If you look carefully at these photographs of buildings in occupied Atlanta, you will see many posters and announcements pasted up on the outside walls. Most of these are illegible, due to the angle or distances at which they were photographed - but the sharp eye will detect some with distinct features.

They are all the same, hand-lettered with words that curl and loop around one another in a decorative way. Those few which can be read advertise concerts or plays or other entertainments, some of which were benefit performances, all planned and executed by the regimental band of the 33rd Massachusetts. One of these events, curiously enough, was scheduled for Election Day, when Abraham Lincoln was re-elected and the fate of the Confederacy sealed.

Who were these concerts supposed to benefit? Apparently they were for a Confederate widow left destitute by the war, trapped in Atlanta and responsible for the raising of at least five children, four of whom were not her own. It is a very interesting story, showing how the soldiers occupying Atlanta amused themselves while they were not pulling down buildings or destroying the city's railroad infrastructure. It is also a story that few people seem to know, which I have teased out through various accounts, often contradictory, told by soldiers who participated in Atlanta's occupation.

Let's start, however, with the posters themselves. At the top of the illustration to the right, you can see excerpts from three photographs (actually, halves of stereographs) in which the posters are most legible. The first is of the Atlanta Intelligencer building at the crossing of Whitehall Street and the Railroad Gulch; the second is the northeastern corner of Whitehall and Alabama streets and the third is the southwestern corner of the same intersection. Together, they advertise three separate events: one on Nov. 5, one on Nov. 8 and another on Nov. 10.

In Picture One, there are actually four posters on the wall of the Intelligencer Building, separated into two sets: three posters are in a group pasted over one another while the fourth poster is a single sheet that extends down to the sidewalk.

In the pasted-over set, the topmost poster reads:

Wentworth's
The New American Hercules
W --
Tonight Nov. 8
-- Hall

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 1864, was of course Election Day and probably a day off for the soldiers who voted in the field.

The third poster in this set wraps around the corner of the building and partially obscures the "Hercules" poster. The only legible portions of this poster seem to make reference to the Atheneum and the date Nov. 8th. Below this set is a single sheet poster which is almost entirely visible:

Benefit
- Night
- of
(Israe)I Smith
Leader of the Band
of the 33rd Mass.
The laugh(able)
pantomime (?) of the
(Cobb)lers Frolic
at the
Atheneum
?
Saturday
Nov 5t(h)

This separate benefit event three days before Election Day featured Israel Smith of New Bedford, Mass., whose leadership of the 33rd Mass. Regimental Band had made the band a superstar within the Federal army. The unit was frequently dispatched to provide entertainment for officers and men, even to units which had their own regimental bands.

Picture Two shows two posters mounted on the wall of the James Bank Building at the northeast corner of Whitehall and Alabama streets. The one on the left apparently makes reference to the same "Wentworth" mentioned in the previous picture, while the one on the right is for an event on Nov. 10 - the day Sherman left Kingston, Ga., and the "March to the Sea" officially began.

The poster on the left reads:

"Wentworth and West
The Black Joker
at
Hayden Hall
Tonight Nov. 8"

The one on the right reads:

"At the Athene(um)
Great Attraction
Pantomimes
Thursday Night
Nov. 10th"

Finally, in Picture Three, we see a poster pasted around one of the iron columns of Markham's "Iron Front" building, the former Parr's Hall at the southeast corner of Alabama and Whitehall. It appears to read:

(entertai)nment
(at?) The
(Atheneu)m
(every Every
night) Night
(of the) Week

The rest of the photos in the illustration show how prolific the posters were across town. So the question is - what were they all about? Here is what I have been able to piece together.

It all begins with Lt. Col. William Gates Le Duc, quartermaster general, who had set up either a residence or an office in the Richard Lyons House on Washington Street, a private residence being used as staff headquarters. Sherman had made his headquarters at the house about Sept. 7 and immediately launched his plan to evacuate all civilians from Atlanta and destroy the city's industries and railroads. Sherman and Le Duc were old acquaintances, but author Adam Scher, who edited the Colonel's memoirs, reckons the two men had a falling out after Sherman chose someone else for the post of chief quartermaster for his Army. That antagonism flaired again over Sherman's policy toward's Atlanta's

civilians, against which Le Duc - a civilian soldier who had been deeply affected by his war experiences - took a strong stand. Perhaps he was not the only one.

Between Sept. 11 and 16, some 446 families, about 1,600 people had left the city. Not long afterward, Sherman himself left the city in pursuit of Hood. But civilians did not stay out of the city, either due to their own conivance or with the silent assent of the officers Sherman had left behind to garrison and destroy the city.

One such person was Mrs. George W. Adair, wife of the publisher of The Southern Confederacy, who apparently remained in her home in the West End, who was giving shelter to two Confederate widows, Mrs. Rebecca S. Welch, who had two children, and Mrs. Welch's sister, with four children and who was extremely ill. According to a 1947 article in the Atlanta Historical Bulletin, a Federal orderly appeared at the Adair home during the evacuation truce because Mrs. Adair still had two cows in her backyard. The article states the orderly had come for milk to give to a sick lady; specifically the wife of a "Gen. Le Duc" who "had come from Ohio to visit her husband." Shortly therafter, the article states, Le Duc "in gratitude" sponsored concerts by Mrs. Welch whom he discovered to be "a brillant pianist."

