They say that pride cometh before the fall, an adage tailor-made for antebellum Atlanta of the 1860s. an overnight sensation, the city's success elevated it from a red-clay backwater to one of the American South's preeminent industrial engines. But while success can generate new wealth, birth new opportunities, and open new doors, it also attracts attention, Northern scrutiny that, during the American Civil War, would see the city burn.
Mr. Wortman's excellent history foregoes a moment-by-moment re-telling of Gen. William Sherman's burning of Atlanta. Instead, the author pulls back his focus until he can capture a broader view that embeds the Atlanta Campaign in the dense tapestry of the war. To tell his tale, Mr. Wortman marshalls a number of compelling characters, mayors, slaves, eyewitnesses, generals, using their first-hand accounts to convey a city on an economic rise to stardom, a city that proved, during the war, to be a vital cog in the South's war machine. In this, the reader is treated to the juxtaposition of proud parades and boastful military salutes, spilling through its streets in 1861, with the ragged retreats and the helpless dismay of occupation and then desecration in 1864. Between, we watch as Atlanta's fortunes ascend until it is designated by the North as a primary target of Union wrath. Where upon, the Union's blockade of its goods, the Confederacy's devaluation of its dollar to worthlessness and the natural instability of an economy in wartime combine to plunge Atlanta into chaos and ruin, smashing its power as thoroughly as Sherman's fire devoured its homes and businesses.
As much as this is a military tale, featuring Gen. Sherman's conquest and burning of the South and his costly victories over Southern armies generalled by Johnston and Hood, The Bonfire is a treatise on human nature which devotes many of its pages to the illumination of the attitudes, both civilian and government, that pervaded the period. And so, while Mr. Wortman goes a long way to explaining why Atlanta burned, he's also able to reveal a general theme for the war. Humans are, on balance, unwilling to give up that which benefits them most. In fact, they are so devoted to the maintenance of their advantages over others that they are willing to contort their ethics, to blind themselves to obvious inequities, in hopes of holding on to what they have. This is exemplified not only in the fight over tariffs which amplified the political discord that lead up to the war, but the South's unwillingness to give up the economic advantage that slavery provided them. Instead, they went to war over the right to earn money via the exploitation of the disenfranchised. In this, they ensured but one thing, the devastation of their way of life.
This is a pleasingly expansive history which suffers not at all for being 470 pages. A thorough blending of eyewitnesses and interested parties ensures that many of the major points of view are given both time and satisfaction. Armies, politics, and the clash of civilizations... In Mr. Wortman's hands, these make a well-mixed cocktail. (4/5 Stars)
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