Madison: The Town Sherman Refused to Burn

Madison was incorporated in eighteen oh nine and named for President James Madison. Before the Civil War it was considered the most cultured town on the stagecoach route between Charleston and New Orleans, and the surrounding cotton economy filled it with handsome Federal and Greek Revival houses. When General Sherman's army swept through in eighteen sixty-four on its March to the Sea, Madison was spared the burning that leveled other Georgia towns.

The story goes that a former United States congressman from Madison persuaded Sherman to pass it by. Whether that is entirely true or not, the result is undeniable: Madison emerged from the war with its antebellum architecture intact. It remains one of the best-preserved collections of pre-Civil-War residential architecture in the South.