Chapter 21

In This Chapter

Maneuvering: Johnston versus Sherman: A war of maneuver

Fighting: Hood versus Sherman: A war of attrition

Capturing Mobile Bay

Re-electing the president: The Republican victory

W hile Union General Ulysses S. Grant sent George C. Meade’s Army of the Potomac into Virginia to destroy Lee’s Confederate army in the Eastern Theater, he also sent William T. Sherman’s combined army of 100,000 men into Georgia to destroy the Confederate Army of Tennessee, commanded by Joseph E. Johnston.

Although the objectives of these two campaigns were the same, the campaigns themselves were conducted differently. Grant, overseeing Meade, battered the Confederate army until it was locked into a siege at Petersburg. Sherman used more maneuvering than fighting, but he ended up in the same position as Grant — locked into a siege. The city under siege was Atlanta, the last important rail center in the west-central part of the Confederacy. By this time, the Army of Tennessee had a new commander, John B. Hood. During Hood’s tenure, things took a definite turn for the worse for the fate of the Confederacy.

Taking Command: Johnston and the Army of Tennessee

With the removal of Bragg, after the disaster at Chattanooga in November of 1863, Confederate President Jefferson Davis held his nose and appointed a man that he intensely disliked as the new army commander. Joseph E. Johnston took command of the dispirited Army of Tennessee and began making changes, instilling discipline, granting furloughs, and offering amnesty to deserters. He obtained clothes and shoes for the men and put the army back in shape to fight a campaign. The army, about 50,000 strong, was entrenched about 20 miles south of Chattanooga. He had two corps, one led by William J. Hardee, a tested officer and the author of a book on tactics that every commander studied and employed during the war. John B. Hood, one of the best division commanders in the Confederate army, led the other corps. Hood had been a mainstay in Longstreet’s corps, but he had suffered grievously in the war, having lost the use of an arm at Gettysburg and having had a leg amputated at Chickamauga. Still full of fight, Hood was a favorite of Davis. Johnston was not sure how Hood would fare as a corps commander. Johnston was expecting that reinforcements from Bishop Leonidas Polk’s Army of the Mississippi would raise his total to 65,000 men.

Davis urged Johnston to go on the offensive, attacking Chattanooga and moving into Kentucky. Johnston had neither the resources nor the capability to defeat Sherman’s forces. Chattanooga was impregnable, and any movement northward would leave Johnston’s army vulnerable to attacks from the flanks and rear. Besides, such a move would leave Atlanta unguarded. So from the very beginning, both Johnston and Davis suspected that the other was working against the best interests of the nation. When political leaders and military commanders do not see eye to eye, there is always trouble ahead.

Preparing to Move: Sherman in the Western Theater

Union General Sherman (see Figure 21-1) was given command of the entire Western Theater, as well as command of the three armies he consolidated around Chattanooga to begin his campaign. These armies included “The Rock of Chicamauga” George H. Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland and the Army of Tennessee, which James B. McPherson took command of upon Sherman’s promotion. McPherson had earned the reputation as one of the finest combat commanders in the Union army. In addition, Sherman had an independent corps from the Army of the Ohio led by John M. Schofield, Sherman had full confidence in his subordinate leaders, and they in him. It was a good team.

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Sherman knew Johnston was a very capable commander, although not an aggressive one. In some ways, Sherman had to fight with one hand tied behind his back. He could not stray too far from his line of supply, the rail line that stretched several hundred miles from Nashville, through Chattanooga, to northern Georgia. He needed about 14,000 tons of supplies a day to sustain his army. To protect this lifeline from Confederate cavalry, Sherman had to reduce his fighting force by placing guards and outposts all along the tracks. He also had to protect Nashville, Tennessee. If this huge depot was captured or destroyed, Sherman’s campaign was finished. Thus, both sides had something to protect while maneuvering against the enemy’s army.

The Campaign for Atlanta Begins

Sherman began his southward movement on May 4, the same day that Grant began his Virginia campaign. Johnston intended to delay Sherman’s progress, to preserve the fighting capabilities of his army, and to inflict high casualties on the Union armies. Time was on his side. It was a presidential election year in the North, and war weariness was growing. A lack of progress by November could lead the voters to throw Lincoln and the Republicans out of office and force the new president to sue for peace. Sherman did not want to fight head-on battles with entrenched Confederate forces. Instead, he wanted to take advantage of Johnston’s penchant for withdrawal and push the Army of Tennessee into a place where it could be destroyed. The Atlanta Campaign loomed large in both Sherman and Johnson’s thinking. It was the key to success for both commanders. Johnston, for his part had to protect the city from capture. Sherman needed to control the city to further demolish the Confederacy’s capacity to fight the war. Both Sherman and Johnston expected to fight a battle for the city, but neither wanted to expose his army to an attack. Thus, the campaign resembles two wary fighters protecting themselves, but seeking an opening to deliver a devastating body blow.

