CHAPTER XXXII

OUT OF THE PAST


By no means all the leading citizens of Atlanta were in a frame of mind
to welcome General Sherman when, ten or a dozen years after the Civil
War, he revisited the city. Captain Evan P. Howell, a former Confederate
officer, then publisher of the Atlanta "Constitution," was, however, not
one of the Atlantans who ignored the general's visit. Taking his young
son, Clark, he called upon the general at the old Kimball House (later
destroyed by fire), and had an interesting talk with him. Clark Howell,
who has since succeeded his father as publisher of the "Constitution,"
was born while the latter was fighting at Chickamauga, and was
consequently old enough, at the time of the call on Sherman, to remember
much of what was said. He heard the general tell Captain Howell why he
had made such a point of taking Atlanta, and as Sherman's military
reasons for desiring possession of the Georgia city explain, to a large
extent, Atlanta's subsequent development, I shall quote them as Clark
Howell gave them to me.

First however, it is perhaps worth while to remind the reader of the
bare circumstances preceding the fall of Atlanta. After the defeat of
the Confederate forces at Chattanooga, General Joseph E. Johnston's army
fell back slowly on Atlanta, much as the French fell back on Paris at
the beginning of the European War, shortening their own lines of
communication while those of the advancing Germans were being
continually attenuated. As the Germans kept after the French, Sherman
kept after Johnston; and as Joffre was beginning to be criticized for
failing to make a stand against the enemy, so was Johnston criticized as