Nonfiction review: The Bonfire

NONFICTION
The burning of Atlanta, with a memorable assist from Hollywood, is one of those events that resonates.

Fires that destroy great cities perhaps are always especially horrific, but in Atlanta's case the bonfire was also a crucial factor in the defeat of the South. Now, in "The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta," journalist Marc Wortman vividly describes the events leading up to the fire, the fire itself and its consequences.

Like many popular histories, Wortman's account of the bonfire is also the story of a range of figures whose lives were affected by the events. Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman is naturally prominent, but Wortman also introduces the Unionist Mayor James Calhoun, who together with Robert Yancey, a barber and slave claiming to be Sen. Daniel Webster's son, surrendered the city to the Yankees.

Men and women such as Cyrena Stone a secret Union supporter who kept a diary of the war years, provide a human dimension to the military strategies and tactics that eventually destroyed Atlanta. They also exemplify the diversity and entrepreneurial energy that fueled its thriving commerce and allowed slaves to operate businesses, keeping any bonuses for themselves.

From the beginning, Atlanta was a city in a hurry, an "instant city, one modern in character and mores unlike anything the South had known." Cash, not cotton, was its major crop, a product of trading and the four railroads that were responsible for its being.

But once the South seceded, Confederate Atlanta devoted its energies to the cause, providing men, money and armaments -- eventually manufacturing 4.1 million rounds of small-arms ammunition.

The bonfire, or more exactly the bonfires -- there were two, the first set by fleeing Confederate defenders and the second by Sherman -- are the story, but Wortman first sets them in the context of the battles, the military objectives and the experiences of individuals, both civilian and military. He also affectingly describes the terrible cost of war to both sides: the horrific injuries, the awful smells and the sounds of battle.

This is a stately if exhaustive approach to what one of the city's besieged defenders called a "grand Holocaust of death." But the rich context Wortman provides for this singular event in America's history does much to explain why Atlanta's fate was critical for both sides. It's a thoughtful work, as vivid and certainly more exact than the movies.

Judith Chettle is a Richmond-based book reviewer and writer.