The Sherman sidestep

The geography of northern Georgia, with its mountains and deep passes, gives an advantage to the defender. However, an aggressor with more troops can outflank a weaker opponent by using the number of passes available in the mountains. Sherman engaged the entrenched Confederate defenders only with enough force to keep them in place, while he used the rest of his army to get around and behind the entrenched troops. Sherman’s approach seemed clear enough to one Union soldier: “Sherman’ll never go to hell. He will flank the devil and make heaven in spite of the guards.” See Figure 21-2.

The Johnston backtrack

Johnston, always mindful of his line of retreat, never let Sherman get fully situated before he skillfully fell back to another defensive position. Starting at Dalton, Johnston backtracked to Resaca. He stopped a Union assault there and then pulled back to Cassville, as Sherman slipped around Johnston’s left, leaving Schofield and his men from the Army of the Ohio to face superior Confederate numbers. At Cassville, Johnston attempted to attack Schofield’s isolated units, but Hood ended up placing his troops in the wrong place, facing the wrong enemy. Frustrated by Hood’s clumsiness, Johnston then decided to retreat to Allatoona Pass, a formidable obstacle for Sherman to attack.

The rail line Sherman depended on for his supplies ran through Allatoona Pass, so Johnston assumed the Yankees would fight to take the position. But Sherman fooled him. He had traveled though the area before the war and knew how difficult it would be to take. Sherman would have none of that fight; instead, he gathered all the wagons he could, stocked the troops with all the food and ammunition they could carry, and abandoned the railroad supply line to maneuver behind the Confederate defenses. Johnston had to send troops to cut off the movement, meeting the Union forces at Dallas, and New Hope Church, both small towns along the Confederate defensive line. Johnston held off the enemy attacks and even initiated one of his own before Sherman began sliding off, again, to turn the Confederate right flank and regain control of the critical rail line.

At this point, Sherman played right into Johnston’s hands. Hampered by rains that limited troop and wagon movement, Sherman’s forces took on the Confederates who occupied strong defenses at Kennesaw Mountain. Sherman’s assault produced nothing, except about 3,000 casualties. A few days later, Sherman maneuvered around Johnston again; this time Johnston fell back to the Atlanta entrenchments. It was July 10 — more than two months had gone by since the beginning of the campaign. Sherman had lost about 17,000 men (a small number by Civil War standards), but he had little to show for his efforts. Johnston had preserved his army. The two sides faced the prospect of a long, drawn-out siege for the control of Atlanta, which could have been political disaster for President Lincoln. The siege at Petersburg was bad enough, but with two stymied Union armies merely watching entrenched and undefeated confederate forces, a strategic stalemate such as this was too much. Johnston earned no praise for his maneuvers either. The Southern press was very critical of his constant retreats. Davis was increasingly frustrated as well. Johnston had done nothing that Davis had instructed him to do at the outset of the campaign. Something had to be done to return the initiative to the Confederacy.

Just as Johnston was preparing an attack on Thomas’s force while it crossed Peachtree Creek, Braxton Bragg (of all the people to take on such a task, Bragg was probably the worst possible choice) arrived from Richmond to assess the situation and relieve Johnston of his command. John B. Hood (see Figure 21-3) became the new commander of the Army of Tennessee. Hood had not been a loyal subordinate. He had played politics behind Johnston’s back, criticizing him and passing back-channel messages to Richmond. The president and Bragg leaned toward believing the worst of Johnston and took their opportunity to relieve him in Atlanta. Unfortunately, Hood had not proven himself to be a competent corps commander, let alone an army commander. But, the president wanted action, and Hood would do his aggressive, bull-headed best to give him action.

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The bishop finds his rest

On June 14, 1864, in the midst of one of the small, but tough fights of the campaign, Johnston, Hardee, and Polk had gathered on a hill to observe the Confederate defenses. A Union battery spotted the riders and began firing at them. Polk, an Episcopal Bishop as well as a Confederate General, had just ridden up, intending to give his follow officers a copy of a religious pamphlet, “Balm for the Weary and Wounded,” when an artillery shell hit him, killing him instantly.

