Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-05-25
WOE TO ATLANTA.
SCENES DURING THE TERRIBLE
BOMBARDMENT.
Vivid Description Of the Suffering
Among the Poor Of the Be-
leagured City.

Vivid Description Of the Suffering
Among the Poor of the Be-
leagured City.
The following is an extract from advance
sheets of a work to be entitled: "Nine
Campaigns-A Sketch" upon which P. S.
Dorney is nov engaged. The work will
deal with certain campaigns of the civil
war, in which a coterie of military men
East are interested, to wit: Fremont in
Missouri, Curtis in Arkansas, Halleck in
Mississippi, Buell. in Kentucky, Rosecrans
in Kentucky and Tennessee, Grant at
Chattanooga, Sherman in Georgia, from
Dalton to Atlanta, and Thomas at Nash
vile:
In Sherman's judgment his line was now
thinned and stretched as far as a proper
regard for safety would permit, and he de-
termined to lombard the city-to try the
effect of a cannonade with heavy ordnance
while parallels were being worked close
up to the enemy.
Some 44-inch thirty pounder Parrots.
ordered from Chattanooga, were placed in
position on Thomas front on the after
noon OF August 10th, and with these and
the regular artillery of the army a terrible
bombardment commenced and continued
night and day for more than two weeks.
In the meantime Hoods Georgia mill
tia, with heavy artillery, occupied the
works facing Thomas, while reserves of
regular troops were held well in hand to
move quickly from point to point. Hardee
held Hoods extreme left, facing Schofeld,
while the rest OF the rebel army occupied
the space fronting the Army of the Ten
nessee. The Confederate line was now
almost fifteen miles in length, and ex-
tended from near Decatur to the vicinity
of West Point. Hood was enabled to hold
this long line by the favor of Governor
| Brown, who had furnished a large force of
State militia, while the nature of the
ground and the form and extent of his
works concealed his weak points.
Sherman's oannonade, with Hoods
thunders in reply, was something awful
1t was fe~arfully grand. To the citizens of
Atlanta it was a N ordeal such as the
Imagination of a Dante might coniEe or
conceive when attempting to describe the
vengence Of a just but p%itiless God or the
woe to come when Gabriel sounds the last
r~oll-call, when worms in the earth, birds
in the air, fishes in the sea, beasts in the
forest, reptiles in clefts and caves, and all
mankind, and earth and hell, and heaven
halt, trembling and aghast, to hear and
comprehend the crack of doom. Day after
day, and day and night, the measureless
roar continued. With Hoods artillery
added to Sherman's, more than 800 can
mons, m1y of them r1ed ordinance, fed
the volume of conclusion that terrified
Atlanta, shook the earth and reverberated
along the neighboring hills. From the
black puzzles and smoking mouths of
more than $50 pieces a food OF fire and an
iron hail was poured upon the beleaguered
city. In the town. beyond the fortifica-
lions, all was chaos. In every direction
the lurid tongues of flame leaped up, de-
noting where red-hot shot and the kissing
fragments of bursting and bursted bombs
had fired the city. The streets, envel-
oped in smoke by day and redeemed by the
glare of flames by night, were soon
choked and disfigured by the debris of
falling and destroyed structures. Yonder,
heaped up and covering half a block,
scowled the battered fragments of a
factory. Here, wretched and distorted,
lay the wreck of a mill. There, running
the whole length of a side street, yawned
the huge ruins of a foundry-the street
adjacent filled with an uneven ridge of
broken bricks and crumbled mortar-once
the great tall, towering smoke-stack, the
pride of the town and a landmark to be
fr1,1 tIA l,,N,~t r.
either side of this ridge of ruin a swath of
destruction appeared-the fotsam and
jetsam. of dwellings-homes of poor
work-people, crushed by the tall chimney
in its fall. About those ruins few men
were to be seen, and they aged and infirm,
but women and children were there.
They knew not where else to be-. Moved
by the same instinct that moves a beast
they lowered around the spot where once
they ate, slept and had their being. The
spot, be it cabin or castle, made holy and
consecrate by the word-home,
In the debris, where once stood the cot
tage of a workman, a sort of cave-like
opening had been made. sheltered in front
by a few charred boards hat leaned against
the ridge of the wreck. Here crouched a
woman, her head and feet barred to the ele-
ments and her long black hair, tangled and
matted, falling about her like the unkempt
name of an animal. She had a babe at
breast, and around her, Juggling convul-
sively at her rags and tatters, four little
ones whined and quarreled. None of
these had yet reached nine years of age,
and one was wholly and the rest nearly
naked. The woman was yet young, at
least in the prime of her years, and dimly |
still might be traced in her form and fea-
lures the fact that she was once fair to look |
upon. But now, alasl She was gaunt,
shriveled, wild-eyed, sallow and sullen-l
yea, savage. Anamalized by terror and
suffering, she was living testimony in favor
of the theory of Pythagorus. Covering in
the cave she had fashioned from the ruins
of her Unconstitutional for her young on
the spot where they were born-the glare !
of her eyes, the harsh and sudden snap of
her voice, her shrinking from sun and air, !
together with a ceaseleas twitching of the
drawn and rigid lines about her mouth, |
and the FESTIVE but furtive movements of
her body, reminded one of a she wolf with
her whelps.
Meanwhile the cannonade roared on.
What was the destruction of a workman's
home to the cannonade? Was it not its
duty to destroy? What the whining of
naked and famished children? Did it not
roar that they might weep? What, to the
cannonade, was the dumb despair that
brutalized a woman? Was not its brazen
throat formed to destroy, to butcher, to
brutalize? The cannonade was faithful
to its mission. 1t could and did wreck
and destroy. 1t could crush armies, king
doms, empires, thrones. 1t could and did
brutalize the woman, destroyed her gentle
ness and beauty, destroyed all that adorns
her sex. All? Nay That in which
every persisted beauty was reflected, the
love and Office of-mother! was above and
beyond the cannonade. 1t was all that
could defy and survive it.
So the cannonade roared on. Death ran
riot and destruction reyeled. Woe to At
lanta The fetid fumes of multiplying