In the warm wet summer nights, Atlanta's homes stood open to the soldiers, the town's defenders. The big houses from Washington Street to Peachtree Street blazed with lights, as the muddy fighters in from the rifle pitswere entertained, and the sound of banjo and fiddle and the scrape of dancing feet and light laughter carried far on the night air.Groups hung over pianos and voices sang lustily the sad words of“Your Letter Came but Came Too Late”while ragged gallants looked meaningly at girls who laughed from behind turkey-tail fans, begging them not to wait until it was too late.None of the girls waited, if they could help it.With the tide of hysterical gaiety and excitement flooding the city, they rushed into matrimony.There were so many marriages that month while Johnston was holding the enemy at Kennesaw Mountain, marriages with the bride turned out in blushing happiness and the hastily borrowed finery of a dozen friends and the groom with saber banging at patched knees.So much excitement, so many parties, so many thrills!Hurrah!Johnston is holding the Yanks twenty-two miles away!
Yes, the lines around Kennesaw Mountain were impregnable. After twenty-five days of fighting, even General Sherman was convinced of this, for his losses were enormous.Instead of continuing the direct assault, he swung his army in a wide circle again and tried to come between the Confederates and Atlanta.Again, the strategy worked.Johnston was forced to abandon the heights he had held so well, in order to protect his rear.He had lost a third of his men in that fight and the remainder slogged tiredly through the rain across the country toward the Chattahoochee River.The Confederates could expect no more reinforcements, whereas the railroad, which the Yankees now held from Tennessee south to the battle line, brought Sherman fresh troops and supplies daily.So the gray lines went back through the muddy fields, back toward Atlanta.
With the loss of the supposedly unconquerable position, a fresh wave of terror swept the town. For twenty-five wild, happy days, everyone had assured everyone else that this could not possibly happen.And now it had happened!But surely the General would hold the Yankees on the opposite bank of the river.Though God knows the river was close enough, only seven miles away!
But Sherman flanked them again, crossing the stream above them, and the weary gray files were forced to hurry across the yellow water and throw themselves again between the invaders and Atlanta. They dug in hastily in shallow pits to the north of the town in the valley of Peachtree Creek.Atlantawas in agony and panic.
Fight and fall back!Fight and fall back!And every retreat was bringing the Yankees closer to the town. Peachtree Creek was only five miles away!What was the General thinking about?
The cries of“Give us a man who will stand and fight!”penetrated even to Richmond. Richmond knew that if Atlanta was lost, the war was lost, and after the army had crossed the Chattahoochee, General Johnston was removed from command.General Hood, one of his corps commanders, took over the army, and the town breathed a little easier.Hood wouldn't retreat.Not that tall Kentuckian, with his flowing beard and flashing eye!He had the reputation of a bulldog.He'd drive the Yankees back from the creek, yes, back across the river and on up the road every step of the way back to Dalton.But the army cried:“Give us back Old Joe!”for they had been with Old Joe all the weary miles from Dalton and they knew, as the civilians could not know, the odds that opposed them.
Sherman did not wait for Hood to get himself in readiness to attack. On the day after the change in command, the Yankee general struck swiftly at the little town of Decatur, six miles beyond Atlanta, captured it and cut the railroad there.This was the railroad connecting Atlanta with Augusta, with Charleston, with Wilmington and with Virginia.Sherman had dealt the Confederacy a crippling blow.The time had come for action!Atlanta screamed for action!
Then, on a July afternoon of steaming heat, Atlanta had its wish. General Hood did more than stand and fight.He assaulted the Yankees fiercely at Peachtree Creek, hurling his men from their rifle pits against the blue lines where Sherman's men outnumbered him more than two to one.
Frightened, praying that Hood's attack would drive the Yankees back, everyone listened to the sound of booming cannon and the crackling of thousands of rifles, which, though five miles away from the center of town, were so loud as to seem almost in the next block. They could hear the rumbling of the batteries, see the smoke which rolled like lowhanging clouds above the trees, but for hours no one knew how the battle was going.
By late afternoon the first news came, but it was uncertain, contradictory, frightening, brought as it was by men wounded in the early hours of the battle. These men began straggling in, singly and in groups, the less seriously wounded supporting those who limped and staggered.Soon a steady stream of them was established, making their painful way into town toward the hospitals, their faces black as negroes'from powder stains, dust and sweat, their wounds unbandaged, blood drying, flies swarming about them.
Aunt Pitty's was one of the first houses which the wounded reached as they struggled in from the north of the town, and one after another, they tottered to the gate, sank down on the green lawn and croaked:
“Water!”