I
Grant and Sherman certainly intended to "do something." But for two more long, weary months their doing seemed to accomplish little except more bloodshed. To be sure, during July Sherman made apparent progress toward the capture of Atlanta, a goal that had come to overshadow the destruction of Johnston's army. Atlanta was indeed a great prize. Its population had doubled to 20,000 during the war as foundries, factories, munitions plants, and supply depots sprang up at this strategic railroad hub. The fall of Atlanta, said Jefferson Davis, would "open the way for the Federal Army to the Gulf on the one hand, and to Charleston on the other, and close up those rich granaries from which Lee's armies are supplied. It would give them control of our network of rail-ways and thus paralyze our efforts."1 Because the South invested so much effort in defending the city, Atlanta also became a symbol of resistance and nationality second only to Richmond. As the Petersburg front stabilized to trench warfare, concern in the Confederate capital shifted, to Georgia, where mobile warfare resumed as the rains ceased.
Slaves had prepared two more defensive positions between Kennesaw Mountain and the Chattahoochee River, which flowed from northeast to southwest only eight miles from Atlanta. Johnston had told a senator who visited his headquarters on July 1 that he could hold Sherman
1. A. A. Hoehling, ed., Last Train from Atlanta (New York, 1958), 17.
north of the Chattahoochee for two months. By the time Davis received word of this assurance on July 10, the Yankees had crossed the river. Once again Sherman had sent McPherson swinging around Johnston's left, forcing the rebels to fall back six miles on July 3 and another six to the river on the 4th. Sherman now reached deeper into his bag of tricks. Having always moved around the enemy's left, he instructed McPherson and a cavalry division to make a feint in that direction while another cavalry division and Schofield's infantry corps moved secretly upriver several miles above Johnston's right for a surprise crossing against a handful of cavalry pickets. At one point Yankee troopers swam the river naked except for their cartridge belts and captured the bemused pickets. At another ford, blue horsemen waded dismounted through neck-deep water with their Spencer carbines. "As the rebel bullets began to splash around pretty thick," recalled a Union officer, northern soldiers discovered that they could pump the waterproof metal cartridges into the Spencer's chamber underwater; "hence, all along the line you could see the men bring their guns up, let the water run from the muzzle a moment, then take quick aim, fire his piece and pop down again." The astonished rebels called to each other: "Look at them Yankee sons of bitches, loading their guns under water! What sort of critters be they, anyhow?"2 The pickets surrendered to this submarine assault; Sherman had part of his army across the river on Johnston's flank by July 9. The Confederates pulled back to yet another fortified position behind Peach-tree Creek, only four miles from downtown Atlanta. Civilians scrambled for space on southbound trains. Newspapers in the city still uttered defiance, but they packed their presses for a quick departure.
In Richmond, consternation grew. Emergency meetings of the cabinet produced nothing but "a gloomy view of affairs in Georgia." Davis cast about for some way of "averting calamity."3 In an unwise move he sent Braxton Bragg—whom he had appointed as his military adviser after the general's resignation as commander of the Army of Tennessee—to Georgia on a fact-finding mission. Bragg was no more popular now than he had been earlier. As a troubleshooter he seemed to cause more trouble than he resolved. He consulted mainly with Hood, who was clearly angling for the command. "We should attack," Hood declared.
2. Ibid., 58–59.
3. Edward Younger, ed., Inside the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean (New York, 1957), 165; Jefferson Davis to Joseph E. Johnston, July 7, 1864, in Rowland, Davis, VI, 283.
"I regard it as a great misfortune to our country that we failed to give battle to the enemy many miles north of our present position. Please say to the President that I shall continue to do my duty cheerfully . . . and strive to do what is best for our country." Bragg urged Davis to appoint Hood in Johnston's place. Davis had already pretty much made up his mind to do so, even though Lee advised against it on the grounds that while aggressive, Hood was too reckless. "All lion," said Lee of him, "none of the fox."4 Davis decided to give Johnston one last chance: on July 16 he telegraphed the general a request for "your plan of operations." Johnston replied that his plan "must depend upon that of the enemy. . . . We are trying to put Atlanta in condition to be held by the Georgia militia, that army movements may be freer and wider."5 This hint of an intention to give up Atlanta was the final straw. Next day the thirty-three-year-old Hood replaced Johnston.
This action stirred up a controversy that has echoed down the years. Like Lincoln's removal of McClellan, the removal of Johnston was supported by the cabinet and by the pro-administration faction in Congress but condemned by the opposition and deplored in the army.6 For his part, Sherman professed to be "pleased at this change." He wrote after the war that "the Confederate Government rendered us a most valuable service" by replacing a cautious defensive strategist with a bold fighter. "This was just what we wanted," declared Sherman, "to fight on open
4. Hood to Bragg, July 14, 1864, in O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 38, pt. 5, pp. 879–80; Clifford Dowdey, ed., The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (New York, 1961), 821–22; Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana, 1983), 607.
