WEBVTT - How Did Art Help Spin the Civil War?

0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:07.840
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren

0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:13.600
<v Speaker 1>Vogelbaum here. In eighteen sixty four, during the Civil War,

0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:18.560
<v Speaker 1>General William Sherman stomped through the United States South, marching

0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:23.040
<v Speaker 1>his Union army across Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean. He

0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:26.880
<v Speaker 1>demoralized the Confederation and wreaked havoc on their supply chain

0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:29.520
<v Speaker 1>in one of the most decisive campaigns of the war.

0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:35.040
<v Speaker 1>But in the late eighteen hundreds, a businessman from Georgia

0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:38.320
<v Speaker 1>wanted people to believe that Sherman had lost the Battle

0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:42.440
<v Speaker 1>of Atlanta, and he used a spectacular piece of artwork

0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.199
<v Speaker 1>to try to spin the story into a Confederate win.

0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:51.320
<v Speaker 1>His name was Paul Atkinson. Atkinson was something of a

0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:55.480
<v Speaker 1>marketing maven and the son of a Confederate soldier. He

0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:58.920
<v Speaker 1>purchased this artwork, a cyclorama called the Battle of Atlanta

0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:03.639
<v Speaker 1>in eighteen ninety one, and reinterpreted several scenes to then

0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:08.960
<v Speaker 1>promote the painting as a win for the Confederates. Cycloramas

0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:13.400
<v Speaker 1>were hugely popular in the eighteen hundreds. These massive pieces

0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.440
<v Speaker 1>of art were typically housed in big buildings so that

0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.080
<v Speaker 1>viewers could stand on platforms and be completely surrounded by it.

0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:24.560
<v Speaker 1>The painting's horizons were at eye level and skylines were

0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:28.560
<v Speaker 1>painted to achieve depth of field, while lower portions sometimes

0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:32.120
<v Speaker 1>incorporated physical figurines and other items as part of ground

0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:37.000
<v Speaker 1>floor dioramas. This helped to achieve an overall three dimensional effect.

0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:42.360
<v Speaker 1>Atkinson took out an advertisement in an Atlanta newspaper in

0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:45.479
<v Speaker 1>eighteen ninety two urging people to buy tickets to come

0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.560
<v Speaker 1>see the painting that proved the valor of the Confederate

0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:54.520
<v Speaker 1>soldiers in their victory. This historic battle was not a

0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:58.600
<v Speaker 1>Confederate victory, of course, A Sherman and the Union practically

0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:02.200
<v Speaker 1>burned Atlanta to the ground. To this day, our city's

0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:06.520
<v Speaker 1>seal features of Phoenix rising from the ashes. But Atkinson

0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:10.320
<v Speaker 1>got away with his ideological spin for decades with the

0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:14.399
<v Speaker 1>help of bitter Southerners clinging to the Lost Cause, which

0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.560
<v Speaker 1>is an ideology that permeated the South, saying that the

0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.480
<v Speaker 1>Civil War was fought to preserve its culture in general,

0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:26.519
<v Speaker 1>and not slavery in particular. The story of the Battle

0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:31.040
<v Speaker 1>of Atlanta cyclorama began when the American Panorama Company commissioned

0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:34.639
<v Speaker 1>a team of seventeen German and Austrian painters in Milwaukee

0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.800
<v Speaker 1>to create this massive painting as a tribute to Union veterans.

0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.320
<v Speaker 1>The painters traveled to Atlanta, made sketches of the landscape

0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:45.600
<v Speaker 1>where the center of the Battle of Atlanta took place,

0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:50.840
<v Speaker 1>and interviewed Union survivors. The cyclorama was painted in eighteen

0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:54.639
<v Speaker 1>eighty five and premiered in eighteen eighty six. It attracted

0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:59.880
<v Speaker 1>adoring crowds in Minneapolis and then Indianapolis. It is hugh

0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:03.520
<v Speaker 1>It measures forty nine feet tall by three hundred and

0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:06.959
<v Speaker 1>seventy one feet long, and weighs some ten thousand pounds

0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.200
<v Speaker 1>in metric that's about twenty by one hundred and thirteen

0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:15.880
<v Speaker 1>meters and over forty five hundred kilos. The painters were

0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.720
<v Speaker 1>instructed to take the battle on July twenty second of

