men with wives and daughters stayed home, weapons at hand, ready for any emergency. The center of the city began to fill with riffraff: military stragglers and deserters; Negroes delirious and confused over their strange sense of freedom; lean and haggard men and women of the lowest class plundering stores and vacant dwellings. Such was the state of affairs on the morning of September 2 when Atlanta, worn out and shattered by the storm of war, lay stranded between two flags, under the protection of neither, abandoned by one and with little hope of mercy from the other.

As the early morning hours slipped by with no sign of the enemy's approach, Mayor James M. Calhoun decided upon a course of action. The city had not been formally surrendered by Hood. The mayor, with a group of citizens bearing a white flag, mounted horses and rode out Marietta Street. When he met units of the Federal XX Corps en route to town via the Mayson and Turner Ferry Road (Bankhead Avenue), Mayor Calhoun introduced himself and stated that he desired to surrender the city. Tearing a blank page from a memorandum book, the mayor wrote the following note to Briga­dier General William T. Ward, the nearest general officer:

Sir: The fortune of war has placed Atlanta in your hands. As mayor of the city I asked protection to noncombatants and private property.

BY NOON Marietta Street was blue with Union soldiers. The citizenry viewed the conquerors with mixed emotions. The first troops to reach the center of the city were of the 2d Massachusetts Regiment. They constituted the provost guard, and occupied the city hall, running the Stars and Stripes to the top of the flagstaff- the first time the old flag had fluttered to the breeze in Atlanta since early 1861.

By the middle of the afternoon heavy army wagons were rolling in, wreathed in clouds of dust, and by sundown sutlers with wares displayed in vacant stores were doing a brisk trade. A news agent of Sherman's army converted the post office into a news emporium selling well-known Northern newspapers and periodicals.

On Sunday, September 4, Richards wrote in his diary:

It is strange to go about Atlanta now and see only Yankee uniforms. . . . The enemy behave themselves pretty well except in the scramble for liquor, during which nearly every store in town was broken into yesterday. This afternoon three soldiers asked us for dinner, saying their rations had not come and they would pay for their dinner; so Sallie had some cooked for them.

Of the hundreds of orders issued by General Sherman during the Atlanta Campaign, none affected the citizens of Atlanta more intimately and painfully than Special Orders No. 67, which provided for their exile. Paragraph one, the substance of the order, read: "The city of Atlanta being exclusively required for warlike purposes, will be at once vacated by all except the armies of the United States, and such civilians as may be retained."

General Hood protested vigorously and an acrimonious exchange of messages between Hood and Sherman took place, but to no avail. Between the llth and 20th of September 446 Atlanta families (705 adults and 860 children) were removed south. A total of 79 serv­ants accompanied them, though most of the ex-slaves preferred to take their chances with their liberators. Few persons desiring to go north had remained in the city until the order of eviction.

The Federal army settled down in and around Atlanta to make itself comfortable for a few weeks. Scores of houses, some quite pre­tentious, were torn down and the lumber used in the construction of shanties for the soldiers. These were built in neat rows on vacant lots, in the city hall square (present State Capitol site), and the public park north of the railroad depot. The ranking officers took over some of the finest homes, where they were waited upon like royalty by the Negroes. Sherman himself occupied the hand­some John Neal home on the present site of Atlanta's city hall.

BY NOVEMBER 8 Sherman's plans for the evacuation of Atlanta and the March to the Sea had been formulated. They called for breaking all communications to the north, departing Atlanta on the night of the 14th-15th. and living off the country all the way to Savannah.

Sherman describes some of the final demolition work on the night of November 14:

Colonel Poe, United States Engineers, of my staff, had been busy in his special task of destruction. He had a large force at work, had leveled the great depot, roundhouse, and the machine shops of the Georgia Railroad, and had applied fire to the wreck. One of these machine shops had been used by the rebels as an arsenal, and in it were stored piles of shot and shell, some of which proved to be loaded, and that night was made hideous by the bursting of shells, whose fragments came uncomfortably near Judge Lyons' [Neal] house, in which I was quartered. The fire also reached the block of stores near the [R. R.] depot, and the heart of the city was in flames all night, but the fire did not reach the parts of Atlanta where the court house was, or the great mass of dwelling houses.

The march from Atlanta began on the morning of Tuesday, the 15th. The right wing and cavalry, under General Howard, de­parted via the McDonough Road (Capitol Avenue) and followed the Macon & Western Railroad southeast toward Jonesboro, while the left wing, under Slocum, marched out Decatur Street, follow­ing the Georgia Railroad through Decatur and Stone Mountain to­ward Madison. Both columns were given seven days to reach Milledgeville, then Georgia's capital.

Sherman himself remained in Atlanta during the 15th with the XIV Corps and the rear-guard of the right wing, to complete the loading of the wagon trains, and the destruction of the buildings of Atlanta which could be converted to hostile uses. About 7 a.m. of November 16, accompanied by his personal staff, a company of cavalry, and another of infantry, Sherman rode out of Atlanta via Decatur Street, filled by the marching troops and wagons of the XIV Corps. As he reached the hill just outside the old Confederate defense line, he paused to look back upon the scene of his recent operations. A little later he stood upon some of the ground whereon was fought the bloody battle of July 22, and from where he could see the woods where McPherson had fallen.

Behind lay Atlanta, smoldering and in ruins, black smoke rising high in the air and hanging like a pall over the burned-out city. Off in the distance, on the McDonough Road, was the rear of Howard's column, the musket barrels of the men glistening in the sun and the long trains of white-topped wagons stretching away to the south. As Sherman surveyed these scenes, a XIV Corps band struck up the stirring music of the Battle Hymn of the Re­public; the marching men caught the strain and the Decatur Road vibrated to the song. Sherman commented that "never before or since have I heard the chorus of 'Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!' done with more spirit or in better harmony of time or place."