MAY OF 1864 CAME—a hot dry May that wilted the flowers in the buds—and the Yankeesunder General Sherman were in Georgia again, above Dalton, one hundred miles northwest ofAtlanta. Rumor had it that there would be heavy fighting up there near the boundary betweenGeorgia and Tennessee. The Yankees were massing for an attack on the Western and AtlanticRailroad, the line which connected Atlanta with Tennessee and the West, the same line over whichthe Southern troops had been rushed last fall to win the victory at Chickamauga.
But, for the most part, Atlanta was not disturbed by the prospect of fighting near Dalton. Theplace where the Yankees were concentrating was only a few miles southeast of the battle field ofChickamauga. They had been driven back once when they had tried to break through the mountainpasses of that region, and they would be driven back again.
Atlanta—and all of Georgia—knew that the state was far too important to the Confederacy forGeneral Joe Johnston to let the Yankees remain inside the state’s borders for long. Old Joe and hisarmy would not let one Yankee get south of Dalton, for too much depended on the undisturbedfunctioningof(even) Georgia. The unravaged state was a vast granary, machine shop and storehouse for the Confederacy. It manufactured much of the powder and arms used by the armyand most of the cotton and woolen goods. Lying between Atlanta and Dalton was the city of Romewith its cannon foundry and its other industries, and Etowah and Allatoona with the largest ironworkssouth of Richmond. And, in Atlanta, were not only the factories for making pistols andsaddles, tents and ammunition, but also the most extensive rolling mills in the South, the shops ofthe principal railroads and the enormous hospitals. And in Atlanta was the junction of the fourrailroads on which the very life of the Confederacy depended.
So no one worried particularly. After all, Dalton was a long way off, up near the Tennessee line.
There had been fighting in Tennessee for three years and people were accustomed to the thought ofthat state as a far-away battle field, almost as far away as Virginia or the Mississippi River.
Moreover, Old Joe and his men were between the Yankees and Atlanta, and everyone knew that,next to General Lee himself, there was no greater general than Johnston, now that StonewallJackson was dead.
Dr. Meade summed up the civilian point of view on the matter, one warm May evening on theveranda of Aunt Pitty’s house, when he said that Atlanta had nothing to fear, for General Johnstonwas standing in the mountains like an iron rampart. His audience heard him with varying emotions,for all who sat there rocking quietly in the fading twilight, watching the first fireflies of the seasonmoving magically through the dusk, had weighty matters on their minds. Mrs. Meade, her handupon Phil’s arm, was hoping the doctor was right. If the war came closer, she knew that Phil wouldhave to go. He was sixteen now and in the Home Guard. Fanny Elsing, pale and hollow eyed sinceGettysburg, was trying to keep her mind from the torturing picture which had worn a groove in hertired mind these past several months—Lieutenant Dallas McLure dying in a jolting ox cart in therain on the long, terrible retreat into Maryland.
Captain Carey Ashburn’s useless arm was hurting him again and moreover he was depressed bythe thought that his courtship of Scarlett was at a standstill. That had been the situation ever sincethe news of Ashley Wilkes’ capture, though the connection between the two events did not occur tohim. Scarlett and Melanie both were thinking of Ashley, as they always did when urgent tasks orthe necessity of carrying on a conversation did not divert them. Scarlett was thinking bitterly,sorrowfully: He must be dead or else we would have heard. Melanie, stemming the tide of fearagain and again, through endless hours, was telling herself: “He can’t be dead. I’d know it—I’dfeel it if he were dead.” Rhett Butler lounged in the shadows, his long legs in their elegant bootscrossed negligently, his dark face an unreadable blank. In his arms Wade slept contentedly, acleanly picked wishbone in his small hand. Scarlett always permitted Wade to sit up late whenRhett called because the shy child was fond of him, and Rhett oddly enough seemed to be fond ofWade. Generally Scarlett was annoyed by the child’s presence, but he always behaved nicely inRhett’s arms. As for Aunt Pitty, she was nervously trying to stifle a belch, for the rooster they hadhad for supper was a tough old bird.
