In Atlanta, Georgia, the time had come for the hardest part of Captain Orlando M. Poe’s task. One hundred and fifty years ago today—November 15, 1864—the chief engineer of Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Military Division of the Mississippi was to continue what he had started—burning down anything of military value—with the 1st Missouri Engineers and 1st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics, but he now was to have the men under his command to immolate the resulting piles of debris once they were finished with their program of destruction. It was not the project itself that was the problem; the fires were controlled. It was that it encouraged even more troops in other units, at least some of them aspiring to avenge the burning of Chambersburg, to do their own waste laying—contrary to Sherman’s orders. For a man who could have had ADHD (he was bundle of nervous energy and could hardly be gotten to stand still) and was fast, intense talker, Sherman was silent on the burning of Atlanta, save his shrug on future criticism while the city was still burning, “Well, I suppose I’ll have to bear it.” Perhaps he knew that he could not justify it. After all, he was resigned to the belief he could not prevent arsonists from getting through, no matter how many guards he set. #AmericanCivilWar #militaryhistory
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 04:39:12 +0000