The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta
By:
Marc Wortman
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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Description:
The destruction of Atlanta is an iconic moment in American history—it was the centerpiece of Gone with the Wind. But though the epic sieges of Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Berlin have all been explored in bestselling books, the one great American example has been treated only cursorily in more general histories. Marc Wortman remedies that conspicuous absence in grand fashion with The Bonfire, an absorbing narrative history told through the points of view of key participants both Confederate and Union. The Bonfire reveals an Atlanta of unexpected paradoxes: a new mercantile city dependent on the primitive institution of slavery; governed by a pro-Union mayor, James Calhoun, whose cousin was a famous defender of the South. When he surrendered the city to General Sherman after forty-four terrible days, Calhoun was accompanied by Bob Yancey, a black slave likely the son of Union advocate Daniel Webster. Atlanta was both the last of the medieval city sieges and the first modern urban devastation. From its ashes, a new South would arise.
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
The Bonfire is a Civil War history of Atlanta in which the city was captured by General Sherman - The Bonfire by Marc Wortman is a study of the city of Atlanta, Georgia from its beginnings as a railroad hub in 1845 through its fall during the American Civil War. Anyone wanting a detailed description of the Atlanta Campaign from May-September 1864 in which General William Tecumseh Sherman defeated Confederate Joseph Eggleston Johnston will be disappointed in this work. It is not a military history of the war; instead the book illumines the conflict through first person accounts and stories of soldiers and civilians involved in the Atlanta Civil War story. In that regard the book succeeds admirably. It is a page turner.
Atlanta was founded by Virginians and was a railroad center of the Western and Atlantic railroad. The Calhoun family were prominent in the political and social leadership of the city which had grown to over 10,000 by the time of the Civil War. James M. Calhoun, a relative of firebrand Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, was the mayor during the war. Calhoun was a unionist but supported the South and slavery. Many slaves were allowed to hire out for business in ante-bellum Atlanta; some of these persons became wealthy. Wortman tells the tale of an African-American business leader in Atlanta who may well have been an illegitimate son of Mass. Senator Daniel Webster.
Wortman recounts the sad story of native American Indian removal from Georgia; the wildy and wooly culutre of Atlanta prior to the war and the lot of southern women living in the city. He describes the horrors of war as soldiers died in the thousands during the Atlanta campaign and the wounded were carried for in the beseiged city. Atlanta was burned by retreating Confederates under the leadership of John Bell Hood. This occurred following Southern defeat at the battles of Peachtree Creek, Atlanta and Jonesboro. Later Sherman would torch the city and demand that all civilians leave its environs. Over 60,000 casualties suffered during the Atlanta campaign about equally divided between Northern and Southern forces. General Sherman loved the South but made hard work on them so as end the war and restore order and union to the United States.
Atlanta grew at the end of the war and became a prominent American city. Wortman has told the story of nineteenth century Atlanta with a novelist touch; interesting stories and anecdotes making this a compelling read.Recommended.
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
"Bonfire" Flames GWTW Legend - I am a Civil War buff, and a member of the Puget Sound Civil War Round Table in Seattle. Enjoyed Marc Wortman's latest work "Bonfire" tremendously. Had no idea there were so many Union sympathizers down south, nor that some blacks had as much literal freedom at times (though they remained slaves in title at least) to determine their own economic fate both before, during, and apparently to a lesser extent after the war. A key part of this book is the chronicle of Atlanta's opportunistic growth -- certainly not beginning as the teeming metropolis we all assumed, heading into the Civil War. I learned a great deal about Sherman, his love of and familiarity with the South, his plodding tactics, his temerity, and ultimately his genius in using superior Yankee numbers to continuously outflank Johnston and Hood on the way to encircling Atlanta. Enjoyed reading about the Calhoun family history and their political ascendency within the city power circles. The book was well written, not as dry as many of the others I've experienced on the Civil War, and very well researched. It teems with personal references and diary entries on the part of those who directed and lived the Battle of Atlanta on a daily basis. As such it is a fine contribution to the body of Civil War literature, and fills in a previous vacuum in the real story of how Atlanta came to the torch.
