Requiem for Savannah, Pearl of the South Atlantic Seaboard, loveliest of the antebellum cities of the South. Destroyed by fire in a single night, but not by General Sherman. Three-quarters of the central city razed in eight hours. In the words of the Chief of the Chatham County Fire Department, widely quoted later: “I can fight fire. I can’t fight God.”
Statistics gathered and published later, when no one had any reason to care anymore: Dead of plague in Savannah: 35,400; dead of fire and insurrection: 85,143. An odd figure, that last one, for a footnote to history.
On the night the fire was finally curbed, the President of the United States on national television made a moving speech in honor of “those valiant dead who fell in the City of Savannah, and those valiant living who remain in the health-protection corps throughout the nation, and who pledge to you tonight that the disaster that struck in Savannah will never happen again. I can tell you the plague is curbed there, now, and we are prepared — I repeat, we are fully prepared — to curb it wherever else it may rear its foul head. As your President, I solemnly pledge to you — ”
On the CBS-TV news network, perhaps without precedent in history, the President’s message to the nation was interrupted at this point with an urgent bulletin. “Just moments ago, CBS news has learned from the Centers for Disease Control headquarters in Atlanta that major outbreaks of plague of the same sort that laid waste to Savannah, Georgia, have been confirmed in Charleston, South Carolina; Atlanta; Canton, Ohio; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; New York City; Seattle; and San Francisco. Residents of these cities and others are urged to remain tuned to CBS-TV for the latest bulletins and instructions from your local Public Health Services.”
Hail and farewell, Savannah.