All the Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign from Peachtree Creek to the City's Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864
192
All the Fighting They Want: The Atlanta Campaign from Peachtree Creek to the City's Surrender, July 18-September 2, 1864
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Overview
John Bell Hood brought a hang-dog look and a hard-fighting spirit to the Army of Tennessee. Once one of the ablest division commanders in the Army of Northern Virginia, he found himself, by the spring of 1864, in the war’s Western Theater. Recently recovered from grievous wounds sustained at Chickamauga, he suddenly found himself thrust into command of the Confederacy’s ill-starred army even as Federals pounded on the door of the Deep South’s greatest untouched city, Atlanta.
His predecessor, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, had failed to stop the advance of armies under Federal commander William T. Sherman, who had pushed and maneuvered his way from Chattanooga, Tennessee, right to Atlanta’s very doorstep. Johnston had been able to do little to stop him.
The crisis could not have been more acute. Hood, an aggressive risk-taker, threw his men into the fray with unprecedented vigor. Sherman welcomed it.
“We’ll give them all the fighting they want,” Sherman said.
He proved a man of his word.
In All the Fighting They Want, Georgia native Steve Davis, the world’s foremost authority on the Atlanta campaign, tells the tale of the last great struggle for the city. His Southern sensibility and his knowledge of the battle, accumulated over a lifetime of living on the ground, make this an indispensable addition to the acclaimed Emerging Civil War Series.
“Military historian Steve Davis vividly presents the last great struggle for the city.” —Midwest Book Review
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611213201 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Savas Beatie |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2019 |
| Series: | Emerging Civil War Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Sales rank: | 786,588 |
| File size: | 13 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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CHAPTER 1
The Summer of '64
In the summer of 1864, the American Civil War entered its third year. Since their opening defeat at Bull Run, Federal forces had won significant victories at Shiloh, Gettysburg, and elsewhere. They had captured Rebel armies at Fort Donelson and Vicksburg, and had seized control of the Mississippi River. They had conquered and were occupying much Southern territory, including three state capitals.
Despite these Northern triumphs, however, the end of the war was nowhere in sight. The Confederate government and much of the Southern citizenry remained determined in their fight for national independence. That spring, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia seemed to be holding Grant's forces at bay outside Richmond and Petersburg, and Confederate troops had defeated Union expeditions in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and Louisiana's Red River.
On the other hand, in Georgia, Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's forces had fought and maneuvered their way through north Georgia and seemed to be on the verge of capturing Atlanta. In mid-July, when Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the Army of Tennessee, could not provide a plan for saving the city or defeating Sherman, President Jefferson Davis relieved him of command. To succeed him the government promoted Lt. Gen. John B. Hood, then leading an infantry corps in Johnston's army. Confederate States Secretary of War James A. Seddon spelled out to Hood his task: find a way to defeat the enemy in battle, send his cavalry to cut Sherman's railroad supply line — do anything he could, in other words, to save Atlanta.
Both sides considered the city important. Reflecting this, Confederate engineers had begun constructing a fortified perimeter around the city more than a year before Sherman approached it. Yet by the time he did, Atlanta's was an importance largely in terms of psychology and morale. The city had been a vital manufacturing center, but much of its heavy machinery had been transported elsewhere as the Yankees approached. It was also a key railroad junction, but Sherman's forces had cut all but one railroad leading into the city (that one, leading south to Macon, supplied Hood's army). Thus Atlanta had become largely symbolic. For Jefferson Davis, holding onto Atlanta would demonstrate Confederate resilience and determination.
For Davis's Northern counterpart, Abraham Lincoln, the capture of Atlanta would have immense political impact. 1864 was a presidential election year in the United States, and Lincoln worried that the Northern people, tired of the war, might vote him out of office. If Sherman could capture Atlanta before the election in November, on the other hand, Lincoln could tell the people he was winning the war. His reelection prospects would be that much stronger.
Southerners realized this, too. In July 1864, the Northern Democratic Party had increasingly come to oppose the war; a number of its key leaders called for an armistice to stop the killing. If a Northern "peace Democrat" were nominated in August and elected in November, Confederates believed — at least hoped — that the new administration might call for a cease-fire. In that case, the secession of the Southern states from the Union would become a de facto reality. In short, a number of people in the Confederacy believed they could win their independence if Lincoln were denied a major battlefield victory — if Robert E. Lee kept Ulysses S. Grant out of Richmond and if John B. Hood kept William T. Sherman out of Atlanta.