The Battle for Atlanta

The men of the army had little faith in Hood; they had responded well to Johnston, and even after the maneuvering from north Georgia, the army was confident of success. Now that Hood was in charge, morale fell. On the other side of the line, morale went up; at least, Sherman’s morale rose. Sherman had fought a cautious and careful campaign against Johnston, knowing that his opponent would give him few, if any, opportunities to strike. Hood, an impetuous and often incautious man, would provide Sherman with openings that Johnston did not. Sherman did not have sufficient forces to surround the city completely. Therefore, he tried to cut off the three rail lines that fed into the city. Hood proceeded to strike out at the Union army.

Hood took on Thomas first, hoping to exploit the gap between Thomas and Schofield. Hood, perhaps, should have remembered what Thomas had done at Chickamauga. Again, Thomas was ready — this time with his troops dug in. Hood’s attack failed, costing 2,500 casualties. Hood then shifted his forces east, attacking McPherson’s troops. Hood’s men were outnumbered. McPherson was killed, but the Confederate attack stalled. Hood had lost another 8,000 men. Sherman shifted his forces to the west side of Atlanta, seeking to cut the southern, and last, rail line to the city. Hood attacked, once again, to stop this movement at Ezra Church. The Yankees had entrenched and were able to stop Hood’s attack. Hood lost another 2,500 men. The offensives had done nothing to alter the basic outcome of the campaign — no matter who was in charge of the Army of Tennessee, Atlanta would face a Union siege. Hood had lost about 13,000 men in confirming that fact, which the politicians in Richmond never understood. Sherman’s cannons began to fire into the city.

Sherman’s supply line

For about a month, both sides settled into what everyone assumed would be a long, drawn-out contest. Everyone except Sherman. To relieve the pressure on the city, Hood had sent his cavalry on a long raid to destroy the rail line Sherman depended on for supplies. Throughout the campaign, Union forces had been plagued by incessant attacks on their supply lines from Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. Sherman had established a system of repair that was so efficient that rail lines and bridges were repaired almost as fast as they were destroyed. Still, the single rail line and the awful, rutted dirt roads were vulnerabilities. It seemed as if the Confederates could interdict his supply line at will, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not put and end to Forrest. Ever restless, Sherman was not content to spend all summer watching Hood. He began to stockpile supplies, as he had done at the beginning of the campaign. His plan was to begin another maneuver around the city, once his army was free of its dependence on the rail line for supply.

Hoodwinking Hood

While Hood waited for reports of his cavalry raids, Sherman’s army was quietly sidling southeast around the city, headed for Jonesboro, Georgia, a small town on the last rail line to Atlanta. With Union forces astride the railroad and essentially sitting in Hood’s rear, Atlanta could no longer be defended. And so it went. What is remarkable is that Hood, now deprived of his cavalry, which were his army’s eyes and ears, had convinced himself that Sherman had given up the siege and was retreating northward to protect his supply lines. He sent President Davis a message proclaiming victory, and held a ball to celebrate. Reports came in that eventually convinced Hood that Sherman was now in Jonesboro with a large force. He hurriedly sent his corps to stop the Yankees, but to no avail. The Union troops were too strong, and the Confederates were too weak and too late. By September 2, Hood had to face reality — Atlanta was lost. Hood destroyed a rolling mill and 81 boxcars loaded with ammunition. The explosions signaled to everyone what had happened. To Sherman, the explosions meant only one thing, as he reported to Washington: “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.”

The Navy’s Contributions in 1864

Although the land campaigns in the Eastern and Western Theaters dominated events in 1864, the U.S. Navy made its own important strategic contributions to the crippling of the Confederacy. The blockade was slow but effective, as more and more supply ships and blockade-runners were captured. But as long as the Confederacy had seaports, namely Mobile, Alabama, Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina, the blockade running would continue, and the South would continue to survive. In 1864, the Navy directed its efforts against the last major seaport available to the Confederacy in the Gulf of Mexico, Mobile Bay.

Prior to the war, Mobile had been the main cotton-shipping port of the South. The bay had only one entrance, which was protected by Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan, and a string of underwater explosive obstacles called torpedoes (today we call them mines). Any ship running into a torpedo would set of an explosion under her hull, sinking the ship. Not only were these defenses strong, but the Confederates also were building another ironclad, the CSS Tennessee , modeled on the CSS Virginia . This ship could serve two purposes: first, to protect Mobile Bay from attack and second, to destroy Union wooden ships to clear the way for supply ships to enter and leave the harbor. Admiral Farragut did not want to see the Tennessee fully operational. He decided to take Mobile Bay by sailing his fleet directly into the harbor.