--Larry Cenotto, Edmonds, WA
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
"War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." - Sherman was not one to glorify war and the siege and taking of Atlanta ably demonstrates how horrible it can be. I recently read Battle Cry of Freedom which provided context for The Bonfire but Wortman does a great job too giving the reader ample background to this particular battle. I enjoyed how he went back to the settlement of the area, the settlers themselves (especially Mayor Calhoun), and how Atlanta had grown to become the heart of the Southern States. Atlanta (like Stalingrad, Berlin, Saigon and Baghdad) was a symbol for both sides. In the case of Atlanta, it represented both a stubborn collective and a strategically important target.
The book provides a holistic view of the conflict from crime in the city, to depleted supplies, to the fluid maneuvers of the cavalry. The style of writing allows for a decent pace and though the author can get wrapped up in details he wins you back with the real human stories. Definitely a must read for Civil War buffs but not necessarily recommended for novices.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A History Lesson - Marc Wortman writes a fascinating book about the Civil War. Ordinary and extraordinary people enmeshed in a horrible conflict. Especially important is the care that the author takes in describing the evolution of Atlanta before the war and the family background of some of the most important characters such as Mayor Calhoun. There are many lessons to be learned from this book - some applicable to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. One wonders how General Sherman would have prosecuted those campaigns.
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Right Book, Wrong Title - Right Book, Wrong Title: The Bonfire
The Bonfire: The Seige and Burning of Atlanta, Marc Wortman, Public Affairs Press, 431 pp., illustrations, index, notes, bibliography, photo credits, $28.95.
How does a non-fiction book end up with the wrong title? A title that leads to disappointment. Bait and switch marketing department at the publisher? A literary agent? The author? CWL will give this book a more accurate, more provocative title. Rebel Phoenix: The Birth, Burning, and Rebirth of Atlanta during the Antebellum and Civil War Era Eras. That is an accurate and compelling labeling of Wortman's work.
Of he 361 pages of text, Atlanta begins to burn in the last 10% of the book. The first 20% concerns frontier Georgia with the very young William T. Sherman showing up at the future site of the city of Atlanta. Yes, Sherman was there, studying the topography of northern Georgia in 1844. A fine story well developed and handled by Wortman. The author finds and presents accounts of massacres survival stories of settlers by Native Americans in early north and central Georgia. These stories Wortman develops well and appreciative of the Georgians later stance on Cherokee removal.
In the next 20% Southern railroad history is developed and a northern Georgia crossroad is planned and labeled 'Terminus' maps. Wortman's chapters here are worthy of reading by anyone interested in American or Southern urban history, the notion of industrial modernization in a slave holding agricultural society.
The next 20% is Civil War history propelled forward by some remarkable Atlanta residents: slaveholders, slaves and freemen, and non-slave holding middle class members. The lives of James Montgomery Calhoun (a Unionist and slaveholder), Festus and Isabella Flipper (slaves whose son enters West Point Military Academy), George Washington Lee (commander of the Confederate Provost Guard) and Bob Yancey (African-American barber, currency speculator and friend to Union prisoners) and many others are well handled by Wortman who offers these individuals as illustrations of how men, women and families accommodate themselves to urban life during wartime.
In the last portion of the book, Sherman and his army reaches Atlanta. During the Confederate retreat from the city, Hood burns the railroad stock. During the Union advance out of the city, Sherman burns much more. Wortman does not excel a telling military history. He should have had a fact checker for the number of commanders Lincoln went through in the Army of the Potomac, the spelling of William Rosecrans' name, and the sequence of events at Chickamaugua and Chattanooga. For those who are looking for a superior military history and social/urban history of the capture of Atlanta and its two destructions, they should consider Bond's War Like A Thunderbolt. Wortman's style uses lots of adjectives and sometimes has lengthly sentences. On the other hand, Bond's is more reportorial and similar to Bruce Catton's Army of the Potomac trilogy.
CWL had trouble 'getting into 'Bonfire' mainly because a huge urban fire should have been around the corner. Upon realizing that Bonfire is urban and social history of a Civil War city, it became enjoyable.
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