0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:23.760
<v Speaker 1>eighteen sixty four and freeze it for history. This part

0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:26.360
<v Speaker 1>of the painting shows a fierce fight on the rail

0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:29.679
<v Speaker 1>line just outside of Atlanta that hadn't yet turned into

0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:32.680
<v Speaker 1>victory for the Union. The Union had set up a

0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:36.120
<v Speaker 1>trench line, but the Confederates had broken through. There were

0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:41.080
<v Speaker 1>skirmishes with bayonets flashing and horses mortally wounded. There were

0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:46.800
<v Speaker 1>heroic figures on both sides The painting was purposefully created

0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:49.680
<v Speaker 1>in a way that showed drama a fight yet to

0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:54.640
<v Speaker 1>be decided. But by eighteen ninety the entertainment value of

0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.800
<v Speaker 1>the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama had worn off in the North,

0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:03.640
<v Speaker 1>and the owners declared bankruptcy. In stepped Atkinson, whose four

0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:06.120
<v Speaker 1>brothers had fought in the Battle of Atlanta along with

0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:10.240
<v Speaker 1>their father. Atkinson had been too young to fight, but

0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.400
<v Speaker 1>in the painting he saw a way to memorialize his

0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.960
<v Speaker 1>family and the South. He bought the cyclorama at a

0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.880
<v Speaker 1>low price and moved it to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and began

0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:25.839
<v Speaker 1>to rewrite history. As we said, the original creators didn't

0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:28.200
<v Speaker 1>paint the battle in a way that showed a decisive win,

0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.240
<v Speaker 1>and Atkinson was able to use that to his advantage.

0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:34.719
<v Speaker 1>He hired his own team of painters to make a

0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:39.400
<v Speaker 1>few simple changes that turned the entire narrative around. In

0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:43.320
<v Speaker 1>one scene that depicts captured Confederates in gray being taken

0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:46.960
<v Speaker 1>prisoner by Union soldiers in blue, and a Union soldier

0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:51.479
<v Speaker 1>holding a crumpled Confederate flag, his team simply repainted the

0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:56.000
<v Speaker 1>soldier's uniforms. The imprisoned soldiers were now in Union blue

0:04:56.279 --> 0:05:00.120
<v Speaker 1>and being herded by Confederate rebels, and that Confederate a

0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.160
<v Speaker 1>flag in the hands of the Union was simply painted over.

0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:08.640
<v Speaker 1>Atkinson's skill as a promoter did the rest to spin

0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.919
<v Speaker 1>this new narrative. He moved the painting to Atlanta in

0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:16.039
<v Speaker 1>eighteen ninety two, upon which local newspaper, The Atlanta Constitution,

0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:22.320
<v Speaker 1>proclaimed it the only Confederate victory ever painted. However, some

0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:26.719
<v Speaker 1>Southerners embraced Atkinson's painting because it proved the South had

0:05:26.720 --> 0:05:30.800
<v Speaker 1>fought valiantly to preserve its way of life. The Cyclorama

0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:34.200
<v Speaker 1>became a monument to revered Confederate leaders, just like the

0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:39.920
<v Speaker 1>statues popping up around the South, but eventually crowds thinned

0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:43.240
<v Speaker 1>in Atlanta, just as they had in the North. On

0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:46.640
<v Speaker 1>November fifteenth of eighteen ninety two, in a last desperate

0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:50.200
<v Speaker 1>attempt to make some money, Atkinson ran another advertisement in

0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:54.280
<v Speaker 1>the newspaper, again proclaiming a Southern win, but his show

0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:59.160
<v Speaker 1>had gone bankrupt by the end of the year. For decades,

0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:02.880
<v Speaker 1>the Cyclorama continued to remain a symbol of the lost Cause,

0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:06.960
<v Speaker 1>but that was also part of its downfall. Many' souther

0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:12.520
<v Speaker 1>nurse did not embrace this ideology. Eventually Atkinson sold the

0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:17.080
<v Speaker 1>painting to Ernest Woodruff, another local businessman, who immediately resold

0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:20.400
<v Speaker 1>it for a small profit. The piece was finally moved

0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.960
<v Speaker 1>to Atlanta's Grant Park, where it remained until twenty fourteen.