That's one story, published in a trusted source of Atlanta history. Then there is another story from Le Duc's own memoirs:

"I went into the city, and took a room in the house of Judge Lyon. It was a large brick house, on a corner. A door in the middle gave entrance to a wide hall. On the left was a reception room, and on the right a large double parlor. I set up my desk in the reception room, and was busy with my work until after nine o'clock. Hearing some piano playing and singing in the parlor, I stepped across the hall and stood by the open door listening to the music made by a little lady, dressed in black, seated at the piano. She commenced to sing "Maryland, My Maryland." "

Quite apart from the fact that singing was itself a remarkable act for a woman in mourning, the song itself - considered pro-Confederate - was highly provocative in a town full of soldiers who felt themselves on a crusade against secession. Le Duc began to worry that some passing soldiers might hear the singing and stone the building. The Colonel sent a little girl over to tell the woman she must not sing the song, and the woman stood up and said angrily, "I did not wish to sing it - your officers here insisted upon it!" Le Duc rebuked the officers and the impromptu concert was ended.

Some 20 years after these memoirs were published, Le Duc gave another version of his meeting with Mrs. Welch in a letter written in 1910 to Forrest Adair, son of George W., whose pregnant mother was eventually sent to Rough and Ready, where and when Forrest was born.

Le Duc wrote that Mrs. Welch's sister had died just before Le Duc had arrived in the city and, since no Chaplain was present, he presided over the woman's funeral, reading from the Masonic burial service. The 1947 Historical Bulletin article agrees on this, and other sources make it clear that Mrs. Welch's husband was big in Masonic circles. Le Duc's letter states that Mrs. Welch, a widow, was now responsible for her sister's four children, as well as her own two children. She was clearly in distress, but Le Duc said he had heard the woman sing. Knowing the quality of her voice, he persuaded her to try a concert to raise money for her benefit.

Le Duc writes that announcements for this first benefit concert were published on a small press used at the staff headquarters to print general orders, and that repairs were made to the roof of the Atheneum, which had been damaged by the artillery barrage, so the building could provide a venue for the event. The concert - which Le Duc says was attended by Sherman and other officers - was a tremendous success.

 

 

That should have been enough, by any standard, for any one person's benefit - yet Le Duc wrote that he arranged another concert, but turned over all the arrangements to the officers of the 33rd Massachusetts so that he could return to Ohio on leave to visit his wife.

There were more events, according to the regimental historian of the 33rd Mass., who asserts that it was Sherman who came up with the idea of a concert to benefit the very needful Mrs. Welch. This "Vocal and Instrumental Concert, " the historian states, was held on Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. at the Atheneum. Two of the performers were listed as "Mrs. Welch" and "Miss Welch." Tickets for event cost $1, a fee which would admit "a gentleman or a gentleman and a lady."

This presents some unanswereed questions. What Ladies should there have been in a town that Sherman had ordered depopulated of its civilians? Neither Le Duc or any other source explains this discrepancy. Nor do they explain what happpened to the money raised at these events, not all of which were for Mrs. Welch.

The 33rd's historian records that a play called "The Cobbler's Frolic" was added for the Oct. 29 show (and evidently repeated Nov. 5 [Picture 1]). Programs for the show were then printed on "old blank discharge papers":

That same regimental historian identifies A.P. Hazard (Arthur P. Hazard, bugler and musician from Co. D, per the National Park Service "Sodiers and Sailors" database) as the performances' "musician, author, actor, stage manager, printer, bill poster and property man, "so perhaps he is the man who went all over town putting up the posters.

As noted earlier, the show for Nov. 8 refer to a performer whose name was "Wentworth." The only person named Wentworth in the 33rd Mass was Pvt. John Wentworth of Co. F. By this time another "pantomime" or play had been added to the repertoire: "The New American Hercules." That show apparently did not, like the rest, take place at the Atheneum, but at a venue called "Hayden Hall, " which I have not identified.

The last performance - the "Great Attraction" scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 10 at the Atheneum - was probably the last festive event given in the city during the occupation, in fact the last such event before the old city would disappear forever. Four days afterward, Sherman arrived back in Atlanta and divided his Army into two separate wings for the historic "March to the Sea." By November 16, Sherman and his Army had left the city, with much of downtown - including the Atheneum - destroyed by fire.

SOURCES

“History of West End, 1830-1910,” by Cornelia E. Cooper, Atlanta Historical Bulletin, Vol. VIII, Jan. 1947, No. 31, pp 65-85.
"Concert After Atlanta Fell," the Atlanta Journal Magazine, Nov. 6, 1927
"This Business of War: The Recollections of a Civil War Quartermaster," By William Gates Le Duc, Edited by Adam Scher (page 127)
Private conversation with Adam Scher, Vice President of Operations, The American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar Ironworks in Richmond Virginia, October 15, 2009
"The Three Years' Service of the Thirty-Third. Mass. Infantry Regiment, 1862-1865) And the Campaigns and Battles of Chancellorsville, Beverly's Ford, Gettysburg, Wauhatchie, Chattanooga, Atlanta, The March to the Sea and Through the Carolinas, In Which It Took Part," By Adin B. Underwood, former Colonel of the Regiment, Brig. Gen. and Brevet Maj. Gen., U.S. V., published in Boston 1881.