THE BURNING OF ROME, GA.
November 11, 1864.
“Rome was evacuated at ten o’clock this forenoon by our (U. S.) forces; but not until the Etowah House, a respectable three-story brick hotel was consumed by fire. Stragglers managed to ignite a lot of straw in the building, and, there being no engines in the town, it was impossible to subdue the flames. A block of fine brick stores was also wantonly destroyed by skulking stragglers. All the barracks were laid in ashes, and a black veil of dark smoke hung over the war-desolated city all day, arising from the smouldering ruins. Owing to the great lack of railroad transportation, General Corse was obliged to destroy nearly a million of dollars’ worth of property, among which was a few thousand dollars’ worth of condemned and unserviceable government stores. Nine rebel guns, captured at Rome by our troops, were burst, it being deemed unsafe to use them. One thousand bales of fine cotton, two flour mills, two rolling mills, two tanneries, one salt mill, an extensive foundry, several machine shops, together with the railroad depots and storehouses, four pontoon bridges, built by General Corse’s pioneer corps, for use on the Coosa and Etowah rivers, and a substantial trestle bridge nearly completed for use, were completely destroyed. This trestle, constructed by the engineer corps, I am told, would have cost fifty thousand dollars north. Recollecting the outrages perpetrated upon Colonel Streight by the ‘Romans,’ our troops, as soon as they learned that the town was to be abandoned, and a portion of it burned, resolved to lay Rome in ashes in revenge. The roaring of the flames, as they leaped from window to window, their savage tongues of fire darting high up into the heavens, and then licking the sides of the buildings, presented an awful but grand spectacle, while then mounted patrol and the infantry men glided along through the brilliant light, like the ghostly spectres of horrid war.”