On the 15th of November, the 2nd Massachusetts remained behind as the 20th Corps pulled out of Atlanta. It would be one of the last bodies of Union troops to leave the city. "Three Regts. including ours have been left behind in a very mysterious manner," Capt. Francis Crowninshield wrote. "I can't fathom it at all. Several men in the regiment have been hard at work building or rather making ladders, for what purpose no one knows but Col. Morse, and he won't tell, consequently everybody is crazed to find out." He could only speculate that perhaps they were going to "destroy all the machine shops, the railroad depot and the other important buildings."
Crowninshield had guessed correctly, but no one could imagine the extent to which the destruction would be carried out. The men of the Second had seen private property destroyed in the past, but nothing on the scale of what Sherman had planned for the city of Atlanta.
"It is impossible to imagine the magnificent spectacle which this city in flames presented," Morse wrote after the conflagaration. "We sat up on top of our houses for hours watching it. For miles around, the country was as light as day. The business portion of Atlanta, embracing perhaps 20 acres, covered with large storehouses and public buildings...was all of fire at one time, the flames shooting up for hundreds of feet into the air."
Lt. Samuel Storrow watched in fascination the "great tongues of fire leaping up into the air" and marvelled at the sight of "whole blocks falling in with a crash that sent a fiery cloud of ciders up, up, up, till they seemed to mingle with the stars."
In the midst of this grand and tragic display, the evening's festivities went from the sublime to the ridiculous as the band of the 33rd Massachusetts struck up some tunes for the occasion, which Morse likened to "fiddling over the burning of Rome."
By dawn, over 200 acres of Atlanta had been reduced to ashes. While Capt. Dan Oakey could imagine how he would feel if Boston were put to the torch--war was war, and he agreed wholeheartedly with Sherman's decision that nothing could be left "for the use or advatage of the enemy." Although Samuel Storrow viewed the burning as "one of the terrific aspects of grim-visaged war," he charged that the refusal of the rebel army to surrender had sealed Atlanta's fate. "We had no other alternative, and this shows the mercy of Sherman's order, depopulating the place." It is doubtful that the citizens of Atlanta would have appreciated Storrow's reasoning. Still, Morse insisted that General Slocum had ordered out large patrols "to protect the dwellings and other private property of the few citizens remaining in the city."
Morse was one of the last Union men to leave Atlanta. And as he turned his back on the smoking ruins of Atlanta on the evening of 16 November, he noted that nothing was left of the proud city except "its churches, the City Hall and private dwellings." The sight was a sobering one. The exhileration of the previous night gone. "It was melancholy, but it was war prosecuted in deadly earnest."
Once again, the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry was on the march. With no base of supplies, no lines of communication,and completely cut off from the rest of the world. The nay-sayers and non-believers suggested that Sherman had gone in the head again, that his army would be either destroyed or slowly bled to death by the roving bands of rebel guerrillas. But the men of the Second never questioned their commander's judgement. They would cheerfully follow Uncle Billy into Hell.
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