CHAPTER 2Hood Takes Command
In a telegram to Hood on July 17, Secretary Seddon acknowledged the steep odds the new army commander faced. "Position, numbers and morale are now with the enemy," Seddon wrote, and indeed they were. After Sherman managed to get a bridgehead on the south bank of the Chattahoochee and forced the Confederates to retreat across the river, Johnston positioned his army several miles to its south. The Southerners dug a seven- or eight-mile line of entrenchments south of Peachtree Creek, a stream running from east to west into the Chattahoochee. The line ran just two miles from the city limits.
Johnston did nothing to contest the Federals' crossing; indeed, he gave Sherman a full week to get his troops to the south bank. On July 17, the day Johnston was relieved, Sherman had his infantry marching toward Atlanta. By the end of the day, Yankees were within five miles of the city's suburbs.
When Hood assumed command on July 18, his army occupied the outer defense line, which Johnston and his chief engineer, Lt. Col. Stephen Presstman, had laid out about the time he was relieved. Hood set his men to working hard to strengthen it, along with the main perimeter of defenses around the city. These fortifications were formidable. A continuous 10-and-a-half-mile circle of entrenchments ringed the city, averaging a mile and a half from the city's edges. To the northwest and northeast, additional works were constructed, so the perimeter eventually ran 12 miles. It included two dozen artillery forts, and abatis, chevaux-de-frise and palisades were set out in front to impede an enemy infantry assault. For forests cut down to provide wood for trench revetments and to clear fields of fire, the C. S. government reimbursed the property owners.
The extensive and formidable defenses of Atlanta were the only factor helping Hood and his army. Otherwise Sherman had the edge. Numbers, as Seddon had stated, especially favored the Federals. In mid-July, Sherman's army invading Georgia really amounted to an army group, consisting of three separate armies.
Largest of them was the army of the Cumberland, commanded by Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas. Consisting of three big corps — the IV, XIV and XX — Thomas's army on June 30 numbered 46,813 infantry officers and men.
Major General James B. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee had previously been Sherman's own command before Sherman had been promoted to lead the Military Division of the Mississippi after Grant was called to Virginia. McPherson's three corps — the XV, XVI and XVII — counted 29,266 infantry on the last day of June.
Smallest contingent of the army group was Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield's "Army of the Ohio," which was really only a single infantry corps — the XXIII — with all of two divisions, 12,007 men.
Sherman's cavalry was organized in four divisions under Kenner Garrard, Edward McCook, Judson Kilpatrick, and George Stoneman. They totaled 12,039 sabers at the start of July. The artillery had 254 guns at the start of the campaign. By this time, the number of men serving them totaled 5,945. Thus Sherman's army group counted 106,070 officers and men as of June 30.
The closest return for Johnston's army is dated July 10. It showed 43,073 infantry officers and men present for duty; 12,379 cavalrymen; and 3,744 in the artillery — totaling 59,196. That meant Johnston had about 56 percent of Sherman's strength. Numerically, the odds against the Confederates were roughly six-to-10.
Morale also favored the Federals. When they reached the Chattahoochee, Sherman had pushed his forces a hundred miles from Chattanooga. Sherman and Johnston had fought in several battles: at Resaca, May 14-15, in the Pickett's Mill/New Hope Church/Dallas area, May 25-28, and at Kennesaw Mountain, June 27, with heavy skirmishes approaching small battles elsewhere. By this time in the war, troops on the defensive always dug in and fortified, so whoever did the attacking was repulsed. Yet after every battle, Sherman had been able to swing McPherson or Schofield around Johnston's flank, forcing Johnston to retreat to yet another position farther to the rear. In withdrawing across the Chattahoochee during the night of July 9-10, Johnston had given up nine different positions since leaving Rocky Face Ridge two months earlier.
Sherman's successes infused his officers and men with buoyant spirit. "Our men are hopeful and cheerful and speak of the summer campaign as being the last," Illinois Sgt. Maj. Lyman Widney wrote home. "They are confident of Grant's success and, too, of our own success, regarded as so certain as that the sun will rise tomorrow morning."
