CHAPTER LXIII.

IN AND ABOUT ATLANTA.

THE railroad runs eastward from Montgomery, forks at Opelika, and enters Georgia by two divergent routes, the south branch crossing the Chattahoochee at Columbus, and the north branch at West Point.

Wilson, the Raider, paid his respects to both these roads. The main body of his troops proceeded to Columbus, (one of the principal towns of Georgia,) which they carried by assault, with a loss of but thirty men, capturing fifteen hundred prisoners, twenty-four pieces of artillery, and immense military stores. At the same time Lagrange's Brigade took West Point. These were the closing battles of the great war of the rebellion. Pushing on towards Macon, Wilson's advance was met, not by bloody opposition, but by a flag of truce announcing the surrender of Lee and the armistice between Sherman and Johnston.

Concerning our loss at West Point I was not able to obtain very exact information. A citizen, who claimed to have been in the fight, said to me, "We had seven men killed, and we just slaughtered over three hundred Yankees.” A negro

said: "I saw five dead Yankees, and if there was any more nobody knows what was done with 'em." A returned Confederate soldier, who regarded with great contempt the little. affair the citizens bragged so much about, said it was no fight at all; the militia gave up the fort almost without a struggle; and there were not over a dozen men killed on both sides. The fort was situated on a high hill; and one old man, who was in it, told me they could not hold it because they could n't use the guns effectively, they "could n't elevate 'em down enough."

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The Yankees had the credit of behaving very well at West Point. "They were going to burn the railroad depot, full of rolling stock; but a lady told 'em that would set her house, so they just run the cars off down the track, over a hundred of 'em, and fired 'em there," the black ruins remaining to

attest the fact.

Leaving West Point at noon I reached Atlanta at seven o'clock in the evening. It was a foggy night; the streets were not lighted, the hotels were full, and the mud, through which I tramped from one to the other, with a dark guide and a very dark lantern, was ankle deep on the crossings. I was at length fortunate enough to find lodgings, with a clergyman and a cotton-speculator, in an ancient tavern-room, where we were visited all night by troops of rats, scampering across the floor, rattling newspapers, and capering over our beds. In the morning, it was discovered that the irreverent rogues had stolen the clergyman's stockings.

A sun-bright morning did not transmute the town into a place of very great attractiveness. Everywhere were ruins and rubbish, mud and mortar and misery. The burnt streets were rapidly rebuilding; but in the mean while hundreds of the inhabitants, white and black, rendered homeless by the destruction of the city, were living in wretched hovels, which made the suburbs look like a fantastic encampment of gypsies or Indians. Some of the negro huts were covered entirely with ragged fragments of tin-roofing from the burnt government and railroad buildings. Others were constructed partly of these irregular blackened patches, and partly of old boards, with roofs of huge, warped, slouching shreds of tin, kept from blowing away by stones placed on the top. Notwithstanding the ingenuity displayed in piecing these rags together, they formed but a miserable shelter at the best. "In dry weather, it's good as anybody's houses. But they leaks right bad when it rains; then we have to pile our things up to keep 'em dry." So said a colored mother of six children, whose husband was killed "fighting for de Yankees," and who supported her family of little ones by washing. "Sometimes I gits along toler

able; sometimes right slim; but dat 's de way wid everybody; -times is powerful hard right now."

Every business block in Atlanta was burned, except one. The railroad machine-shops, the founderies, the immense rolling-mill, the tent, pistol, gun-carriage, shot-and-shell factories, and storehouses, of the late Confederacy, disappeared in flames and explosions. Half a mile of the principal street was destroyed. Private residences remained, with a few exceptions. The wooden houses of the suburbs had been already torn down, and their materials used to construct quarters for Sherman's men. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, built by the colored people with their hard earnings, and viewed by them with as much pride and satisfaction as the Jews felt in the contemplation of the great Temple at Jerusalem, was also demolished by our soldiers, at the instigation, it is said, of a white citizen living near, who thought the negro's religious shoutings a nuisance.

"When I came back in May," said a refugee," the city was nothing but piles of brick and ruins. It did n't seem it could ever be cleared. But in six weeks new blocks began to spring up, till now you see more stores actually in operation than we ever had before.”

