In 1864, the city, as feared by Gilmer, did indeed become the target of a major Union invasion (the subject of the 1939 film Gone with the Wind). The area now covered by metropolitan Atlanta was the scene of several fiercely contested battles, including the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Atlanta, and the Battle of Ezra Church. On September 1, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuated Atlanta, after a four-month siege mounted by Union General William Sherman and ordered all public buildings and possible Union assets destroyed.
On September 2, a committee of Mayor James Calhoun and Union-leaning citizens William Markham, Jonathan Norcross, and Edward Rawson met a captain on the staff of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum and surrendered the city.[1] Sherman sent a telegram to Washington reading, "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won" and he established his headquarters there on September 7, where he stayed for two months. That same day, Sherman ordered the civilian population to evacuate.[2] His forces occupied the city for several months, and he then ordered Atlanta burned to the ground on November 11 in preparation for his punitive march south. After a plea by Father Thomas O'Reilly of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Sherman did not burn the city's churches or hospitals. However, the remaining war resources were then destroyed in the aftermath and in Sherman's March to the Sea. As General Sherman departed Atlanta at 7:00 a.m. on November 15 with the bulk of his army, he noted his handiwork:
... We rode out of Atlanta by the Decatur road, filled by the marching troops and wagons of the Fourteenth Corps; and reaching the hill, just outside of the old rebel works, we naturally paused to look back upon the scenes of our past battles. We stood upon the very ground whereon was fought the bloody battle of July 22d, and could see the copse of wood where McPherson fell. Behind us lay Atlanta, smouldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in air, and hanging like a pall over the ruined city.
– William T. Sherman, Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman, Chapter 21
美國曆史要讀英文的,不能隻依靠憤憤杜撰的中文小說。FYI:The fall of Atlanta
本帖於 2009-08-14 18:45:44 時間, 由超管 論壇管理 編輯