In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

DURING THE PAST GENERATION KNOWLEDGE OF BLACK LIFE before and after emancipation has grown exponentially. One result has been a reconceptualization of the Civil War as not simply a military struggle with civilian consequences but as a key transitional episode in the story of American race relations—a final chapter in the tragedy of bondage and an opening scene in the drama of freedom. For students of black history, the Atlanta campaign partakes of the dualism inherent in the larger war experience. Although blacks were conspicuous by their absence in the early weeks of the Atlanta campaign, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s invasion had a profound effect on Georgia slavery. Coming relatively late in the war, Sherman’s thrust southward from Tennessee supplied external pressure that accelerated the ongoing collapse of the slave system’s internal mechanisms of stability and control. In northwestern Georgia during May and June 864, just as along the coast some two years earlier, Yankee invaders prompted slaveowners to flee in panic with their human property. Approaching armies brought near chaos to already unstable conditions in Atlanta by creating emergency demands for black labor to build fortifications, to work in weapons factories and hospitals, or to provide direct logistical support for the Confederate and Union armies. At the same time, Sherman’s advance created a steadily growing area of free territory in northwest Georgia, where hundreds of blacks experienced their first taste of life beyond the reach of southern whites. The liberty available behind Yankee lines was precarious to be sure, tainted by the antiblack prejudice of Sherman and his men, and often short lived once Confederates regained conThe Atlanta Campaign and the African American Experience in Civil War Georgia CLARENCE L. MOHR 272 trol of invaded areas. But it was freedom nonetheless, and it added to the repudiation of the old regime that had begun with massive black flight to the Sea Islands after the appearance of Union warships off Georgia’s coast early in 862. The slave system that Sherman’s troops encountered in 864 had been transformed and significantly weakened by the combined effect of refugee life, urban and industrial expansion, white military conscription, and the hiring or impressment of slaves for military labor. All of these processes, operating more or less simultaneously, helped erode structures of traditional authority in plantation society by disrupting black family life and diluting the paternalistic content of master-slave relations. Indeed, in their push toward Atlanta, Sherman’s soldiers triggered what was often the second phase of a process of forced removal that had begun in 862–63, when northwest Georgia became a major destination for slaves withdrawn by their owners from exposed areas of the Georgia coast.2 Although precise estimates are impossible, it is clear that many hundreds—and probably several thousand—refugee slaves spent lengthy periods in the counties north and west of Atlanta, where they were employed in subsistence agriculture; coal, iron, and niter mining; in war industries such as Mark A. Cooper’s Etowah Iron Works near Cartersville; and as employees in the extensive hospital system established for the Confederate Army of Tennessee . Partial records show that during 863, Medical Director Samuel H. Stout employed some 384 slaves in nineteen of the twenty-nine hospitals located between Catoosa Springs and Atlanta, along the line of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. Slaves represented nearly half of all hospital workers and some 80 percent of the hired employees. All of these facilities and their black workers would be moved repeatedly in 864—first to Atlanta, then to Macon, Columbus, and on into Alabama and Mississippi.3 Extractive industries absorbed a considerable number of refugee slaves. Niter,or saltpeter,a basic component of gunpowder,was mined in natural limestone caves throughout north Georgia, and by mid-862 some sixty-six slaves were at work digging four hundred pounds of niter per day from caves in Bartow County alone.But their efforts ceased with Sherman’s approach in 864.The war also provided a major stimulus to Georgia’s fledgling iron industry, which assumed new importance after major iron-producing regions of Tennessee and the border states fell into Union hands.Before the Atlanta campaign interrupted mining and smelting operations, at least three of the state’s six antebellum iron makers had reactivated or expanded blast furnaces in Bartow County, and four new companies had begun operations in Dade County or adjacent areas. The Atlanta Campaign and the African American...

Share