AUGUST 28, 1864:
60,000
Union troops wait to enter Atlanta. The Augusta, Georgia Daily Constitutionalist, reporting from the besieged city, editorializes:
The vandals in front
of us having failed to take the city by fair means, and in open combat are
resorting to the last expedient of a baffled, unprincipled and disconsolate
bully—that of its destruction by fire.
Within the past four and twenty hours as many as nine buildings have
touched the ground, and are now visible only in smouldering walls and charred
ruins. During these conflagrations the
Yankee batteries played vigorously among the fire battalion. They obtained the range by the clouds of
smoke and flame and had nothing more noble to do than to drop their shells in
among the humane non-combatants at their work of charity, and the frightened
and houseless women and children fleeing from the wrath of the two fierce and
consuming enemies. Can anything be more
typical of the desperation of the ruffians who came here under the illusion of
winning an easy victory, or the infamy of the universal Yankee nation? It is a perfect symbal [sic] of the fear of
the intolerable wretch who commands them.
Sherman, who said that the waistcoat of God Almighty was not big enough
to make him a coat, supports his pretentions [sic] to the character indicated by this blasphemy in every conceivable way,
and rolls up mountain upon mountains of guilt every hour that he inspires the
breath of life. Of all the Yankee
Generals he is the poorest, the vainest, the meanest. He is without honor as a man, or conscience
as a human being. His wit, by which he
sets great store, is that of a Dutch dissenting class leader, his wisdom that
of a circus clown, his temper that of Meg Merriles, his honesty that of Ananias
and Sapphira, his ambition that of Beast Butler, and his appearance and manners
those of Uriah Keep. His fate will be
upon the earth wreck and ruin, the exposure of his littleness and puppiness,
the disgrace of his military pretensions and the discomfiture of all his
schemes; in the world to come—though I judged not let I be judged—you can
imagine what awards will be assigned to a villain, who not content with
insulting the purity of womanhood and assailing the innocence of children,
points his blasphemous tongue like a hissing adder in the face of his
Maker. Ugh! what a disgust the things inspires
[sic]! A paltry villian [sic], a currish
knave, the very Fawkes of society, the situs cates of war, a dull sharper, a
cheat and shame upon the name of soldier, the very embodiment of an
ill-begotten, ill-bred and destined caterpiller [sic], clinging only to sloth
and milldew [sic], climbing no higher
than the scum of a rank and putrid atmosphere.
Last night a shell, a
forty-two pounder, struck the Presbyterian Church. It passed through the pulpit and floor into
the basement, or Sunday school room, where a number of citizens had sought
refuge. Here it exploded. The scene which followed was frightful. Several were hurt and one poor fellow had his
arm shot off . . .
