A Changing Wind by Wendy Hamand Venet

Author:Wendy Hamand Venet [Venet, Wendy Hamand]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300206586
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2014-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

8. The Barbarous War

On a hot, humid night in July 1864, Sam Richards pulled out his small clothbound diary and penned an entry. Richards worried about the military situation, which did not look promising. The Confederate Army had failed to stop the onward march of General William T. Sherman and his army, and Sherman now aimed enormous artillery guns that rained a “great many shells” into neighborhoods throughout Atlanta, including Richards's own. Levelheaded and rational, Richards avoided panic but did express frustration that General Sherman engaged in warfare against civilians, including women and children. Richards called it “a very barbarous mode of carrying on war.”1 The barbarous war had no end in sight. By the summer of 1864, conversations about business profits, military strategy, even loyalty to state and region no longer mattered to Richards and other Atlanta civilians. Instead, they focused on survival amid deteriorating conditions. When General Sherman aimed his guns at the city, Atlanta began to implode.

Five weeks before Richards's lament, on June 14, Atlantans opened their daily papers to see black-bordered columns of newsprint; Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk had been killed by Yankee artillery. With the armies now massed northwest of Atlanta near Kennesaw Mountain, Generals Joseph Johnston and William Hardee, along with Polk, had held a conference on nearby Pine Mountain. While observing Sherman's army, they suddenly realized that the enemy had artillery trained on them. Just as they broke up the meeting, a shell hit Polk, killing him instantly. Although Polk had a poor record as general, Confederate civilians held him in high regard, for he personified their values of military leadership and Christian service. A graduate of West Point in the 1827, Polk left the army to become a planter, clergyman, and later a bishop in the Episcopal Church. He joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and quickly won an appointment as major general. During the Atlanta campaign, Polk also provided religious counsel and personally baptized Generals John Bell Hood and Joseph E. Johnston.2

According to news reports, Atlantans were “thrown into gloom” upon hearing the news that the beloved general had fallen. Mayor Calhoun sent a delegation of civilians to the depot to receive Polk's remains. The train arrived early in the morning, and a solemn tolling of bells marked the occasion. Polk's body lay in state at St. Luke's Episcopal Church until noon, when the casket left Atlanta, transported by rail to Augusta, where Bishop Stephen Elliott conducted the funeral and presided at the burial. Thousands of Atlantans paid their respects to Polk by filing past his casket at St. Luke's. A Confederate flag draped the coffin, also embellished with white roses and magnolia blossoms. Many of the silent mourners paused to take a flower or leaf, apparently desirous of keeping a memento of the general. The crowd then formed a line of mourners to accompany the coffin back to the rail station.3

Military events soon refocused the attention of Atlantans on the living. In late May and early June, Dr. Samuel Stout

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