5. O.R., Ser. I, Vol. 38, pt. 5, pp. 882–83.
6. Anti-administration newspapers attributed Johnston's removal to Davis's "cold snaky hate" for the general. One army veteran remembered that several soldiers deserted when they learned of Johnston's removal. But some soldiers agreed with an artillery lieutenant who wrote that no one "ever dreamed of Johnston falling back this far. . . . I don't believe Johnston ever did or ever will fight."Richmond Whig, quoted in Thomas L. Connelly, Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865 (Baton Rouge, 1971), 405; Sam R. Watkins, "Co. Aytch": A Side Show of the Big Show (Collier Books ed., New York, 1962), 172; Hoehling, Last Train from Atlanta, 49, 77. For appraisals of the controversy by historians, see Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 391–426; Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood, A Different Valor: The Story of General Joseph E. Johnston (Indianapolis, 1956), 308–36; and Richard M. McMurry, John Bell Hood and the War for Southern Independence (Lexington, Ky., 1982), 116–24.
ground, on any thing like equal terms, instead of being forced to run up against prepared intrenchments."7 So he said, with benefit of hindsight. But Davis, like Lincoln, preferred generals who would fight. To have lost Atlanta without a battle would have demoralized the South. And whatever else Hood's appointment meant, it meant fight.
Sure enough, two days after taking command Hood tried to squash the Yankees. As events turned out, however, it was the rebels who got squashed. After crossing the Chattahoochee, Sherman had again sent McPherson on a wide swing—this time to the left—to cut Atlanta's last rail link with the upper South. Schofield followed on a shorter arc, while Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, separated from Schofield by a gap of two miles, prepared to cross Peachtree Creek directly north of Atlanta. Hood saw his chance to hit Thomas separately, but the attack on July 20 started several hours too late to catch the bluecoats in the act of crossing the stream. Five Union divisions drove an equal number of rebels back after the bloodiest combat in the campaign thus far.
Not succeeding at first, Hood tried again. On July 21 he pulled the army back into elaborate defenses ringing the city. After dark Hood sent one corps on an exhausting all-night march to attack the exposed south flank of McPherson's Army of the Tennessee on July 22. They did, but found the flank less exposed than expected. After recovering from their initial surprise the bluecoats fought with ferocity and inflicted half as many casualties on Hood's army in one afternoon as it had suffered in ten weeks under Johnston. But the Confederates exacted a price in return: the death of McPherson, shot from his saddle when he refused to surrender after riding blindly into Confederate lines while trying to restore his own.
Though grieved by the loss of his favorite subordinate, Sherman wasted no time getting on with the job. He gave command of the Army of the Tennessee to Oliver O. Howard, a transplant from the Army of the Potomac. The one-armed Christian general from Maine took his profane midwesterners on another wide swing around the Confederate left and headed south to tear up the one remaining open railroad out of Atlanta. Hood sent a corps to stop them and readied another to follow up with a counterattack. But the Federals handled them so roughly at the Ezra Church crossroads two miles west of the city on July 28 that
7. William T. Sherman, "The Grand Strategy of the Last Year of the War," Battles and Leaders, IV, 253; Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (New York, 1886), II, 72.
the rebels had to entrench instead of continuing the attack. Nevertheless, they kept the bluecoats off the railroad.
In three battles during the past eight days Hood's 15,000 casualties were two and one-half times Sherman's 6,000. But southern valor did seem to have stopped the inexorable Yankee advance on Atlanta. Union infantry and artillery settled down for a siege, while Sherman sent his cavalry on raids to wreck the railroad far south of the city. One division of northern horsemen headed for Andersonville to liberate Union captives at the notorious prison, but rebel cavalry headed them off halfway. Six hundred of these Yankee troopers did reach Andersonville—as prisoners. Confederate cavalry and militia prevented other Union detachments from doing more than minimal damage to the railroad, while southern raids in turn on Sherman's supply line fared little better.
Civilians continued to flee the city; some of those who remained were killed by northern shells that rained down on their streets. "War is war, and not popularity-seeking," wrote Sherman in pursuance of his career as Georgia's most unpopular visitor.8 The defiant courage of Atlantans who stayed raised the spirits of southerners everywhere. Much of the Confederate press viewed Hood's attacks as victories. The Atlanta Intelligencer (published in Macon) predicted that "Sherman will suffer the greatest defeat that any Yankee General has suffered during the war. . . . The Yankee forces will disappear before Atlanta before the end of August." The "cheering" news from Georgia convinced a War Department clerk in Richmond that "Sherman's army is doomed."9 Richmond newspapers exulted that "Atlanta is now felt to be safe, and Georgia will soon be free from the foe. . . . Everything seems to have changed in that State from the deepest despondency."10
Opinion north of the Potomac reflected the other side of this coin of southern euphoria. As Sherman closed in on Atlanta during July, northern newspapers had daily predicted the city's capture before the next edition. By early August the forecast had moderated to "a question of a few days," and one reporter confessed himself "somewhat puzzled at the
8. Memoirs of Sherman, II, 111. It should be noted that factories, rail facilities, warehouses, and other military targets—including artillery emplacements—were scattered among residential areas of Atlanta.
9. Intelligencer quoted in Hoehling, Last Train from Atlanta, 325, and in Samuel Carter III, The Siege of Atlanta, 1864 (New York, 1973), 275; Jones, War Clerk's Diary(Swiggett), II, 259.
10. Quoted in Hoehling, Last Train from Atlanta, 167, 251.
stubborn front presented by the enemy." By the middle of the month a Boston newspaper expressed "much apprehension" while the New York Times warned against "these terrible fits of despondency, into which we plunge after each of our reverses and disappointments." A Wisconsin soldier, formerly confident, wrote home on August 11 that "we make but little progress toward Atlanta, and it may be some time before we take the place." In New York a prominent member of the Sanitary Commission feared that "both Grant and Sherman are on the eve of disaster."11