That morning Aunt Pitty had reached the regretful decision that she had better kill the patriarchbefore he died of old age and pining for his harem which had long since been eaten. For days hehad drooped about the empty chicken run, too dispirited to crow. After Uncle Peter had wrung hisneck, Aunt Pitty had been beset by conscience at the thought of enjoying him, en famille, when somany of her friends had not tasted chicken for weeks, so she suggested company for dinner.
Melanie, who was now in her fifth month, had not been out in public or received guests for weeks,and she was appalled at the idea. But Aunt Pitty, for once, was firm. It would be selfish to eat therooster alone, and if Melanie would only move her top hoop a little higher no one would noticeanything and she was so flat in the bust anyway.
“Oh, but Auntie I don’t want to see people when Ashley—”
“It isn’t as if Ashley were—had passed away,” said Aunt Pitty, her voice quavering, for in herheart she was certain Ashley was dead. “He’s just as much alive as you are and it will do you goodto have company. And I’m going to ask Fanny Elsing, too. Mrs. Elsing begged me to try to dosomething to arouse her and make her see people—”
“Oh, but Auntie, it’s cruel to force her when poor Dallas has only been dead—”
“Now, Melly, I shall cry with vexation if you argue with me. I guess I’m your auntie and I knowwhat’s what. And I want a party.”
So Aunt Pitty had her party, and, at the last minute, a guest she did not expect, or desire, arrived.
Just when the smell of roast rooster was filling the house, Rhett Butler, back from one of hismysterious trips, knocked at the door, with a large box of bonbons packed in paper lace under hisarm and a mouthful of two-edged compliments for her. There was nothing to do but invite him tostay, although Aunt Pitty knew how the doctor and Mrs. Meade felt about him and how bitterFanny was against any man not in uniform. Neither the Meades nor the Elsings would have spokento him on the street, but in a friend’s home they would, of course, have to be polite to him. Besides,he was now more firmly than ever under the protection of the fragile Melanie. After he hadintervened for her to get the news about Ashley, she had announced publicly that her home wasopen to him as long as he lived and no matter what other people might say about him.
Aunt Pitty’s apprehensions quieted when she saw that Rhett was on his best behavior. Hedevoted himself to Fanny with such sympathetic deference she even smiled at him, and the mealwent well. It was a princely feast Carey Ashburn had brought a little tea, which he had found in thetobacco pouch of a captured Yankee en route to Andersonville, and everyone had a cup, faintlyflavored with tobacco. There was a nibble of the tough old bird for each, an adequate amount ofdressing made of corn meal and seasoned with onions, a bowl of dried peas, and plenty of rice andgravy, the latter somewhat watery, for there was no flour with which to thicken it For dessert, therewas a sweet potato pie followed by Rhett’s bonbons, and when Rhett produced real Havana cigarsfor the gentlemen to enjoy over their glass of blackberry wine, everyone agreed it was indeed aLucullan banquetWhen the gentlemen joined the ladies on the front porch, the talk turned to war. Talk alwaysturned to war now, all conversations on any topic led from war or back to war—sometimes sad,often gay, but always war. War romances, war weddings, deaths in hospitals and on the field,incidents of camp and battle and march, gallantry, cowardice, humor, sadness, deprivation andhope. Always, always hope. Hope firm, unshaken despite the defeats of the summer before.
When Captain Ashburn announced he had applied for and been granted transfer from Atlanta tothe army at Dalton, the ladies kissed his stiffened arm with their eyes and covered their emotionsof pride by declaring he couldn’t go, for then who would beau them about?
Young Carey looked confused and pleased at hearing such statements from settled matrons andspinsters like Mrs. Meade and Melanie and Aunt Pitty and Fanny, and tried to hope that Scarlettreally meant it.
