Saturday, January 21, 1865
From: shermans5th.blogspot.com
Savannah, Ga.
I never in all my life knew such furious rains as we had last night; it seemed as if the heavens themselves were falling upon us. In addition to the uproar among the elements, my slumbers were disturbed by frightful dreams about Garnett. Twice during the night I dreamed that he was dead and in a state of corruption, and I couldn't get anybody to bury him. Col. Avery and Capt. Mackall were somehow mixed up in the horrid vision, trying to help me, but powerless to do so. In the morning, when we waked, I found that Metta also had dreamed of Garnett's death. I am not superstitious, but I can't help feeling more anxious than usual to hear news of my darling brother.
I am afraid God will suffer some terrible retribution to fall upon us for letting this war happen. Oh, what a horrible thing war is when stripped of all its "pomp and circumstance"!
E.F.A.
Cook House, Milledgeville, Georgia
Our country is in a deplorable condition. Men fear a war of races, and indeed it seems impossible for the white man to submit to negro rule. Men look ominously at one another and wonder what the times will bring.
Anna Marie Cook
Burge Plantation, near Covington, Georgia
The state of our country is very gloomy. General Sherman’s army has devastated Georgia and will no doubt do the same to South Carolina. Well, if it will only hasten the conclusion of this war, I am satisfied. There has been something very strange in the whole affair to me, and I can attribute it to nothing but the hand of Providence working out some problem that has not yet been revealed to us poor, erring mortals. At the beginning of the struggle the minds of men, their wills, their self-control, seemed to be all taken from them in a passionate antagonism to the coming-in President, Abraham Lincoln.
Our leaders, to whom the people looked for wisdom, led us into this, perhaps the greatest error of the age. "We will not have this man to rule over us!" was their cry. For years it has been stirring in the hearts of Southern politicians that the North was enriched and built up by Southern labor and wealth. Men's pockets were always appealed to and appealed to so constantly that an antagonism was excited which it has been impossible to allay. They did not believe that the North would fight. Said Robert Toombes: "I will drink every drop of blood they will shed." Oh, blinded men! Rivers deep and strong have been shed, and where are we now? - a ruined, subjugated people! What will be our future? is the question which now rests heavily upon the hearts of all.
Dolly S. L. Burge
Hale Farm, Decatur, Georgia
I saw Mr. Pate, the depot agent at Decatur, coming toward me. “Oh, Mr. Pate, have you heard anything in the last week?”
“Yes, and it is very hard.”
I did not have to ask another question. I knew it all, and was dumb with grief. The thought that I will never see my darling brother again paralizes me. I see him in the mirror of my sould, in all the periods of his existence. The beautiful little baby boy, looking at me the first time out of his heavenly blue eyes, and his second look, as if not satisfied with the first, followed by the suggestion of a smile. Ah, that smile! It has never failed me through successfive years and varying scenes. The boyhood and youth—honest, truthful and generous to a fault—and the noble, genial boyhood, had all developed within my recollection, and I loved him with an intensity bordering on idolatry. My heart cries and I refuse to be comforted.
“Killed on the battle-field, thirty steps from the breastworks at Franklin, Tennessee, November 30th 1864.”
Oh, the weight of this grief that is crushing me! Had the serpents which attacked Laocoon, and crushed him to death by their dreadful strength, reached out and embraced me in their complicated folds, I could not have writhed in greater agony. I do not believe it was God’s will that my brother should die, and I can not say to that Holy Being, “Thy will be done.” In some way, I feel a complicity in his death—a sort of personal responsibility. When my brother wrote to me from Texas that, having voted for sucession, he believed it to be his duty to face the danger involved by that step, and firght for the principles of self-government vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States, I said nothing in reply to discourage him, but rather indicatd that if I were eligible I should enter the contest. These, and such as these were the harrowing reflections which accused me of personal responsibility for the deman of war entering our household and carrying off the hope and prop of a widowed mother.
My country is prostrate and bleeding from many such lacerations.
Mary Ann Hale
Georgia Southern Watchman
“The Desolation of War”
A correspondent of the Indianapolis Journal paints the following picture of Northern Georgia:
As you wind through the forest, ravine and open country from Resaca to Dalton, the utter loneliness, the want of human life, strikes one with a feeling of desolation. The fences are gone, the houses are deserted, the bubbling spring on the road side has no happy child drinking or paddling in its water. No sheep graze in the fields, no cattle browze in the woods, not even the crowing of a cock is heard. The bee hive is deserted by its once busy tenants, and the ruined mill is still. So startling is the utter silence, that even when the wild bird of the forest carols a note, you look around surprised that amid such loneliness any living being should be happy. This is the result of war.