0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:30.080
<v Speaker 1>But meanwhile, in nineteen thirty four, then Atlanta Mayor William

0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:33.440
<v Speaker 1>Hartsfield co opted the epic painting for his own use.

0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:37.680
<v Speaker 1>He commissioned historian and painter Wilburg Kurtz to restore the

0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.520
<v Speaker 1>painting to its original form as part of a branding

0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:45.760
<v Speaker 1>campaign for the city. Hartsfield's message was here's how we suffered,

0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:49.600
<v Speaker 1>Here's how we have risen from the ashes. The mayor

0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:52.400
<v Speaker 1>declared that the painting shows the valor of both sides,

0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:54.960
<v Speaker 1>the North and the South, and that it was time

0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:59.480
<v Speaker 1>to come together. A Kertz researched original drawings from the

0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:03.839
<v Speaker 1>eighteen eighth and discovered Atkinson's edits. He repainted the Union

0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.000
<v Speaker 1>soldiers back in command of the captured Confederates and returned

0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:11.720
<v Speaker 1>the captured Confederate flag, and just like that, the North

0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:17.240
<v Speaker 1>won the Battle of Atlanta again. Kurtz's work also included

0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:20.560
<v Speaker 1>creating plaster figurines like the ones that would have originally

0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.120
<v Speaker 1>been displayed with the work at ground level. I bring

0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:26.920
<v Speaker 1>this up because when the film Gone with the Wind

0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:30.920
<v Speaker 1>premiered in Atlanta, Mayor Hartsfield took actor Clark Gable on

0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:35.240
<v Speaker 1>a tour of the cyclorama, and soon after, at Gable's request,

0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.720
<v Speaker 1>there was a diaryma figurine of his character, a dying

0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.160
<v Speaker 1>reht Butler added to the scene at the base of

0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:48.120
<v Speaker 1>the painting. Anyway, in twenty fourteen, the Atlanta History Center

0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:52.360
<v Speaker 1>undertook another monumental restoration effort to bring the painting back

0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:56.240
<v Speaker 1>to display. For the article this episode is based on,

0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.600
<v Speaker 1>has Stuff Work spoke with Gordon Jones, the senior military

0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.559
<v Speaker 1>historian and curator at the Atlanta History Center. He said,

0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:07.880
<v Speaker 1>You've got this wonderful artifact, with this wonderful, rich, deep

0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:10.240
<v Speaker 1>history that can tell you a whole lot about the

0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.760
<v Speaker 1>nation's history and Atlanta's history and the history of race,

0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.600
<v Speaker 1>and those stories are not being told. Let's treat it

0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:20.400
<v Speaker 1>as an artifact and learn from it. We don't have

0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.119
<v Speaker 1>to make up stuff. Let's be honest and tell people

0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:26.680
<v Speaker 1>the truth. That's what they expect out of a museum.

0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:32.160
<v Speaker 1>The thirty five million dollar restoration campaign included moving the

0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:35.760
<v Speaker 1>painting from Grant Park to its own specially built rotunda

0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:39.400
<v Speaker 1>at the Atlanta History Center. The History Center used a

0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:43.520
<v Speaker 1>multitude of resources to interpret the painting in the context

0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.320
<v Speaker 1>of the battle itself, the Civil War as a whole,

0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:50.520
<v Speaker 1>the role of slavery within it, the reconstruction era, and

0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:54.600
<v Speaker 1>how the country was divided Today. The Battle of Atlanta

0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.960
<v Speaker 1>is one of only two cycloramas from that era on

0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:01.760
<v Speaker 1>display in North America. The other is the Battle of Gettysburg,

0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:07.080
<v Speaker 1>located in Pennsylvania. But the value of the Battle of

0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:11.520
<v Speaker 1>Atlanta cyclorama goes well beyond money and its pull on crowds.

0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:15.400
<v Speaker 1>The real value may be a lesson in how Americans

0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:19.600
<v Speaker 1>can interpret and freestyle with facts to satisfy their own

0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:26.959
<v Speaker 1>view of the world. Today's episode is based on the

0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.480
<v Speaker 1>article how Atlanta's cyclorama was used to spin the Civil

0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.480
<v Speaker 1>War on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Ray Glear.

0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:37.559
<v Speaker 1>Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot

0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.840
<v Speaker 1>Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts

0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:44.079
<v Speaker 1>from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:46.000
<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.