Maine at War: April 2019
Here’s what Brian Swartz was up to on his great blog, Maine At War, in the month of April (check it out!):
April 3, 2019
Georgia plantation wife from Maine, part 1
Raised in Bowdoinham, Maine, Dolly Lunt followed her sister to Georgia and hired on as a schoolteacher. When a local plantation owner took a shine to her, Dolly fell in love and married into antibellum society.
April 10, 2019
Georgia plantation wife from Maine, part 2
When six Yankee raiders suddenly burst into her Georgia plantation home, Dolly Lunt Burge of Maine cooks them breakfast and tells off one impertinent “bummer.”
April 17, 2019
Georgia plantation wife from Maine, part 3
Suddenly warned that Union soldiers were headed toward her plantation from Atlantan, Dolly Lunt Burge was unsure as to whether to stay or flee.
April 24, 2019
Georgia plantation wife from Maine, part 4
“But like demons they rush in!” Dolly Lunt Burge exclaimed as soldiers from the Left Wing of William T. Sherman’s army crossed her Georgia plantation on Saturday, November 19, 1864.
It is worth noting that while William Tecumseh Sherman, having taken Atlanta, was contemplating his next move, his supply base at Allatoona was besieged, and only just managed to hold on against a determined Confederate General Hood. Possibly in response to that “threat to his supply line,” as well as having experimented with a similar practice during the Meridian, Mississippi campaign, Sherman decided to cut loose from his supply line, feed his Army “off the land” as he wrought destruction from Atlanta to the Sea… and in process, “make Georgia howl.”
Of interest: the man in charge of Sherman’s Army of the Tennessee since July 1864 was Maine native, Oliver O. Howard. And since Howard commenced his March from the south side of Atlanta, it is highly probable that bummers from his force interacted with former Maine resident, Dolly Burge.
During this first “modern war,” which became more brutal the longer it persisted, General William T. Sherman supposedly remarked, “War is all Hell.” What he actually wrote: “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
Dolly Burge could verify, from personal experience, Sherman’s practice in fighting, and helping speed to an end, a cruel war.