Strange scenes, indeed, are witnessed in this civil war: “The two armies in Georgia met in the persons of some of their superior officers—Generals Clayborne, Cheatham, Hindman, and Maney—parties having been detailed from each by mutual agreement, for the burial of their dead. Grouped together in seemingly fraternal unity were officers and men of both contending armies, who but five minutes before were engaged in the work of slaughter and death. Cheatham looked rugged and healthy, though seemingly sad and despondent. He wore his ‘fatigue’ dress, a blue flannel shirt, black necktie, gray homespun pantaloons, and slouch black hat. Colonel Clancy, of the Fifty-second Ohio, in talking to Generals Maney and Hindman, remarked that it was a sad state of affairs to witness human beings of a common origin and nationality dig two hours every day to bury the dead of twenty minutes’ fighting. ‘Yes, yes, indeed,’ said one, ‘but if the settlement of this thing were left to our armies there would be peace and good fellowship established in two hours.’ ”
With the “forward to Atlanta!” ringing over the proud ranks of Generals Logan, Howard, Palmer, and Hooker, moving out through the enemy’s works, and defiling into the valley along the railroad toward Marietta, let us look into the deserted mountain fortress. First you will notice twenty feet in front of the battlements, to prevent approach, the small trees cut down and sharpened, presenting an impenetrable thicket of pointed green-wood under the “dread artillery.” Besides, “hay-rakes,” as they are called by the “boys,” are added. They are trees half of a foot in diameter, pierced with two rows of auger holes about the same distance apart, through which are driven sticks sharp at both ends—no trifling barrier to a successful charge. Inside of the defences all the means of strength suggested by military art had been employed to make them impregnable. But before the irresistible Sherman, General Johnston is obliged to retreat, hastening on toward the bulwarks of Atlanta.
At Smyrna, General Sherman continues: “General Thomas found him, his front covered by a good parapet, and his flanks behind the Nickajack and Rottenwood Creeks. Ordering a garrison for Marietta, and General Logan to join his own army near the mouth of Nickajack, I overtook General Thomas at Smyrna. On the 4th of July we pushed a strong skirmish line down the main road, capturing the entire line of the enemy’s pits, and made strong demonstrations along Nickajack Creek, and about Turner’s Ferry. This had the desired effect, and the next morning the enemy was gone, and the army moved to the Chattahoochie, General Thomas’s left flank resting on it near Price’s Ferry, General McPherson’s right at the mouth of Nickajack, and General Schofield in reserve; the enemy lay behind a line of unusual strength, covering the railroad and pontoon bridges and beyond the Chattahoochie.”
The commander-in-chief now began to cast about for places to ford the Chattahoochie, whose waters crossed his path. He had secured three safe points of passage above his enemy, with good roads running toward the city, ten miles distant, on which his eager eye was fixed.
Marietta, where General Johnston paused to make a faint resistance before reaching the river, is a pleasant town which before the war contained a thousand inhabitants, with neat villas and elegant brick mansions. Nearly all the families left before or with the rebel army on their retreat, leaving their deserted houses and gardens as trophies for the “invading horde of Lincolnites.” But about forty houses were occupied, principally by rabid rebel women, who, as our officers rode through the town, betrayed evident uneasiness, rushing into their houses in some instances, and locking their doors against all callers who politely asked admittance. The town is beautifully situated in the Kenesaw valley, with nearly all the houses nestling in beautiful groves of southern trees that gave forth fragrant odors, to mingle with the air that is wafted to the mountain resort, where the ladies made their lookout to witness the efforts of the Federals to drive back Johnston and his followers. Our troops occupied the town about ten o’clock, while the bells of the Episcopal Church pealed out the call to public worship. The minister and the congregation were not interrupted in their devotions, the troops behaved very orderly, and, after a brief rest, resumed the march to the Chattahoochie.
While here, the chieftain wrote the following noble letter to a friend of former days, the wife of Rev. Charles Bowen, in reply to a note reminding him of the cherished past in their social relations, and of the melancholy present with its cruel “Yankee invasion.”
“Headquarters Military Division of the Mississippi, }
In the Field near Marietta, Ga., June 30. }
“Mrs. Anna Gilman Bowen, Baltimore, Md.
“Dear Madam: Your welcome letter of June 18th, came to me here amid the sound of battle, and, as you say, little did I dream, when I knew you, playing as a school-girl on Sullivan’s Island beach, that I should control a vast army, pointing, like the swarm of Alaric, toward the plains of the South. Why, oh why is this? If I know my own heart it beats as warmly as ever toward those kind and generous families that greeted us with such warm hospitality in days long past but still present in memory, and to-day, were Frank and Mrs. Porcher, and Eliza Gilman, and Mary Lamb, and Margaret Blake, the Barksdales, the Quashis, the Pryors, indeed any and all of our cherished circle, their children, or even their children’s children, to come to me as of old, the stern feelings of duty and conviction would melt as snow before the genial sun, and I believe I would strip my own children that they might be sheltered; and yet they call me barbarian, vandal, and monster, and all the epithets that language can invent that are significant of malignity and hate. All I pretend to say, on earth as in Heaven, man must submit to some arbiter. He must not throw off his allegiance to his Government or his God without just reason and cause. The South has no cause; not even a pretext. Indeed, by her unjustifiable course she has thrown away the proud history of the past, and laid open her fair country to the tread of devastating war. She bantered and bullied us to the conflict. Had we declined battle, America would have sunk back, coward and craven, meriting the contempt of all mankind. As a nation, we were forced to accept battle, and that once begun, it has gone on till the war has assumed proportions at which even we in the hurly-burly sometimes stand aghast. I would not subjugate the South in the term so offensively assumed, but I would make every citizen of the land obey the common law, submit to the same that we do—no worse, no better—our equals and not our superiors. I know and you know that there were young men in our day, now no longer young, but who control their fellows, who assumed to the gentlemen of the South a superiority of courage and manhood, and boastingly defied us of northern birth to arms. God knows how reluctantly we accepted the issue, but once the issue joined, like the northern race in other ages, though slow to anger, once aroused are more terrible than the more inflammable of the South. Even yet my heart bleeds when I see the carnage of battle, the desolation of homes, the bitter anguish of families; but the very moment the men of the South say that instead of appealing to war they should have appealed to reason, to our Congress, to our courts, to religion, and to the experience of history, then will I say Peace—Peace; go back to your point of error, and resume your places as American citizens, with all their proud heritages. Whether I shall live to see this period is problematical, but you may, and may tell your mother and sisters that I never forgot one kind look or greeting, or ever wished to efface its remembrance; but in putting on the armor of war I did it that our common country should not perish in infamy and dishonor. I am married, have a wife and six children living in Lancaster, Ohio. My course has been an eventful one, but I hope when the clouds of anger and passion are dispersed, and truth emerges bright and clear, you and all who knew me in early years will not blush that we were once dear friends. Tell Eliza for me that I hope she may live to realize that the doctrine of ‘secession’ is as monstrous in our civil code as disobedience was in the Divine law. And should the fortunes of war ever bring you or your sisters, or any of our old clique under the shelter of my authority, I do not believe they will have cause to regret it. Give my love to your children, and the assurance of my respects to your honored husband.