Conversely, while many Confederates remained confident, Johnston's retreating understandably weakened the morale of some of his men. "I don't like giving up so much territory," Capt. Wallace Howard of the 63rd Georgia told another officer as he watched the army march across the Chattahoochee. "It looks to me like the beginning of the end, as though we were going right straight down to the Gulf of Mexico." On July 10, with the army on the south river bank, Capt. W. L. Trask, a Confederate staff officer, recorded in his diary, "we feel much dejected and low spirited at our prospects."
The Confederate retreat to the outskirts of the city scared many Atlantans, who gathered up their belongings as they could, secured transport, and fled. "Everybody seems to be hurrying off," a reporter for the Mobile News observed; "every train of cars is loaded to its utmost capacity."
For his part, Hood could only evince optimism to his troops. "I look with confidence to your patriotism," he announced to the army when he took command from Johnston. All knew, however, they faced a most difficult task keeping Sherman out of Atlanta.
The Union commander already had his plan in mind. He knew from spy reports that Atlanta was strongly fortified, and he knew he would not send his infantry charging against the Rebel works. "I was willing to meet the enemy in the open country," he later explained, "but not behind well-constructed parapets." Nor did he have the manpower to completely surround the Rebels in their works. Sherman determined to force Hood from Atlanta by cutting the several railroads that brought in food and supplies for Hood's army while Federal forces conducted something of a semi-siege.
Sherman accordingly ordered his three armies to approach Atlanta from the north and east, swinging far enough around so as to reach and tear up the Georgia Railroad running toward Augusta. Once that line was rendered useless to the Rebels, Sherman planned to move against the other railway lines serving them.
Hood could not protect all the railroads, especially when the Yankees could cut them at any point. On July 18, Union Brig. Gen. Kenner Garrard's cavalry and some of McPherson's infantry reached the Georgia Railroad 13 miles east of Atlanta and began wrecking it as they moved westward toward the city. North of Atlanta, Thomas approached Peachtree Creek; Schofield pushed toward the city from the northeast, between the two other armies.
On the 18th, Hood got more bad news: enemy cavalry had cut the railroad connecting Atlanta with Montgomery. Major General Lovell H. Rousseau had led 2,700 Northern horsemen out of north Alabama and on July 17 reached the Montgomery & West Point Railroad near Auburn. Riding east along the line, they destroyed two dozen miles of track before riding off to join Sherman's forces at Atlanta. The damage was not repaired till late August. For all intents, Atlanta's connection to Montgomery was cut. For the rest of the campaign Hood could only depend on the Macon & Western Railroad for the supplies needed by his men and animals.
... And needed by the civilians still in the city, too, of whom thousands remained. At the start of the year, Atlanta's population had numbered about 20,000. Many of these had fled upon the Yankees' approach, especially after Johnston's army retreated across the Chattahoochee. Unless they had gardens or livestock, these people needed food, too, and were thus also dependent upon the Macon railroad.
More immediately, Hood had to contend with the enemy columns closing in on Atlanta. On July 19, Thomas's infantry started laying makeshift bridges across the deep-ravined Peachtree Creek at several points as close as one mile north of the Confederates' outer line. On McPherson's front, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan's XV Corps marched to Decatur, six miles east of Atlanta.
Sherman called for his infantry to destroy more of the Augusta railroad's track and prescribed how he wanted it done. "Pile the ties into shape for a bonfire," the orders read, "put the rails across, and when red hot, in the middle let a man at each end twist the bar so that its surface become spiral." All this was to keep the enemy from readily repairing their road. "Officers should be directed," Sherman lectured, "that bars simply bent may be used again, but if when red hot they are twisted out of line they cannot be used again."
* * *
Hood spent his first full day of command, July 19, attending to administrative matters, such as appointing a replacement to lead his old corps. He chose Maj. Gen. Benjamin Franklin Cheatham, though the assignment was intended only as temporary. Elevating Cheatham from division to corps command left an opening for the head of Cheatham's division: Brig. Gen. George E. Maney was named to fill it, effective July 19.
On the front lines, Confederates tried to impede the enemy's approach. After Federals got across Peachtree Creek that afternoon, an Arkansas brigade charged and tried, unsuccessfully, to drive them back over the stream. Wheeler's cavalry contested McPherson's advance from Decatur, but the Southern horsemen, greatly outnumbered, could barely slow the Yankees down.
On the morning of July 19, Sherman learned of the command change in the Army of Tennessee. With the Federals' approach and the hurried exodus of many citizens, most of the city's newspapers had also fled. Still staying, at least for a few days more, was the Atlanta Appeal, originally from Memphis. A spy picked up its issue announcing the change in the city and took it to Union lines. Sherman thus learned of Hood's promotion. John Schofield, who had been Hood's classmate at West Point, advised his commander of what the news meant: there would be fighting ahead.
