The Burning of Atlanta

Atlanta fell to William T. Sherman's armies on September 2, 1864, after a summer-long campaign down from Chattanooga. Sherman ordered the civilian population out and turned the city into a fortified depot. By November he had decided to abandon it altogether, cut loose from his supply line, and march to the sea.

Before the columns left, his engineers under Orlando Poe set about the railroad depot, the roundhouse, the foundries and the machine shops. On the night of November 15 the fires spread well beyond the military targets. Sherman rode out the next morning with the city still burning behind him and some 62,000 men on the road ahead.

He did not look back for long. Savannah was 285 miles away, and Washington would not hear from him for the better part of a month.

The column moves left across the foreground while the city burns behind it, and the painting keeps the two apart — the men in shadow, the fire in full color. Notice the small red guidon carried near the head of the file and the white wagon covers, the only clean things in the frame. Smoke fills two-thirds of the picture and leans with the wind. Nobody in the line is looking back.