IT'S NOT TERRORISM WHEN WE DO IT:

Atlanta had been holding out for some six weeks after Sherman's army had defeated the forces under J. B. Hood in a series of bloody battles that pushed the Confederates into defensive positions inside the city where they, and the civilian population, were supplied by a single rail line. When that was cut in the battle of Jonesboro, Atlanta was doomed, and Hood took his troops out of the city, lest they starve there as John Pemberton's army had at Vicksburg. On his way out, Hood put all useful military supplies to the torch, a scene that was dramatized 75 years later in Gone with the Wind.

A week after sending his message to the president, Sherman ordered that "the city of Atlanta, being exclusively required for warlike purposes, will at once be vacated by all except the armies of the United States."

In a wire to his superior in the War Department, General Halleck, Sherman went on record. "If the people raise a howl against my barbarity or cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity-seeking."

And to the mayor of Atlanta, who did, indeed, protest an action that would make civilians homeless refugees with winter approaching, he said, in effect, that he agreed. That it was a hard and heartless thing, but, he added, "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."

He would do what he must, then, and Mayor Calhoun should do the same. Which meant he must leave Atlanta "and take with you your old and feeble, feed and nurse them .  .  . until the mad passions of men cool down and allow the Union and peace once more to settle over your old homes at Atlanta."

And this was just the beginning.

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