Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[581] which could not be described by words. Sherman was inexorable. He affected the belief that Atlanta might again be rendered formidable in the hands of the Confederates, and resolved, in his own words, “to wipe it out.” The old and decrepit were hunted from their homes; they were packed into railroad cars; tottering old age and helpless youth were crowded together; wagons were filled with wrecks of household goods; and the trains having deposited their medley freight at Rough-and-Ready, the exiles were then left to shift for themselves.

The fall of Atlanta was a terrible blow to the Southern Confederacy; a reanimation of the North; the death of “the peace party” there; the date of a new hope of the enemy and of a new prospect of subjugation. “On that day,” said the Richmond Examiner, “McClellan's nomination fell still-born, and an heir was born to the Abolition dynasty. On that day, peace waved those ‘ white wings,’ and fled to the ends of the morning. On that day, calculations of the war's duration ceased to be the amusements even of the idle.” President Davis had declared, when he removed Johnston, that “Atlanta must be held at all hazards.” It was the most important manufacturing centre in the Confederacy; it was the key to the network of railroads extending to all portions of the Gulf States; it was “the Gate City” from the north and west to the southeast; it was an important depot of supplies, and commanded the richest granaries of the South. Such was the prize of the enemy.

The catastrophe moved President Davis in Richmond, and mortified the vanity that had so recently proclaimed the security of Atlanta under the command of Hood. He determined to visit Hood's new lines, to plan with him a new campaign, to compensate for the loss of Atlanta, and to take every possible occasion to raise the hopes and confidence of the people. It is remarkable that the visits of the Confederate President to the armies were always the occasions of some far-fetched and empirical plan of operations, and were always accompanied with vapours and boasts that unduly exalted the public mind. Mr. Davis never spoke of military matters without a certain ludicrous boastfulness, which he maintained to the last event of the war. It was not swagger or affectation; it was the sincere vagary of a mind intoxicated with conceit when occupied with a subject where it imagined it found its forte, but where in fact it had least aptitude. Mr. Davis, as a military commander or adviser, was weak, fanciful, to excess, and much too vain to keep his own counsels. As he travelled towards Hood's lines, he made excited speeches in South Carolina and Georgia. At Macon he declared that Atlanta would be recovered; that Sherman would be brought to grief; and that this Federal commander “would meet the fate that befell Napoleon in the retreat from Moscow.” These swollen assertions, so out of character, were open advertisements to the enemy of a new plan of operations. It appears