“Why, he’ll be back in no time,” said the doctor, throwing an arm over Carey’s shoulder.
There’ll be just one brief skirmish and the Yankees will skedaddle back into Tennessee. And whenthey get there, General Forrest will take care of them. You ladies need have no alarm about theproximity of the Yankees, for General Johnston and his army stands there in the mountains like aniron rampart. Yes, an iron rampart,” he repeated, relishing his phrase. “Sherman will never pass.
He’ll never dislodge Old Joe.”
The ladies smiled approvingly, for his lightest utterance was regarded as incontrovertible truth.
After all, men understood these matters much better than women, and if he said General Johnstonwas an iron rampart, he must be one. Only Rhett spoke. He had been silent since supper and hadsat in the twilight listening to the war talk with a down-twisted mouth, holding the sleeping childagainst his shoulder.
“I believe that rumor has it that Sherman has over one hundred thousand men, now that hisreinforcements have come up?”
The doctor answered him shortly. He had been under considerable strain ever since he firstarrived and found that one of his fellow diners was this man whom he disliked so heartily. Only therespect due Miss Pittypat and his presence under her roof as a guest had restrained him fromshowing his feelings more obviously.
“Well, sir?” the doctor barked in reply.
“I believe Captain Ashburn said just a while ago that General Johnston had only about fortythousand, counting the deserters who were encouraged to come back to the colors by the lastvictory.”
“Sir,” said Mrs. Meade indignantly. “There are no deserters in the Confederate army.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Rhett with mock humility. “I meant those thousands on furlough whoforgot to rejoin their regiments and those who have been over their wounds for six months but whoremain at home, going about their usual business or doing the spring plowing.”
His eyes gleamed and Mrs. Meade bit her lip in a huff. Scarlett wanted to giggle at herdiscomfiture, for Rhett had caught her fairly. There were hundreds of men skulking in the swampsand the mountains, defying the provost guard to drag them back to the army. They were the oneswho declared it was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” and they had had enough of it. Butoutnumbering these by far were men who, though carried on company rolls as deserters, had nointention of deserting permanently. They were the ones who had waited three years in vain forfurloughs and while they waited received ill-spelled letters from home: “We air hungry.” “Therewon’t be no crop this year—there ain’t nobody to plow.” “We air hungry.” “The commissary tookthe shoats, and we ain’t had no money from you in months. We air livin’ on dried peas.”
Always the rising chorus swelled: “We are hungry, your wife, your babies, your parents. Whenwill it be over? When will you come home? We are hungry, hungry.” When furloughs from therapidly thinning army were denied, these soldiers went home without them, to plow their land and plant their crops, repair their houses and build up their fences. When regimental officers,understanding the situation, saw a hard fight ahead, they wrote these men, telling them to rejointheir companies and no questions would be asked. Usually the men returned when they saw thathunger at home would be held at bay for a few months longer. “Plow furloughs” were not lookedupon in the same light as desertion in the face of the enemy, but they weakened the army just thesame.
Dr. Meade hastily bridged over the uncomfortable pause, his voice cold: “Captain Butler, thenumerical difference between our troops and those of the Yankees has never mattered. OneConfederate is worth a dozen Yankees.”
The ladies nodded. Everyone knew that.
“That was true at the first of the war,” said Rhett. “Perhaps it’s still true, provided theConfederate soldier has bullets for his gun and shoes on his feet and food in his stomach. Eh,Captain Ashburn?”
His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility. Carey Ashburn looked unhappy, for itwas obvious that he, too, disliked Rhett intensely. He gladly would have sided with the doctor buthe could not lie. The reason he had applied for transfer to the front, despite his useless arm, wasthat he realized, as the civilian population did not, the seriousness of the situation. There weremany other men, stumping on wooden pegs, blind in one eye, fingers blown away, one arm gone,who were quietly transferring from, the commissariat, hospital duties, mail and railroad serviceback to their old fighting units. They knew Old Joe needed every man.
