Usually it is a bad thing when I note in a review that a book is misnamed or deceptively titled. Not so with Marc Wortman’s The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta. Despite the title, the book is in truth about a lot more than the actual destruction of the town in 1864 by Union forces during the Civil War. It is an engrossing tale of the antebellum life, death, and rebirth of an iconic Southern city told through the eyes of individuals.
Wortman’s chronicle begins with the wresting of the area in which Atlanta lies from the Cherokee Indians, and concludes with the city’s postwar recovery from its fiery destruction. He gives an entertaining and informative overview of how the city came to be an important target for Union forces during the Civil War—by most counts it was second only to Richmond in terms of strategic importance by a number of measures—while giving readers an enlightening description of the sights sounds, and even smells of the young Georgia metropolis. In fact, Union troops don’t even enter the city (in September of 1864) until nearly three-quarters way into the book.
This does not mean that the fighting around and for Atlanta in the summer of 1864 are not discussed adequately. The Bonfire does cover the campaign for the city that preceded its capture, but does it in a decidedly different way than a standard military history. Wortman provides overviews of the fighting but keeps the focus on the perspective of the people of the city of Atlanta, making it a welcome addition to the almost entirely strictly military literature on the campaign. The most detailed discussion of military matters actually concerns the shelling of the city by Federal artillery and the consequent chaos in the streets and homes of the city. It is those stories of cannonballs crashing through walls and rolling through streets and the underground shelters built by many residents for cover (one is reminded of Vicksburg) that readers will likely remember as much as anything else in the book.
Wortman keeps the story interesting by having much of the story told from the perspectives of a short list of dynamic key characters including wartime mayor James M. Calhoun, diarist Cyrena Stone, a slave (and possibly illegitimate son of Daniel Webster!) named Bob Yancey who was given unusual liberties and became a remarkably prominent businessman, and Union General William T. Sherman. In Wortman’s expert hands, these characters are given real depth and vitality as individuals whose actions and experiences help define a pivotal moment in our nation’s history. Confederate generals Johnston and Hood, whose efforts to defend the city were unsuccessful, are not explored as fully but they still inherently are significant players in the drama.
The Bonfire is a great read, and a welcome counterpoint to the dozens of other studies of the campaign for Atlanta, several of which have appeared in the last decade. It takes readers inside the city that came into the crosshairs of the Union war effort in 1864 in a way nobody else has done. In other words, it is one of those rare books that complement rather than rephrase what volumes of literature about its subject already have said. I highly recommend it.
JMB
The Historians Manifesto 