The importance of a given moment in the world’s history is not of necessity to be estimated by the numbers occupying the stage at the time, nor even with the degree of activity or turmoil with which their parts are playing.
Much labor is wasted in the lives of men, and mountains of effort result often in mere noise or discomfiture, making no real history. The center of gravity of two worlds may be an immaterial point, and the earth itself revolves upon a slender axis. So a turning point of history may be concentrated upon a comparatively narrow field, while the reverberation of its potency shall resound forever, as the silent nod of Jove lets loose the thunders of Olympus to shake the earth and change the fate of nations.
Some preliminary remarks are in order, explanatory of the general situation and its relation to the Battle of Allatoona.
THE GENERAL SITUATION.
It was the fall of ’64. The fiery comet of secession that, blazing out in ’61, for three long years had scorched the firmament, spreading death and pestilence over all the land, was waning in its course; doomed presently to disappear forever in Chaos, but emitting malignant emanations to its latest spark. The structure of the Confederate Government, practically a military despotism, founded on the enforced servitude and sale of human beings, reared and upheld by the lives, the fortunes, and the constrained or misguided energies of a deluded and chivalrous people, to feed the vain ambition of an oligarchy, was toppling to the ruin that six months later overwhelmed it. Great was to be the fall thereof, and not even to-day is the atmosphere fully cleared of the dust of its destruction.
Two famous, and as the outcome proved, morally conclusive campaigns had been fought and closed.
In the East, Grant, moving against Richmond through the wilderness and swamps of Virginia, all the long summer had been dealing trip-hammer blows, as deadly and sickening to his foe as the stroke of the axe in the shambles, and at length resting from the slaughter, lay before Petersburg and astride the James; feeling out with his left to cut Lee’s lines of communication to the South and West, and pressing him close that he should not detach any of his force to act against Sherman.
In the West, Sherman, starting from Chattanooga, with an antagonist the wariest, wisest and most skillful captain of the rebel host to oppose him, had overreached his foe at every point, and stretching out his sinewy arm, had seized in a relentless grasp the “Gate City” of the South; and electrified the country with the exultant shout, “Atlanta is ours and fairly won;” opening wide the door into the hollow trunk of the Confederacy and exposing its emptiness.