Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

From 1861 into 1865 Atlanta Georgia suffered more per capita physical damage and human misery than any other American city before or since. The simplest popular mythology has it that Gen. William T. Sherman came and burned the place down, and some business, political, and newspaper boosters raised the city from its ashes after the end of the war. That is embedded in the city seal and motto. But there is much more to the story. This paper will focus on what happened to the people of Atlanta and those who came to and through the small city during those years. With each year came new and cumulative forms of physical deterioration and destruction and human trauma and misery. Everyone suffered – male and female, black (as both slave and newly freed) and white, young and old, rich and poor. Much of this hurt took place in the years before Sherman entered the city in September 1864, and more followed after he left in November. The cascade of cumulative blows left no chance of recovery from one year to the next.