He did not speak and Dr. Meade thundered, losing his temper: “Our men have fought withoutshoes before and without food and won victories. And they will fight again and win! I tell youGeneral Johnston cannot be dislodged! The mountain fastnesses have always been the refuge andthe strong forts of invaded peoples from ancient times. Think of—think of Thermopylae!”
Scarlett thought hard but Thermopylae meant nothing to her.
“They died to the last man at Thermopylae, didn’t they, Doctor?” Rhett asked, and his lipstwitched with suppressed laughter.
“Are you being insulting, young man?”
“Doctor! I beg of you! You misunderstood me! I merely asked for information. My memory ofancient history is poor.”
“If need be, our army will die to the last man before they permit the Yankees to advance fartherinto Georgia,” snapped the doctor. “But it will not be. They will drive them out of Georgia in oneskirmish.”
Aunt Pittypat rose hastily and asked Scarlett to favor them with a piano selection and a song.
She saw that the conversation was rapidly getting into deep and stormy water. She had known verywell there would be trouble if she invited Rhett to supper. There was always trouble when he waspresent. Just how he started it, she never exactly understood. Dear! Dear! What did Scarlett see inthe man? And how could dear Melly defend him?
As Scarlett went obediently into the parlor, a silence fell on the porch, a silence that pulsed with resentment toward Rhett How could anyone not believe with heart and soul in the invincibility ofGeneral Johnston and his men? Believing was a sacred duty. And those who were so traitorous asnot to believe should, at least, have the decency to keep their mouths shut.
Scarlett struck a few chords and her voice floated out to them from the parlor, sweetly, sadly, inthe words of a popular song:
“Into a ward of whitewashed wallsWhere the dead and dying lay—Wounded with bayonets, shells and balls—Somebody’s darling was borne one day.
“Somebody’s darling! so young and so brave!
Wearing still on his pale, sweet face—Soon to be hid by the dust of the grave—The lingering light of his boyhood’s grace.”
“Matted and damp are the curls of gold,” mourned Scarlett’s faulty soprano, and Fanny half roseand said in a faint, strangled voice: “Sing something else!”
The piano was suddenly silent as Scarlett was overtaken with surprise and embarrassment. Thenshe hastily blundered into the opening bars of “Jacket of Gray” and stopped with a discord as sheremembered how heartrending that selection was too. The piano was silent again for she wasutterly at a loss. All the songs had to do with death and parting and sorrow.
Rhett rose swiftly, deposited Wade in Fanny’s lap, and went into the parlor.
“Play ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ ” he suggested smoothly, and Scarlett gratefully plunged intoit. Her voice was joined by Rhett’s excellent bass, and as they went into the second verse those onthe porch breathed more easily, though Heaven knew it was none too cheery a song, either.
“Just a few more days for to tote the weary load!
No matter, ‘twill never be light!
Just a few more days, till we totter in the road!
Then, my old Kentucky home, good night!”
.
Dr. Meade’s prediction was right—as far as it went Johnston did stand like an iron rampart inthe mountains above Dalton, one hundred miles away. So firmly did he stand and so bitterly did he contest Sherman’s desire to pass down the valley toward Atlanta that finally the Yankees drewback and took counsel with themselves. They could not break the gray lines by direct assault andso, under cover of night they marched through the mountain passes in a semicircle, hoping to comeupon Johnston’s rear and cut the railroad behind him at Resaca, fifteen miles below Dalton.
With those precious twin lines of iron in danger, the Confederates left their desperately defendedrifle pits and, under the starlight, made a forced march to Resaca by the short, direct road. Whenthe Yankees, swarming out of the hills, came upon them, the Southern troops were waiting forthem, entrenched behind breastworks, batteries planted, bayonets gleaming, even as they had beenat Dalton.