The new business blocks were mostly one-story structures, with cheap temporary roofs, designed to be rebuilt and raised in more prosperous times. Nine stores of this description had just been put up by a Connecticut man; each costing three thousand dollars, and renting for twenty-five hundred. "He run a rolling-mill for the Confederate Government during the war; sold out when Sherman was coming; called himself a good Union man;-a mighty shrewd fellow!" said one who knew him.

Here and there, between the new buildings, were rows of shanties used as stores, and gaps containing broken walls and heaps of rubbish.

Rents were enormous.

Fifteen and twenty dollars a month were charged for huts which a respectable farmer would hardly consider good enough for his swine. One man had crowded

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into his backyard five of these little tenements, which rented for fifteen dollars a month each, and a very small brick house that let for thirty dollars. Other speculators were permitting the construction, on their premises, of houses that were to be occupied rent-free, for one year, by the poor families that built them, and afterwards to revert to the owners of the land.

The destitution among both white and black refugees was very great. Many of the whites had lost everything by the war; and the negroes that were run off by their masters in advance of Sherman's army, had returned to a desolate place, with nothing but the rags on their backs. As at nearly every other town of any note in the South which I visited, the smallpox was raging at Atlanta, chiefly among the blacks, and the suffering poor whites.

I stopped to talk with an old man building a fence before the lot containing the ruins of his burnt house. He said: "The Yankees did n't generally burn private dwellings. It's my opinion these were set by our own citizens, that remained after Sherman's order that all women who had relatives in the Southern army should go South, and all males must leave the city except them that would work for government. I put for Chattanooga. My house was plundered, and I reckon, burnt, by my own neighbors, for I 've found some of my furniture in their houses. Some that stayed acted more honorably; they put out fires that had been set, and saved both houses and property. My family is now living in that shebang there. It was formerly my stable. The weather-boards had been ripped off, but I fixed it up the best I could to put my little 'uns in till we can do better."

Another old man told me the story of his family's sufferings, with tears running down his cheeks. During the battle of July, I had typhoid fever in my house. One of my daughters died, and my other three were down with it. The cemeteries were being shelled, and I had to take out my dead child and bury her hastily in my backyard. My house was in range of the shells; and there my daughters lay, too sick to be moved." His description of those terrible days I shall

not repeat. At length his neighbors came with ambulances, and the sick daughters were 'removed. They were scarcely out of the house when a shell passed through it.

Walking out, one Sunday afternoon, to visit the fortifications, I stopped to look at a negro's horse, which had been crippled by a nail in his foot. While I was talking with the owner, a white man and two negroes, who had been sitting by a fire in an open rail-cabin close by, conversing on terms of perfect equality, came out to take part in the consultation, around the couch of the sick beast. One proffered one remedy; another, another.

"If ye had some tare," said the white man (meaning tar); open his huf, and bile tare and pour int' it."

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His lank frame and slouching dress, his sallow visage, with its sickly, indolent expression,- his lazy, spiritless movements, and the social intimacy that appeared to exist between him and the negroes, indicated that he belonged to the class known as "Sand Hillers". in South Carolina, " Clay-eaters" in North Carolina, "Crackers" in Georgia, and "white trash and "poor whites" everywhere. Among all the individuals of this unfortunate and most uninteresting class, whom I have seen, I do not remember a specimen better worth describing. I give his story in his own words.

He told me his name was Jesse Wade. "I lived down in Cobb," (that is, Cobb County,) — seating himself on the neap of the negro's wagon, and mechanically scraping the mud from it with his thumb-nail. "I was a Union man, I was that, like my daddy befo'e me. Thar was no use me bein' a fule 'case my neighbors was. The Rebel army treated us a heap wus 'n Sherman did. I refugeed, — left everything keer o' my wife. wife. I had four bales o' cotton, and the Rebs burnt the last bale. I had hogs, and a mule, and a hoss, and they tuk all. They did n't leave my wife narry bedquilt. When they'd tuk what they wanted, they put her out the house and sot fire to 't. Narry one o' my boys fit agin the Union; they was conscripted with me, and one night we went out on guard together, we did, and jest put for the Yankees. All the men