September 2 is the anniversary of the fall of Atlanta during the Civil War

On September 2, 1864, the mayor of Atlanta surrendered the city to Union forces, with the Confederate troops under General Hood having withdrawn without a fight. Two years earlier, Confederate troops under General Heth had made a feint to Cincinnati, but withdrew without a fight, leaving Cincinnati intact.

There are probably a lot more people who remember the taking of Atlanta in 1864 than the demonstration in front of Cincinnati in 1862, probably informed in part by the current relative sizes of the cities.

However, the census of 1860 tells a different story of relative importance at the time. Cincinnati, of population 161,044 and the seventh largest US city, was only slightly smaller than New Orleans ( 168,675 ) , which was the most populated city in the Confederacy. Covington, KY, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati had a population of 16,471. In contrast, Atlanta of population 9,554 was only the 99th most populated city in the US, and smaller in size than, for example, New Brunswick or Hoboken, New Jersey.

Atlanta was a rail center, but Savannah ( 22,292 ) had more people, but only slightly larger than Salem, Massachusetts (22,252 ).