SEPTEMBER 4, 1864:
William
Tecumseh Sherman, having taken Atlanta, is now bedeviled by what to do with the
city. Unwilling to detach thousands of fighting men from his armies for
garrison duty, unable to feed the thousands of Atlantans who are without food, and
concerned that the city, always a hotbed of Rebel sentiments, would be a fire
in the rear of his forces, Sherman issues an order that all civilians must
evacuate the city. Only a few will be able to take anything at all with them. Sherman
writes in his Order:
I have deemed it to
the interest of the United States that the citizens now residing in Atlanta
should remove, those who prefer it to go South, and the rest North.
The mayor of Atlanta, James Calhoun, protests hotly. Sherman’s
curt reply, "War is cruelty and you cannot
refine it," begins to define the monstrous reputation he will be known
for in the South forever after.
Sherman does provide civilians transportation to the south, leaving
the refugees at Rough and Ready, Georgia, near to the lines of defeated
Confederate General John Bell Hood. Hood, however, is faced with his own crises.
His army has no supplies and no food, and his soldiers are forced to eat
unripened corn out of the fields. The indigestible vegetable causes an outbreak
of mass diarrhea among his men. His broken army can go no further, do nothing
more for the time being.
Hood writes to Sherman about the evacuation, closing with
this statement:
And now, sir, permit
me to say that the unprecedented measure you propose transcends, in studied and
ingenious cruelty, all acts ever before brought to my attention in the dark
history of war. In the name of God and humanity I protest, believing that you
will find that you are expelling from their homes and firesides the wives and
children of a brave people.
When the destitute civilians of Atlanta appear in Hood’s
picket lines, the sickened soldiers let them through; most even share a little
of the nothing they have; but many, too many, men, driven to desperation by
defeat and hunger, leave the weeping women and terrified children to their own
devices.
One young Atlanta woman, Mary Gay, lamented bitterly that
her fellow citizens "were dumped out
upon the cold ground without shelter and without any of the comforts of
home." They had only the "cold
charity of the world," and that charity was very cold indeed
considering the rapidly declining conditions in the South.