Schofield was right. Secretary Seddon had urged Hood to seek opportunity to deliver an attacking battle on anything approaching equal terms, and Hood on the 19th began to see just such an opportunity. Thomas's army was the largest in Sherman's army group, but in the process of crossing Peachtree Creek, it would be divided and vulnerable to attack. Even if the enemy infantry deployed on the south creek bank before he could launch his assault, Hood reasoned that they would not have had time to fortify much, if at all. Moreover, Schofield's army was not in immediate supporting distance. To close the gap, Thomas had sent Howard and two divisions off to the southeast, but a two-mile gap still existed between them and the left of Thomas's line. This would disappear when Sherman drew his three armies in closer to Atlanta, forming them into a unified front. Clearly the time to strike was now.
Joe Johnston later claimed that the idea of attacking Thomas at Peachtree Creek was his, and that before he left the army he had explained his plan to Hood. The two generals, writing their memoirs in the 1870s, clashed over this point. "In transferring the command to General Hood I explained my plans to him," Johnston wrote in his Narrative (1874); "I expected an opportunity to engage the enemy on terms of advantage while they were divided in crossing Peach-Tree Creek." Hood, on the other hand, claimed in his Advance and Retreat (1880) that "the Federal commander had committed a serious blunder in separating his corps, or Armies by such distance as to allow me to concentrate the main body of our Army upon his right wing." It was Wheeler's intelligence of the enemy's dispositions, Hood contended, that led to his formulation of the battle plan, not anything Johnston allegedly told him.
Historians continue to take sides as to who should be credited with the plan to attack Thomas at Peachtree Creek. After the war, a Confederate congressman, George Vest of Missouri, claimed that he was visiting General Johnston when news came in that the Federals were crossing the creek. "Gentlemen, the time has come to strike," Johnston allegedly declared; "Sherman has cut his army into three pieces and I believe now by rapid movements, I can whip him in detail." The problem with the Vest recollection, though, is that its timing is wrong. By the time George Thomas's infantry were crossing Peachtree Creek on July 19, Joe Johnston had already been relieved of command.
Another argument in favor of Johnston's plan-authorship is similarly flawed. Confederate Sgt. T. G. Dabney contended after the war that, on the afternoon of July 16, "a circular battle order was promulgated among the troops from General Johnston, which stated that the favorable opportunity had arrived for striking the enemy." Johnston purportedly announced, "We would advance at daylight next morning and beat him." The afternoon of July 16 was the very time Joe Johnston was telling authorities in Richmond that his "plan of operations must ... depend upon that of the enemy. It is mainly to watch for an opportunity to fight to advantage." If Johnston planned to attack the enemy the next morning, he most certainly should have told his superiors.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "All the Fighting They Want"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Stephen Davis.
Excerpted by permission of Savas Beatie LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments,
Prologue: John Bell Hood at Gaines's Mill,
Chapter One: The Summer of '64,
Chapter Two: Hood Takes Command,
Chapter Three: The Battle of Peachtree Creek,
Chapter Four: The Fight for the Bald Hill,
Chapter Five: Hood's Flank Attack of July 22,
Chapter Six: Sherman's Bombardment and "General" Issues,
Chapter Seven: Ezra Church,
Chapter Eight: The McCook-Stoneman Cavalry Raid,
Chapter Nine: Hood's Railroad Defense Line and the Fight at Utoy Creek,
Chapter Ten: "Too Hot to Be Endured",
Chapter Eleven: Wheeler's Raid and Kilpatrick's Raid,
Chapter Twelve: Hood Tries to Make Good his Losses,
Chapter Thirteen: Sherman's "Grand Movement by the Right Flank",
Chapter Fourteen: "Atlanta is Ours and Fairly Won",
Epilogue: Measuring Sherman's Achievement,
Driving Tour,
Appendix A: Confederate Monuments in and around Atlanta by Gould Hagler,
Appendix B: Civil War Collections at the Atlanta History Center by Gordon Jones,
Appendix C: The Battle of Atlanta on Canvas: A Brief History of the Atlanta Cyclorama by Gordon Jones,
Order of Battle,
Suggested Reading,
About the Author,
Related Subjects
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