Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum here. In eighteen sixty four, during the Civil War, General William Sherman stomped through the United States South, marching his Union army across Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean. He demoralized the Confederation and wreaked havoc on their supply chain in one of the most decisive campaigns of the war.
But in the late eighteen hundreds, a businessman from Georgia wanted people to believe that Sherman had lost the Battle of Atlanta, and he used a spectacular piece of artwork to try to spin the story into a Confederate win. His name was Paul Atkinson. Atkinson was something of a marketing maven and the son of a Confederate soldier. He purchased this artwork, a cyclorama called the Battle of Atlanta in eighteen ninety one, and reinterpreted several scenes to then
promote the painting as a win for the Confederates. Cycloramas were hugely popular in the eighteen hundreds. These massive pieces of art were typically housed in big buildings so that viewers could stand on platforms and be completely surrounded by it. The painting's horizons were at eye level and skylines were painted to achieve depth of field, while lower portions sometimes incorporated physical figurines and other items as part of ground
floor dioramas. This helped to achieve an overall three dimensional effect. Atkinson took out an advertisement in an Atlanta newspaper in eighteen ninety two urging people to buy tickets to come see the painting that proved the valor of the Confederate soldiers in their victory. This historic battle was not a Confederate victory, of course, A Sherman and the Union practically burned Atlanta to the ground. To this day, our city's
seal features of Phoenix rising from the ashes. But Atkinson got away with his ideological spin for decades with the help of bitter Southerners clinging to the Lost Cause, which is an ideology that permeated the South, saying that the Civil War was fought to preserve its culture in general,
and not slavery in particular. The story of the Battle of Atlanta cyclorama began when the American Panorama Company commissioned a team of seventeen German and Austrian painters in Milwaukee to create this massive painting as a tribute to Union veterans. The painters traveled to Atlanta, made sketches of the landscape where the center of the Battle of Atlanta took place, and interviewed Union survivors. The cyclorama was painted in eighteen
eighty five and premiered in eighteen eighty six. It attracted adoring crowds in Minneapolis and then Indianapolis. It is hugh It measures forty nine feet tall by three hundred and seventy one feet long, and weighs some ten thousand pounds in metric that's about twenty by one hundred and thirteen meters and over forty five hundred kilos. The painters were instructed to take the battle on July twenty second of
eighteen sixty four and freeze it for history. This part of the painting shows a fierce fight on the rail line just outside of Atlanta that hadn't yet turned into victory for the Union. The Union had set up a trench line, but the Confederates had broken through. There were skirmishes with bayonets flashing and horses mortally wounded. There were heroic figures on both sides The painting was purposefully created in a way that showed drama a fight yet to
be decided. But by eighteen ninety the entertainment value of the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama had worn off in the North, and the owners declared bankruptcy. In stepped Atkinson, whose four brothers had fought in the Battle of Atlanta along with their father. Atkinson had been too young to fight, but in the painting he saw a way to memorialize his family and the South. He bought the cyclorama at a low price and moved it to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and began
to rewrite history. As we said, the original creators didn't paint the battle in a way that showed a decisive win, and Atkinson was able to use that to his advantage. He hired his own team of painters to make a few simple changes that turned the entire narrative around. In one scene that depicts captured Confederates in gray being taken prisoner by Union soldiers in blue, and a Union soldier holding a crumpled Confederate flag, his team simply repainted the
soldier's uniforms. The imprisoned soldiers were now in Union blue and being herded by Confederate rebels, and that Confederate a flag in the hands of the Union was simply painted over. Atkinson's skill as a promoter did the rest to spin this new narrative. He moved the painting to Atlanta in eighteen ninety two, upon which local newspaper, The Atlanta Constitution,
proclaimed it the only Confederate victory ever painted. However, some Southerners embraced Atkinson's painting because it proved the South had fought valiantly to preserve its way of life. The Cyclorama became a monument to revered Confederate leaders, just like the statues popping up around the South, but eventually crowds thinned
in Atlanta, just as they had in the North. On November fifteenth of eighteen ninety two, in a last desperate attempt to make some money, Atkinson ran another advertisement in the newspaper, again proclaiming a Southern win, but his show had gone bankrupt by the end of the year. For decades, the Cyclorama continued to remain a symbol of the lost Cause, but that was also part of its downfall. Many' souther
nurse did not embrace this ideology. Eventually Atkinson sold the painting to Ernest Woodruff, another local businessman, who immediately resold it for a small profit. The piece was finally moved to Atlanta's Grant Park, where it remained until twenty fourteen. But meanwhile, in nineteen thirty four, then Atlanta Mayor William Hartsfield co opted the epic painting for his own use.
He commissioned historian and painter Wilburg Kurtz to restore the painting to its original form as part of a branding campaign for the city. Hartsfield's message was here's how we suffered, Here's how we have risen from the ashes. The mayor declared that the painting shows the valor of both sides, the North and the South, and that it was time to come together. A Kertz researched original drawings from the
eighteen eighth and discovered Atkinson's edits. He repainted the Union soldiers back in command of the captured Confederates and returned the captured Confederate flag, and just like that, the North won the Battle of Atlanta again. Kurtz's work also included creating plaster figurines like the ones that would have originally
been displayed with the work at ground level. I bring this up because when the film Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta, Mayor Hartsfield took actor Clark Gable on a tour of the cyclorama, and soon after, at Gable's request, there was a diaryma figurine of his character, a dying reht Butler added to the scene at the base of the painting. Anyway, in twenty fourteen, the Atlanta History Center undertook another monumental restoration effort to bring the painting back
to display. For the article this episode is based on, has Stuff Work spoke with Gordon Jones, the senior military historian and curator at the Atlanta History Center. He said, You've got this wonderful artifact, with this wonderful, rich, deep history that can tell you a whole lot about the nation's history and Atlanta's history and the history of race, and those stories are not being told. Let's treat it as an artifact and learn from it. We don't have
to make up stuff. Let's be honest and tell people the truth. That's what they expect out of a museum. The thirty five million dollar restoration campaign included moving the painting from Grant Park to its own specially built rotunda at the Atlanta History Center. The History Center used a multitude of resources to interpret the painting in the context of the battle itself, the Civil War as a whole, the role of slavery within it, the reconstruction era, and
how the country was divided Today. The Battle of Atlanta is one of only two cycloramas from that era on display in North America. The other is the Battle of Gettysburg, located in Pennsylvania. But the value of the Battle of Atlanta cyclorama goes well beyond money and its pull on crowds. The real value may be a lesson in how Americans can interpret and freestyle with facts to satisfy their own
view of the world. Today's episode is based on the article how Atlanta's cyclorama was used to spin the Civil War on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Ray Glear. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.