In a Bombarded City.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 858, 10 August 1888, Page 9

In a Bombarded City.

The First Shell oe the Siege—The last

(Atlanta Constitution.) It was a hot July raorniDg in the sulphurous year of ’64. - Within its blood-red circle of redoubts and breastworks the beleagured city sweltered aad throbbed iu an agony of terror and tumult. . The Atlanta of that day was the most important stronghold of the Confederacy. It was. at once a city and a camp. Thirty thousand citizens and 40,000 soldiers were packed within its bristling ramparts, awaiting the onslaught of tho 80,000 foemen whose flaunting colours could be seen advancing from every direction. In the crowded streets good-natured anarchy ruled the' and the occasional rub-a-dub-bub of a drum and the blare of a bugle were lost in tho dull, grumbling roar of moving artillery trains and army On some of the spacious Peachtree piazzas groups of young ladies might have been seen chatting with a few officers whose bronzed faces and battle marked uniforms showed plainly enough that they were just from the front.

Suddenly there rose above the humming discord of camp and city a hideous shriek.

Ing, whizztng noise, so unearthly, and bloodcurdling that thousands of peaeeful.citizens turned white with fear and fled aimlessly from one point to another. « A shell, by God !' exolaimed a cavalry officer who was in the act of mounting his horse near the corner of Peachtree and Ellis. It was the first shell of the siege, and it had fallen inside the city limits. The soldiers shrugged their shoulders and laughed, and then the most reckless of them looked serious for a moment. They were thinking of the women and children who were about to go through the coming baptism of fire.

Tom Crusselle, who had been watobing Hooker’s batteries on Todd’s Hill, a little eminence north east of Ponce de Leon Spring, was standing in his front yard,' the present site of Colonel Bob Maddox’ residence, when the shell came plunging through the air.

He could have sworn it as heading straight for the spot on which he stood, but a strange fascination compelled him to watch its curving course until it tore its way into A. 0. Ladd's lot, opposite the well-known Calico house on Wheat street.

Mr Crusselle did not lose any time in fancy speculations. He was a man of action, and he felt that the time had come for him to prepare.for the worst. It was not an easy matter to seoure help, but in less than an hour he had several men hard at work digging a bomb-proof in his back yard. As the city was honey-combed with just such dug-outs in the course of a day or two, a picture of this one will describe them all.

The stately Herring mansion on Peachtree, in later years known as the Lejden House, had more than its share of these missiles. One crashed through the house, and ricocheted, landing on a bed in which a lady was trying to take a nap, where it cozily settled down on one of the pillows with its fuse still smoking. Another, a spent shell, dropped into one of the rooms on the first floor, where it poised itself on its end before a pier glass. ' It merely paused for reflection,’ remarked one of the inmates of the house who, by the way, had rushed across the street to put on suoh garments as he had carried with him in his flight.

But all this occurred in one looality. The same wild experience befell other parts of the city. The neighbourhood called Deantown was shelled almost out of existence. The heavy projectiles darted in a straight line down Marietta street, stripping nearly every house of its weather-boarding. The bomb-proof was 20 feet long, 7 feet wide and 9 feet deep, The entrance to it was in a zig zag shape. It was well lined with thick plank and carpeted. Great care was taken with the covering. First, heavy timbers were laid across the trench, and then a mountain of closely packed clay, twentyone feet high was piled on top. In this'snug little retreat, for the next forty days, three families spent a considerable part of their time. Only two shells hit it daring the siege. There was a frightful jar when one of them, a 30-poundor, exploded, bat the fortress held its own.

The first shell was followed by few, if any, that day. Three days later a big shell fell in Mr Crasselle’s yard, tearing np the ground and covering good old Dr. d’Alvigney and Mrs d’Alvigney, who happened to be there on a visit, with a shower of dirt.

Altogether, during the siege, seven shells btrack the Crusselle lot, only three of them exploding. Between Ellis and Cain and Spring and Ivy streets, 163 shells struck, doing comparatively little damage. The helpless citizens burrowed under the ground like moles. They spent a third of their time down in the bowels of the earth. The sides of the railway, cat under the Broad-street Bridge, looked like a net-work of holes, ho many caves had been dug there by people who were seeking a safe refuge. Even the bank vaults were utilized in this way, and the family and friends of many a city banker spent night after night in these massively walled apartments.

Shortly after high noon on the 2nd day of September, a young man in a faded, powderscorched suit of grey, stood on the hill by General Gartrell’s house, on Decatur street. He turned his weather-beaten face westward, and drawing his slouched hat over his eyes to shade them, looked down the street. The Confederate had a reckless, dofiant look. The siege *vas over. Atlanta had been surrendered, and the victors, flushed with triumph, were marching in. The solitary soldier had remained hehind with a squad of troopers, who like himself feared neither men nor devils. They had met the advancing Federal column near the artesian well, and after throwing it' into confusion by firing a rattling volley, had put spurs to their horses and made their escape. All but this man. He had paused on the hill, after tying his horse out of sight around a corner.

* One last shot,’ he said grimly to himself. , , , . Down on the earth he dropped, hugging the dusty earth, with his carbine in front of him. Tramp,jtramp, tramp ! A thousand echoes caught np the noise of the marching feet, and the sullen watcher tingled with mad excitement in every nerve. The crack of the carbine rang out upon the sultry air, and the men in blue caught a glimpse of a gaunt, grey figure leaping up "from the dust and speeding away like the wind. A hundred muskets belched forth a sheet of flame, but when the smoke lifted the daring Confederate was on his horse clattering over a hill half a mile away.

His last shot had brought down its game, and a Federal soldier dragged himself to the sidewalk with a bullet in his thigh ! Not-another gun was fired, and Sherman’s stern legions marched on, spreading 'over the town like a mighty blue wave, a rushing torrent of glittering steel and starry The long strugglefor Atlanta was over 1 The Old Colonel.