On August 5, Farragut moved his fleet, a mixture of 18 monitor-type ironclads and wooden sailing ships, into battle line. Moving into the narrow channel, a Union ironclad hit a torpedo and sunk; the wooden ships began shifting to avoid the torpedoes. This maneuver blocked the entrance to the harbor and left the rest of the fleet under fire from the fort’s guns. Now the Tennessee appeared, with its captain Franklin Buchanan, who had been the captain of the Virginia . Now was the moment for decisive action.

Farragut, on his flagship USS Hartford , was about the seventh ship in the line. He had tied himself to the rigging of the mainmast to get a better view. He decided to take the lead and bring on the engagement himself. As he gave the order to move forward, the USS Tecumseh , still in the lead, hit a torpedo, exploded, and sank in seconds. Someone warned him of the torpedoes in the channel. “Damn the torpedoes!” Farragut said, “Full speed ahead!” (His famous words have become a part of the Navy’s battle heritage.) Once the Hartford led the Union ships past the channel, theTennessee was no match for the sheer weight of numbers. Never very seaworthy to begin with, the Tennessee was outmaneuvered, and her engines so damaged by cannon fire that she had to surrender. The Union owned Mobile, and the Confederacy no longer had access to the Gulf.

Farragut’s fighting words

While Farragut’s order appears to be the act of either a madman or a man with ice water in his veins, there is some background to the story. Farragut had been planning the Mobile Bay operation for nearly eight months. He was well aware of the torpedoes and spent a great deal of time in the weeks before the attack locating the torpedoes. His reconnaissance discovered many of the mines, and he found that they had been in the water for so long that they were no longer functional. So Farragut’s order “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” was based on a clear knowledge of the dangers and risks. This knowledge gave him the great confidence that led to victory.

Presidential Politics of 1864

Lest we forget that war is never separated from politics, the presidential election of 1864 was a key event that ensured a Union victory. Although Lincoln is granted the stature today as one of the greatest presidents, he was not considered great in his own time. In fact, he was a very unpopular man in 1864.

People in the North were heartily tired of war by the summer of 1864. Grant had accomplished little and lost 80,000 men in the process. Sherman’s progress seemed no better, with his slipping and sliding and accomplishing nothing. The human costs of the war were a heavy burden to voters of the North. In 1864, they had the opportunity to vote out of office the man who had got them to this point, Abraham Lincoln. Peace advocates became more vocal. The highly influential editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, told the president: “Our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country longs for peace.” Many Northerners called for a meeting with Confederate representatives to end the war on favorable terms, leaving the issue of slavery out of the question entirely. During the summer of 1864, Lincoln was heavily pressured into opening peace talks with the Confederate government and even abandoning his abolition policy.

The Democrats nominate McClellan

Since he had been relieved from command in 1862, McClellan had risen in the Democratic Party as a symbol of resistance to Republican policies. The anti-war Democrats (known as Copperheads) who advocated peace and reunion through a negotiated settlement controlled the party platform. The Copperheads, who disliked McClellan’s pro-war stance, teamed him up with a Copperhead vice-presidential candidate, Ohio Congressman George Pendleton. The Democratic platform attacked the Republicans for misusing the Constitution to suppress resistance to the war. If elected, the Democrats would call for an immediate cessation of hostilities and organize a convention of all the states to work together on a compromise to restore the Union. Of course, the Confederacy had no interest in returning to the Union; its goal was independence. However, the Southerners stayed quiet, hoping to encourage the Democrats and continue the military stalemate until the November election.

No one, not even members of his own party, gave Lincoln a shred of chance to win the election. A movement was even afoot within the Republican ranks to find another nominee at the convention. In late August, Lincoln wrote a memorandum acknowledging that he had virtually no chance of reelection. He pledged that it would be his duty to cooperate with the president-elect but resolved to save the Union’s chances of victory, between Election Day and inauguration day, because, as he put it, “he cannot possibly save it afterwards.” Lincoln sealed the memorandum and had each member of his cabinet sign it unviewed, committing them to support his post-election policy.

