Peace, God of Peace! peace, peace in all our homes,
And peace in all our hearts!
1864 was a year to be endured in stricken anguish. After a comparative lull during the first months of the war, on the fourth of May three Union armies moved forward, two destined for Richmond to shatter what part of the original Confederate line there was left, and one for Atlanta against Johnston and Hood, setting out to employ the troops still in the far South, and keep them from the relief of Lee and Richmond. This latter campaign was to end in the fall of Atlanta, and “Sherman’s March to the Sea,” and caused the invention of a new word.
Gaunt and grim like a spectre rose that word before the world,
From a land of bloom and beauty into ruin rudely hurled,
From a people scourged by exile, from a city ostracised
Pallas-like it sprang to being, and that word is—Shermanized.[16]
Atlanta fell, despite Hood’s frantic efforts, on September third, ’64. Hood’s rashness in engaging in a counter attack against Nashville, cost him several severe defeats, and finally his army. Tennessee was thus brought entirely under Union control, and late in December, on the twenty-fourth, Sherman occupied Savannah. Two poems, by the same author, Alethea S. Burroughs of Georgia, commemorate this incident most poignantly, “Savannah,” written in encouragement when her ruin seemed impending, and “Savannah Fallen,” written after the occupation of the town.
On the way to Savannah, Sherman’s route had lain through Columbia, which had been pillaged and burned, a circumstance that was the savage inspiration of James Barron Hope’s flaming verses, “A Poem that Needs No Dedication.” The sack of Columbia caused the evacuation of Charleston by the Confederate forces, then directly menaced, and before the oncoming destroyer the city was deserted. The pitiful fate of the city which had witnessed the birth and earliest days of the Confederacy, could not fail to stir the anguish of the Southern poets. “The Foe at the Gates,” by Dr. Bruns, for example, reveals the still prevailing temper of the South.
Ring round her! children of her glorious skies,