CHAPTER LXIII.
IN AND ABOUT ATLANTA.
The railroad runs eastward from Montgomery, forks at Opelika, and enters Georgia by two divergent routes,—the south branch crossing the Chattahoochee at Columbus, and the north branch at West Point.
Wilson, the Raider, paid his respects to both these roads. The main body of his troops proceeded to Columbus, (one of the principal towns of Georgia,) which they carried by assault, with a loss of but thirty men, capturing fifteen hundred prisoners, twenty-four pieces of artillery, and immense military stores. At the same time Lagrange’s Brigade took West Point. These were the closing battles of the great war of the rebellion. Pushing on towards Macon, Wilson’s advance was met, not by bloody opposition, but by a flag of truce announcing the surrender of Lee and the armistice between Sherman and Johnston.
Concerning our loss at West Point I was not able to obtain very exact information. A citizen, who claimed to have been in the fight, said to me, “We had seven men killed, and we just slaughtered over three hundred Yankees.” A negro said: “I saw five dead Yankees, and if there was any more nobody knows what was done with ’em.” A returned Confederate soldier, who regarded with great contempt the little affair the citizens bragged so much about, said it was no fight at all; the militia gave up the fort almost without a struggle; and there were not over a dozen men killed on both sides. The fort was situated on a high hill; and one old man, who was in it, told me they could not hold it because they couldn’t use the guns effectively,—they “couldn’t elevate ’em down enough.”
The Yankees had the credit of behaving very well at West Point. “They were going to burn the railroad depot, full of rolling stock; but a lady told ’em that would set her house, so they just run the cars off down the track, over a hundred of ’em, and fired ’em there,”—the black ruins remaining to attest the fact.
Leaving West Point at noon I reached Atlanta at seven o’clock in the evening. It was a foggy night; the streets were not lighted, the hotels were full, and the mud, through which I tramped from one to the other, with a dark guide and a very dark lantern, was ankle deep on the crossings. I was at length fortunate enough to find lodgings, with a clergyman and a cotton-speculator, in an ancient tavern-room, where we were visited all night by troops of rats, scampering across the floor, rattling newspapers, and capering over our beds. In the morning, it was discovered that the irreverent rogues had stolen the clergyman’s stockings.
A sun-bright morning did not transmute the town into a place of very great attractiveness. Everywhere were ruins and rubbish, mud and mortar and misery. The burnt streets were rapidly rebuilding; but in the mean while hundreds of the inhabitants, white and black, rendered homeless by the destruction of the city, were living in wretched hovels, which made the suburbs look like a fantastic encampment of gypsies or Indians. Some of the negro huts were covered entirely with ragged fragments of tin-roofing from the burnt government and railroad buildings. Others were constructed partly of these irregular blackened patches, and partly of old boards, with roofs of huge, warped, slouching shreds of tin, kept from blowing away by stones placed on the top. Notwithstanding the ingenuity displayed in piecing these rags together, they formed but a miserable shelter at the best. “In dry weather, it’s good as anybody’s houses. But they leaks right bad when it rains; then we have to pile our things up to keep ’em dry.” So said a colored mother of six children, whose husband was killed “fighting for de Yankees,” and who supported her family of little ones by washing. “Sometimes I gits along tolerable; sometimes right slim; but dat’s de way wid everybody;—times is powerful hard right now.”
Every business block in Atlanta was burned, except one. The railroad machine-shops, the founderies, the immense rolling-mill, the tent, pistol, gun-carriage, shot-and-shell factories, and storehouses, of the late Confederacy, disappeared in flames and explosions. Half a mile of the principal street was destroyed. Private residences remained, with a few exceptions. The wooden houses of the suburbs had been already torn down, and their materials used to construct quarters for Sherman’s men. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, built by the colored people with their hard earnings, and viewed by them with as much pride and satisfaction as the Jews felt in the contemplation of the great Temple at Jerusalem, was also demolished by our soldiers,—at the instigation, it is said, of a white citizen living near, who thought the negro’s religious shoutings a nuisance.
“When I came back in May,” said a refugee, “the city was nothing but piles of brick and ruins. It didn’t seem it could ever be cleared. But in six weeks new blocks began to spring up, till now you see more stores actually in operation than we ever had before.”
The new business blocks were mostly one-story structures, with cheap temporary roofs, designed to be rebuilt and raised in more prosperous times. Nine stores of this description had just been put up by a Connecticut man; each costing three thousand dollars, and renting for twenty-five hundred. “He run a rolling-mill for the Confederate Government during the war; sold out when Sherman was coming; called himself a good Union man;—a mighty shrewd fellow!” said one who knew him.