Burning of Atlanta...

5fish

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This man who burned Atlanta along with gangs of marauding troops...Confederates maybe too?

LINK:
Orlando Metcalfe Poe - Wikipedia
Orlando Metcalfe Poe (March 7, 1832 – October 2, 1895) was a United States Army officer and engineer in the American Civil War. After helping General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea, he was responsible for much of the early lighthouse construction on the Great Lakes and design of the Poe Lock at Soo Locks between lakes Superior and Huron.

The below from wiki...

On September 4, 1864, General Sherman issued Special Field Order# 64. General Sherman announced to his troops that "The army having accomplished its undertaking in the complete reduction and occupation of Atlanta will occupy the place and the country near it until a new campaign is planned in concert with the other grand armies of the United States."[25]

On the night of September 1, Hood evacuated Atlanta and ordered that the 81 rail cars filled with ammunition and other military supplies be destroyed. The resulting fire and explosions were heard for miles.[

In his capacity as chief engineer of the XXIII Corps, he was a key factor in the defense of Knoxville, Tennessee. This city was successfully defended against a siege led by Confederate Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, which culminated in the November 29, 1863, Battle of Fort Sanders. Due to Poe's contributions, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman selected Poe as his chief engineer in 1864. Poe oversaw the burning of Atlanta, for which action he was honored by Sherman. Poe directly supervised the dismantling of all buildings and structures in Atlanta that could have provided any military value to the Rebels once Sherman abandoned the city; rail depots, roundhouses, arsenals and storage areas were manually disassembled and the combustible materials then destroyed by controlled fires (however, Poe was incensed at the level of uncontrolled arson by marauding soldiers not of his unit which resulted in heavy damage to civilian homes.) He continued to serve as chief engineer during Sherman's March to the Sea. Poe was indispensable (by the commanding General's own words) during the March, when Sherman cut loose from his supply lines to Chattanooga and headed southeast across the body of Georgia to Savannah, living off the land, to bring fire and pillage to the center of the Confederacy rather than pursue John Bell Hood's elusive Rebel army

From a Marker below, Link to below:

https://georgiahistory.com/ghmi_marker_updated/the-burning-and-destruction-of-atlanta/#:~:targetText=On Nov. 11, 1864,,the site of this marker


Marker Text: After capturing Atlanta in September 1864 during the Civil War, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, before leaving Atlanta on the March to the Sea, ordered the destruction of all railroads, factories, and commercial buildings of possible use to the Confederacy. On Nov. 11, 1864, Chief Engineer Orlando M. Poe directed the demolition of stone and brick buildings using specially made battering rams. On Nov. 15, Poe’s troops burned the wooden buildings in the downtown business district around the site of this marker. Though houses and churches were not targeted, some were burned nonetheless. Many houses had already been dismantled by both armies to make way for fortifications. Contrary to popular myth only forty percent of Atlanta was left in ruins.


Link for Below... https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/who-burned-atlanta/


A
t 7 a.m. on Nov. 16, 1864, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman accompanied the last corps of his Union army as it left Atlanta to begin a virtually uncontested “March to the Sea,” which would end in Savannah five weeks later. Three miles outside the city, he stopped for a final look back. “Behind us lay Atlanta smoldering and in ruins, the black smoke rising high in the air and hanging like a pall over the ruined city,” he recalled. Presently a nearby infantry band struck up John Brown’s anthem. “
Never … have I heard the chorus of ‘Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!’ done with more spirit.” The men were proud of what they had done.

Estimates of the physical damage Sherman left behind varied. Capt. Orlando Poe, ordered to supervise a limited destruction, estimated that 37 percent of the city was demolished. An Indiana soldier’s diary entry simply stated, “We have utterly destroyed Atlanta.” After Sherman left, Georgia’s governor sent a militia officer named William Howard to prepare an assessment. Howard spent four days systematically mapping every house left standing; within a half-mile radius of the city center, only 400 homes remained, of 3,600.

The real story of the destruction of Atlanta is more complex.
During the preceding siege, from July 20 to Aug. 31, parts of Atlanta were wrecked by fighting. Long trenches were dug by the opposing armies. Buildings were destroyed to provide clear fields of fire and for materials to build fortifications. Then there was Sherman’s indiscriminant five-week bombardment of the city, which started July 20. The day after the shelling began Sherman wired the Union’s chief of staff, Henry W. Halleck, in Washington, “The city seems to have a line around it at an average distance to the center of town of about one-and-a-half miles, but our shot passing over this line will destroy the town.”

The first unauthorized fires started on Nov. 11 near the edge of town
. The next morning Slocum offered a $500 reward for the capture of the arsonists, but it was never collected. By Nov. 13, when an Illinois unit marched into Atlanta, a captain in the unit wrote in his diary, “The smoke almost blinded us.” By Nov. 15, the city was on fire everywhere. By 3 p.m., officers who were distributing supplies at the commissary invited soldiers to simply take whatever they needed, because the out-of-control fires would inevitably consume the facility.






Images from the burning of Atlanta, November 1864.Credit Library of Congress
 

5fish

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Some eyewitness accounts...
Link": https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/150-...stands-defining-event/zqCN0mtAwGRKGokrYhDaQI/

A young Atlanta girl offered a different perspective. Carrie Berry, who lived with her family in Atlanta, wrote a series of frightened entries in her diary during mid-November 1864. Renegade Union troops, she wrote, took out revenge on their unwilling hosts.
“Some mean soldiers set several houses on fire in different parts of the town,” she wrote on Nov. 12. “We all dread the next few days to come for they said that they would set the last house on fire if they had to leave this place.”

As the forces left Atlanta on Nov. 15, 1864, smoke rose behind them; it must have darkened the sun. In the downtown area, flames spread from one brick storefront to the next. “I believe,” one departing soldier said, “Sherman has set the very river on fire.”

The event has helped define Atlanta. On our city seal is the phoenix, the mythical bird that rose from the ashes. Our motto: Resurgens, Latin for “rising again.”

Here an eyewitness account after Sherman left you will be surprised what building were still standing...

https://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/thisday/ownwords/12/07/eyewitness-account-of-atlanta-destruction

Like City Hall, Large Homes and more... were left standing...
 
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