Richmond, Virginia Whig
“The Refugees from Atlanta Yearning for Home”
Among no class of refugees whom we have met since the war, says the Augusta Register do we find the same excessive longing for home as we find among the citizens of Atlanta. Old men and women, girls and children, are all longing to return to the desolated scenes to which their local attachments cling. Even as the Jews long for Jerusalem so they yearn for their homes. They are willing to go back to the charred and blackened walls of Atlanta, and live during the winter in tents, for the sake of being among the dear old scenes of home.
There are the scenes that are dear to them as the apple of their eye; the hearthstones where the family circle communed, the sanctuaries where they worshiped, the old familiar streets once thronged with familiar faces, all, all are dear to them still and their anxiety, is now on tiptoe to go back to those scenes, even though their businesses are in ruins, their sanctuaries demolished, and the streets strewn with the ruins of their homes. It is home to them. All other lands are as strange places to them, and they feel as strangers among those with whom they are sojourning. They long for home—home, the dearest spot of earth to them.
We hope the day is near when their wishes may be gratified. But ah! it will be a sad pleasure after all. The sweet return will be mingled with much bitter when they see the work of the desolator.
“The Desolation of War”
A correspondent of the Indianapolis Journal paints the following picture of Northern Georgia:
As you wind through the forest, ravine and open country from Resaca to Dalton, the utter loneliness, the want of human life, strikes one with a feeling of desolation. The fences are gone, the houses are deserted, the bubbling spring on the road side has no happy child drinking or paddling in its water. No sheep graze in the fields, no cattle browze in the woods, not even the crowing of a cock is heard. The bee hive is deserted by its once busy tenants, and the ruined mill is still. So startling is the utter silence, that even when the wild bird of the forest carols a note, you look around surprised that amid such loneliness any living being should be happy. This is the result of war.
Richmond, Virginia Whig
“The Refugees from Atlanta Yearning for Home”
Among no class of refugees whom we have met since the war, says the Augusta Register do we find the same excessive longing for home as we find among the citizens of Atlanta. Old men and women, girls and children, are all longing to return to the desolated scenes to which their local attachments cling. Even as the Jews long for Jerusalem so they yearn for their homes. They are willing to go back to the charred and blackened walls of Atlanta, and live during the winter in tents, for the sake of being among the dear old scenes of home.
There are the scenes that are dear to them as the apple of their eye; the hearthstones where the family circle communed, the sanctuaries where they worshiped, the old familiar streets once thronged with familiar faces, all, all are dear to them still and their anxiety, is now on tiptoe to go back to those scenes, even though their businesses are in ruins, their sanctuaries demolished, and the streets strewn with the ruins of their homes. It is home to them. All other lands are as strange places to them, and they feel as strangers among those with whom they are sojourning. They long for home—home, the dearest spot of earth to them.
We hope the day is near when their wishes may be gratified. But ah! it will be a sad pleasure after all. The sweet return will be mingled with much bitter when they see the work of the desolator.
Atlanta, Ga., Correspondence of the Atlanta Intelligencer
“Terrible State of Affairs in North Georgia”
Having just returned from upper Georgia, a line to you may not be uninteresting. I may not be able to give any news so much has been written. I was through the counties of Milton, Cherokee, Bartow, Gordon, Murray, Pickens, and the lower end of Whitfield. The general destitution of the country renders it almost impossible to travel there. One has to carry his rations for self and horse or both will suffer in many places.
There is no flat in the Chattahoochee River between Green's Ferry, seven miles below the railroad bridge, and Warsaw. The belt of country from Dalton, from twenty to thirty miles wide, is devastated. Houses are mutilated, fences down and burned, women and children look dirty, ragged and hungry. But sir notwithstanding these things, the spirit of the people is not subdued. I talked with an old lady in Cherokee county, who said there was one thing Lincoln, Sherman and Grant could never do--"subjugate the South." In many places the people could get along very well if they were let alone. The whole of North Georgia is to a great extent filled with deserters and tories. All of the Northwestern counties are subjugated by those calling themselves Confederate scouts. The great body of the men are deserters from our army, and many of them have been in the Yankee home guards. I am more than mortified to say so; but the people generally were infinitely better off when the Yankees occupied the country.
The people are ready to testify to the truth of the book that says, "When the wicked rule, the people mourn."
Preview of tomorrow’s post:
Sunday, January 22, 1865
"Next, I want rest and peace, and they can only be had through war. You will hear of me, but not from me for some time."
W. T. Sherman
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