When the wounded from Dalton brought in garbled accounts of Old Joe’s retreat to Resaca,Atlanta was surprised and a little disturbed. It was as though a small, dark cloud had appeared inthe northwest, the first cloud of a summer storm. What was the General thinking about, letting theYankees penetrate eighteen miles farther into Georgia? The mountains were natural fortresses,even as Dr. Meade had said. Why hadn’t Old Joe held the Yankees there?
Johnston fought desperately at Resaca and repulsed the Yankees again, but Sherman, employingthe same flanking movement, swung his vast army in another semicircle, crossed the OostanaulaRiver and again struck at the railroad in the Confederate rear. Again the gray lines were summonedswiftly from their red ditches to defend the railroad, and, weary for sleep, exhausted frommarching and fighting, and hungry, always hungry, they made another rapid march down thevalley. They reached the little town of Calhoun, six miles below Resaca, ahead of the Yankees,entrenched and were again ready for the attack when the Yankees came up. The attack came, therewas fierce skirmishing and the Yankees were beaten back. Wearily the Confederates lay on theirarms and prayed for respite and rest. But there was no rest. Sherman inexorably advanced, step bystep, swinging his army about them in a wide curve, forcing another retreat to defend the railroadat their back.
The Confederates marched in their sleep, too tired to think for the most part But when they didthink, they trusted Old Joe. They knew they were retreating but they knew they had not beenbeaten. They just didn’t have enough men to hold their entrenchments and defeat Sherman’sflanking movements, too. They could and did lick the Yankees every time the Yankees would standand fight What would be the end of this retreat, they did not know. But Old Joe knew what he wasdoing and that was enough for them. He had conducted the retreat in masterly fashion, for they hadlost few men and the Yankees killed and captured ran high. They hadn’t lost a single wagon andonly four guns. And they hadn’t lost the railroad at their back, either. Sherman hadn’t laid a fingeron it for all his frontal attacks, cavalry dashes and flank movements.
The railroad. It was still theirs, that slender iron line winding through the sunny valley towardAtlanta. Men lay down to sleep where they could see the rails gleaming faintly in the starlight.
Men lay down to die, and the last sight that met their puzzled eyes was the rails shining in themerciless sun, heat shimmering along them.
As they fell back down the valley, an army of refugees fell back before them. Planters andCrackers, rich and poor, black and white, women and children, the old, the dying, the crippled, thewounded, the women far gone in pregnancy, crowded the road to Atlanta on trains, afoot, on horseback, in carriages and wagons piled high with trunks and household goods. Five miles aheadof the retreating army went the refugees, halting at Resaca, at Calhoun, at Kingston, hoping at eachstop to hear that the Yankees had been driven back so they could return to their homes. But therewas no retracing that sunny road. The gray troops passed by empty mansions, deserted farms,lonely cabins with doors ajar. Here and there some lone woman remained with a few frightenedslaves, and they came to the road to cheer the soldiers, to bring buckets of well water for the thirstymen, to bind up the wounds and bury the dead in their own family burying grounds. But for themost part the sunny valley was abandoned and desolate and the untended crops stood in parchingfields.
Flanked again at Calhoun, Johnston fell back to Adairsville, where there was sharp skirmishing,then to Cassville, then south of Cartersville. And the enemy had now advanced fifty-five milesfrom Dalton. At New Hope Church, fifteen miles farther along the hotly fought way, the gray ranksdug in for a determined stand. On came the blue lines, relentlessly, like a monster serpent coiling,striking venomously, drawing its injured lengths back, but always striking again. There wasdesperate fighting at New Hope Church, eleven days of continuous fighting, with every Yankeeassault bloodily repulsed. Then Johnston, flanked again, withdrew his thinning lines a few milesfarther.
