The Battle of Atlanta (The U.S. Civil War) cyclorama

We're in the Atlanta History Center in an enormous, round room on a high platform surrounded by a 50-foot tall painting that encircles the platform. It's a cyclorama. It's amazing. So amazing that hundreds of thousands of people turned up to see it as it traveled through various cities in the United States, and this is only one of many cycloramas that were popular among the public in the late 19th century. These were entrepreneurial endeavors. People paid admission to come see this. It was meant, in this case, to put you in the center of the Battle of Atlanta. This is one of only two surviving cycloramas in the United States. The other is of the Battle of Gettysburg. So they both depict critical moments in the Civil War. Many people, in fact, point to the Battle of Atlanta as a critical turning point. The North had been able to take many of the South's industrial centers, but Atlanta remained, and this painting depicts General Sherman's attempt with the U.S. Army to take Atlanta. But the moment that's chosen, a very precise moment, 445 in the afternoon, is a moment in a day-long battle that could move either way, and it's important to understand that this painting was made by 17 German artists in the northern city of Milwaukee for a northern audience initially, and what's being depicted is the U.S. troops rushing forward to close their lines and to take back the land that had been lost. Ultimately, they would be victorious. At this point, the American public in the North especially has grown tired of the war and the casualties and the expenses, and so a victory at this moment was incredibly important for President Lincoln. Well, he was about to stand for re-election, and he might lose that election if he couldn't certainly point to a quick conclusion to the war, but this battle provided that. As we come up the escalator, the first scene that we're confronted with is the heat of a battle on top of a hill surrounding a brick house. The red house is immediately surrounded by Confederate troops that had just recently taken it, and you can see why this house is so important because this was the location of a battery of artillery, and you can see just to the right of the house, four cannon. And as we look closely at the house, we see the damage done to the house by the fighting, we see figures shooting from the house, we see smoke emerging. The Union troops are rushing in to close their line, but they have to displace these Confederate soldiers, which is no easy feat. And as we pull back and our eye takes more in, we see smoke coming from the horizon all around us. Since the 1930s, the cyclorama has not only included the painting itself, but also figures made of plaster that blend in with the painting beyond. What that does is merge our space with the space of the painting and makes it even more magical and immersive. It is so vivid. Throughout the painting, in every direction, we see bravery and heroism and pain and suffering and wounded figures. You have this over-the-top representation of warfare. This was a commercial enterprise, and the idea was to be as vivid, as emotionally powerful as possible, but also to get every detail right. The German painters came to Atlanta not once but twice in order to ensure their accuracy. They interviewed Confederate soldiers. They went to the site of the battle. In fact, they built a wooden tower that was the height of where we are standing now so that they could get the perspective correct. And if we look to the west, we see the young city of Atlanta. If we look to the east, we can see Stone Mountain. And so these landmarks would have spoken to the veracity of this scene. So much of what we're seeing is taken from a tradition of battle painting that goes back to the 17th century, the 18th century. We can think of images of Napoleon's battles. And so the line between serious, heroic, academic painting and this very popular imagery is coming undone in the 19th century. In the years after the rebels lost the Civil War, a mythology developed that has come to be known as the Lost Cause. This was to create a heroic narrative for the South that it was simply defending its way of life, defending its dignity, with no mention of the institution of slavery. It was critical at that point to give the impression not of a Union victory but of Southern glory and a moment of Southern heroism so that the painting could be read, if one didn't look too closely, as a victory for the South. A victory for the rebels. And so you can imagine that when an entrepreneur bought this painting and wanted to bring it to Atlanta, some changes needed to be made. And so the painting was partially repainted. At one section, you can see a group of ragtag figures. These are soldiers that have been captured. Originally, these had been Confederate soldiers. But when the painting was to be shown in the South, these figures were repainted so that they could be read as U.S. soldiers that had been captured. And of course, this is all meant to make this more palatable to an Atlanta audience. There are conspicuous absences in this painting. There is only one black man. There are no women. And so it is a very selective portrayal and one that some historians have critiqued as being very much a product of a moment in the late 19th century when there was an effort to heroicize both sides and to portray white male brotherhood as more important than the issue of slavery, which was so central to the Civil War.