'An Ugly Wreck and Ruin'

“It makes me very sad to think of others going and of staying behind myself. Our virtual imprisonment and separation from friends makes me feel wretched; I pray for patience. God help me, for I cannot help myself.”

So wrote Matthew J. Williams in his diary during September 1864. Williams, a 59-year-old retired college professor who had once been a major in the U.S. Army, was one of a handful of Mariettans who had chosen to stay behind when the city was evacuated.

Now under Union occupation and martial law, he and his wife, Martha, lived in their house on Roswell Street, doing their best to continue life with some semblance of normalcy.

Normalcy was hard to find in those days. Since Marietta’s communication with the outside world had been cut off. Buildings on the square had been modified into small fortresses with Union soldiers standing guard on the rooftops. Textile mills in nearby towns had been destroyed, their workers rounded up and . Most of the population had fled when the Confederate Army retreated, and many of those who remained had been arrested and shipped north.

There was also the unsettling quiet to deal with. During the first weeks after the Union moved in, Marietta had bristled with activity: Soldiers and wagons crammed the square; the houses left abandoned by evacuees were occupied by Union officers and refugees from places like Roswell; and columns of troops passed through Marietta on their way to the front lines.

But now the bulk of the Army had moved on to join the siege of Atlanta, and the houses, emptied of refugees, had been stripped of their fittings and weatherboarding, left to stand with their beams exposed like denuded trees.

A small garrison had been left behind under the command of Col. Samuel Ross, and those trooped maintained order in the town. Civilian white males were forbidden to move about the town without a pass from the provost marshal.

Guards were posted at many private homes to protect their occupants and property. Such was the case with Williams.

On the occasion of his diary entry above, Williams had been permitted to send a letter south. The regular mail did not run–only military dispatches. But in this case, two Marietta ladies, identified as “Mrs. Brannon and Mrs. Campbell,” had been given a pass to leave the occupied territory in the company of one Mr. Lanier, who was headed south to join family and friends.

Williams had entrusted Lanier with a letter addressed to his son, Henry, who had been among the evacuees. He wanted Henry to know that his parents were alive and well, but he also wanted to know the same about his son. He realized there would almost certainly be no reply.

“The letter may never reach Henry,” he wrote in his diary. “Lanier himself may be snapped up.”

As the weeks turned into months, Williams’ daily life fell into a routine that he found monotonous. He and his wife worked in their meager garden, and, having obtained letters of permission, he took daily walks about the town, although these did little to lift his spirits.

“All the beauty of the place has gone,” he wrote Sept. 19. “One would think that a settled and deliberate object in view was to make it an ugly wreck and ruin.” He lamented that the fence rails had been removed, houses stripped and many trees cut down.

“The soldiers about the place have made a ‘finish’ of my chestnut trees,” he wrote.

What recreation Williams found seems to have been in calling upon some of the Union officers, with whom he formed friendships. He played chess with Col. Cummings, and Col. Ross, the commandant, saved newspapers for him. These he relished, for they gave him some sense of what was happening in the world outside.

The Williamses also seemed to form attachments to the young guards placed at their home, inviting them inside, feeding them and getting to know them. The guards were changed often as the young men were continually sent south, and Williams remarked more than once that he was sad to see the boys go.

By his own account, he was treated with kindness by the Union occupiers. On Aug. 2, Williams wrote: “I called today to see Col. Ross toward sunset. He met and received me with great kindness. It would be base ingratitude to question his sincerity.”

The following day he sent a note to Col. Ross requesting to purchase flour and was sent 50 pounds of it. Whenever he tried to pay for the flour, Ross would claim that he had “no time to settle.”

“I think his object is to refuse payment,” he wrote later. “He has certainly treated me with great kindness.”

This kindness included an armed escort when he took his corn to the mill to have it ground. The woods about Cobb County were thick with guerrilla fighters, and these were known to rob citizens of their supplies and foodstuffs.

In addition, although the bulk of the Confederate Army had withdrawn across the Chattahoochee, Confederate cavalry under Gen. Joseph Wheeler still operated north of the river and made numerous raids.

Perhaps the most surreal moment for Williams came when, while on his daily walk through the square, he encountered handbills seeking recruits for the Union Army. The handbills advertised a $302 payment for any man enlisting to serve for three years.

Atlanta fell to Sherman on Sept. 2, although, contrary to popular belief, it was not burned at that time beyond what the retreating Confederates burned themselves. For days afterward, the railroad through Marietta saw constant trains heading north with wounded soldiers and prisoners.

But as September waned and Atlanta, like Marietta, became an occupied zone, the quiet became even more ominous. Gen. Sherman was seen in Marietta from time to time as October wore on. When November came, the storm broke.