Photo Credit: George N. Barnard/Library of Congress
Gen. William T. Sherman, leaning on breach of gun, and staff at Federal Fort No. 7 in Atlanta Georgia. George N. Barnard, photographer, 1864.
This photograph of Sherman was taken after three and a half months of incessant maneuvering and much hard fighting. Sherman forced Hood to abandon the munitions center of the Confederacy in Atlanta. Sherman remained there, resting his war-worn men and accumulating supplies, for nearly two and a half months. During the occupation, George N. Barnard, official photographer of the Chief Engineer’s Office, made the best documentary record of the war in the West; but much of what he photographed was destroyed in the fire that spread from the military facilities blown up at Sherman’s departure on November 15.