“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now”
Originally published October 2019 · pp. 41–46
“I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now”
Atlanta Campaign 1. Who was the Union army commander killed in the battle fought east of Atlanta on July 22, 1864? 2. Who was Johnston’s and Hood’s cavalry commander? 3. What was William T. Sherman’s middle name? And from it, his nickname? 4. Who was senior corps commander in the Army of Tennessee after Hood was promoted to lead it? 5. Commander of the Union XV Corps during the campaign was this Illinoisan, nicknamed “Black Jack.” Who? 6. Hood fought three attacking battles on July 20, 22, and 28. What was the name of the third, fought west of the city? 7. This Union major general of cavalry was captured July 31 northeast of Macon. He had formerly commanded the Army of the Potomac’s cavalry under Hooker. Who?
- Governor of Georgia in 1864, he sent several thousand state militia to help Hood defend Atlanta. Which governor? 9. This Union brigadier general led the division that defended an important bald hill in the battle of July 22. Later some named the hill after the general. Who? 10. This Confederate brigadier, commander of Johnston’s artillery, devised innovative earth-and-log infantry forts as a defensive line along the north bank of the Chattahoochee River. What was his name? And the nickname that the soldiers gave his little forts?
Some of us old-timers can remember Judy Collins’ hit, “Both Sides Now” (1968), in which she sings of gazing at clouds in the sky. Well, that’s what George Barnard invites us to do in his Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign. The album of sixty-one photographic plates was produced by Barnard in 1866 in some 100 to 150 copies. Each featured pictures taken by the photographer as he traveled with Sherman’s army during the war and in spring 1866, when he returned to the South. Barnard’s Photographic Views is reprinted in Keith F. Davis’ definitive George N. Barnard:
Photographer of Sherman’s Campaign (Kansas City, 1990). In it Davis observes that by careful double printing, Barnard could add clouds to the skylines of his war scenes for aesthetic effect. Theodore Davis, the Harpers Weekly illustrator whom Barnard had met during Sherman’s Georgia campaign, was assisting him with the Photographic Views album when he wrote Capt. Orlando Poe (Sherman’s former chief engineer) on Sept. 9, 1866: “Barnard has by a new process (double printing) got the most beautiful clouds in his prints, which excel any thing that I have ever seen in the way of photograph[y].” Keith Davis notes that Barnard had not invented the double-printing process, but adds that it was still relatively new when Barnard employed it in 1866. Those clouds moved around, as one can see in plate 24, “Allatoona from the Etawah,” and plate 46, “City of Atlanta, Ga., No. 2.” They’re the formation!
same cloud
This is just another example of the fun to be had in Barnardiana— studying the work of the Civil War western theater’s very best photographer.
Answers found on page 46. Steve Davis is the Civil War News Book Review Editor. He can be contacted by email at: [email protected].
Small Talk Trivia Answers 1. James Birdseye McPherson (1828–1864) 2. Joseph Wheeler (1836–1906) 3. Tecumseh. “Cump.” 4. William Joseph Hardee (1815–1873) 5. John Alexander Logan (1826–1886) 6. Ezra Church 7. George Stoneman (1822–1894) 8. Joseph Emerson Brown (1821–1894) 9. Mortimer Dormer Leggett (1821–1896) 10. Francis Asbury Shoup (1834–1896). “Shoupades.”