The Confederate dead and wounded at New Hope Church ran high. The wounded floodedAtlanta in train-loads and the town was appalled. Never, even after the battle of Chickamauga, hadthe town seen so many wounded. The hospitals overflowed and wounded lay on the floors ofempty stores and upon cotton bales in the warehouses. Every hotel, boarding house and privateresidence was crowded with sufferers. Aunt Pitty had her share, although she protested that it wasmost unbecoming to have strange men in the house when Melanie was in a delicate condition andwhen gruesome sights might bring on premature birth. But Melanie reefed up her top hoop a littlehigher to hide her thickening figure and the wounded invaded the brick house. There was endlesscooking and lifting and turning and fanning, endless hours of washing and rerolling bandages andpicking lint, and endless warm nights made sleepless by the babbling delirium of men in the nextroom. Finally the choked town could take care of no more and the overflow of wounded was senton to the hospitals at Macon and Augusta.
With this backwash of wounded bearing conflicting reports and the increase of frightenedrefugees crowding into the already crowded town, Atlanta was in an uproar. The small cloud on thehorizon had blown up swiftly into a large, sullen storm cloud and it was as though a faint, chillingwind blew from it.
No one had lost faith in the invincibility of the troops but everyone, the civilians at least, hadlost faith in the General. New Hope Church was only thirty-five miles from Atlanta! The Generalhad let the Yankees push him back sixty-five miles in three weeks! Why didn’t he hold the Yankeesinstead of everlastingly retreating? He was a fool and worse than a fool. Graybeards in the HomeGuard and members of the state militia, safe in Atlanta, insisted they could have managed thecampaign better and drew maps on tablecloths to prove their contentions. As his lines grew thinnerand he was forced back farther, the General called desperately on Governor Brown for these verymen, but the state troops felt reasonably safe. After all, the Governor had defied Jeff Davis’
demand for them. Why should he accede to General Johnston?
Fight and fall back! Fight and fall back! For seventy miles and twenty-five days theConfederates had fought almost daily. New Hope Church was behind the gray troops now, amemory in a mad haze of like memories, heat, dust, hunger, weariness, tramp-tramp on the redrutted roads, slop-slop through the red mud, retreat, entrench, fight—retreat, entrench, fight. NewHope Church was a nightmare of another life and so was Big Shanty, where they turned and foughtthe Yankees like demons. But, fight the Yankees till the fields were blue with dead, there werealways more Yankees, fresh Yankees; there was always that sinister southeast curving of the bluelines toward the Confederate rear, toward the railroad—and toward Atlanta!
From Big Shanty, the weary sleepless lines retreated down the road to Kennesaw Mountain, nearthe little town of Marietta, and here they spread their lines in a ten-mile curve. On the steep sidesof the mountain they dug their rifle pits and on the towering heights they planted their batteries.
Swearing, sweating men hauled the heavy guns up the precipitous slopes, for mules could notclimb the hillsides. Couriers and wounded coming into Atlanta gave reassuring reports to thefrightened townspeople. The heights of Kennesaw were impregnable. So were Pine Mountain andLost Mountain near by which were also fortified. The Yankees couldn’t dislodge Old Joe’s menand they could hardly flank them now for the batteries on the mountain tops commanded all theroads for miles. Atlanta breathed more easily, but—But Kennesaw Mountain was only twenty-two miles away!
On the day when the first wounded from Kennesaw Mountain were coming in, Mrs.
Merriwether’s carriage was at Aunt Pitty’s house at the unheard-of hour of seven in the morning,and black Uncle Levi sent up word that Scarlett must dress immediately and come to the hospital.
Fanny Rising and the Bonnell girls, roused early from slumber, were yawning on the back seat andthe Risings’ mammy sat grumpily on the box, a basket of freshly laundered bandages on her lap.
Off Scarlett went, unwillingly for she had danced till dawn the night before at the Home Guard’sparty and her feet were tired. She silently cursed the efficient and indefatigable Mrs. Merriwether,the wounded and the whole Southern Confederacy, as Prissy buttoned her in her oldest andraggedest calico frock which she used for hospital work. Gulping down the bitter brew of parchedcorn and dried sweet potatoes that passed f............