Linden Goes Home by Marie Conway Oemler

Over the entire region, through which distracted beings wandered like lost souls, there hung by day a column of smoke and by night a pillar of fire. A calamity that one named Sherman -- a vast, awful blue thundercloud edged with crooked, bright gleams of bayonets -- spread from Atlanta to the sea.

Everybody was running; one's destination did not seem to make much difference, so long as it happened to be somewhere else. Then when one reached somewhere else, folks were flying from there, too; so that women and young children and old men and scared negro servants milled around in a horrid circle of fear.