Atlanta and the soldier vote

The fall of Atlanta changed the entire face of the election. Atlanta became a symbol of victory. Sherman’s triumph at Atlanta, along with Farragut’s capture of Mobile a month earlier and the good news from Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, made final victory seem nearer. The Democrats now appeared trapped between a pro-war stance and a policy of peace before the Union. The Republicans rallied solidly behind Lincoln. Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson, a war Democrat from Tennessee, to be his vice president to pull votes away from McClellan and demonstrate bipartisan unity. The soldiers in the field also rallied behind Lincoln, seeing a quality in him that others may have not. Thousands of soldiers cast absentee ballots from the field. In trying to lock up the vote, Lincoln, as Commander in Chief, allowed his army commanders to grant furloughs to soldiers in states where absentee ballots were not used, so that they could go home in time to vote Republican.

The election results

McClellan carried only three states, New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky, with a total of 21 electoral votes. Lincoln won 212 electoral votes, carrying the rest of the North and the Border States, including the new state of West Virginia. The popular vote was solidly in Lincoln’s favor as well — 2.2 million (55 percent of votes cast) to 1.8 million (45 percent of votes cast). Republicans also controlled the state legislatures and governorships in all the states, except those that voted for McClellan, as well as heavy majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. Largely, the same people who had voted for Lincoln in 1860 voted for him four years later. Lincoln also gained votes in the Border States. And the soldier vote certainly helped impress upon the North that the men who were going to do the fighting and dying were willing to keep Lincoln in office.

For the Confederacy, Lincoln’s resounding reelection spelled doom for their cause. The North was united in its goal to restore the Union by force, while rejecting Confederate independence. Although the resolve of the Confederacy was unshaken, the future looked bleak, their hopes now attached to abilities of the armies of Lee and Hood to miraculously turn the tide of war.

Sherman’s March to the Sea

William T. Sherman was faced with a choice in the fall of 1864. He could follow the instructions of General Grant, which told him to destroy Hood’s army, or he could accomplish the same goal by attacking the South’s ability to make war. He developed a bold plan and a truly breathtaking grand strategic maneuver.

Sherman took no action against Hood in the month after the fall of Atlanta. Hood decided to draw the Union army away from the lower South by moving north to threaten Sherman’s 400-mile supply line. If the Confederate army could pose a significant enough threat, Sherman would be compelled to follow. Of course, Nashville was vulnerable. Perhaps the Confederates could even make another invasion of Kentucky. Buoyed by this shaky logic, Hood began a doomed march with the Army of Tennessee.

Sherman did not take the bait. He reasoned that he could chase Hood all over the country and still never catch him. He decided to make Hood’s threat an empty one. First, he would detach 30,000 men to defend Nashville. Thomas would take command of these troops and gather other scattered units to protect Tennessee. Thus, Sherman proposed to ignore Hood and drive through Georgia to Savannah, South Carolina, living off the land and destroying Confederate military property with the rest of his army, about 62,000 men. He would meet with supply ships in Savannah and then be prepared for any other operational movement of his army (see Figure 21-4.) Starting out, his army would have no supplies except what could be carried in wagons or on the men’s backs. There would be no telegraph communications with Washington. Although Lincoln and Grant were skeptical of such a plan, they accepted it, trusting in Sherman’s skills.

The Yankees on the move

At Milledgeville, the Georgia state capital as it was named then, the Union troops were like frat boys on a holiday, destroying the library, holding drunken mock sessions in the legislature, visiting the women’s penitentiary, and pouring molasses into the organ of the Episcopal church. At other times, these same troops took care of orphans, protected women and children, and saved lives with unselfish acts of bravery and kindness. Neither all bad, nor all good, Sherman’s march continues to raise arguments, especially in the South.

Beginning the march: Soldiers take all

As Sherman’s army departed Atlanta, it destroyed all of the city’s rail and industrial facilities and storehouses. During and after the war, Southerners would accuse the Yankees of destroying much more than military-related facilities in Atlanta. Sherman divided his army into two wings, marching abreast and stretching 60 miles in width. They were virtually unopposed. Only 8,000 militia total were available throughout Georgia to offer any kind of resistance. Sherman’s men took whatever they needed from the civilians and destroyed everything else. Although soldiers were forbidden from entering private houses, they were authorized to take any food they could find (leaving a reasonable amount behind for the civilians). They could take horses and mules and wagons; they could destroy mills, railroads, and cotton gins; commanders were authorized to destroy any property if the population displayed hostility. The looseness of these orders gave wide latitude to commanders, and they took advantage of the situation. The march soon became an all-day excursion for the men to grab whatever they could find, destroying what they didn’t want. Officers turned a blind eye to most activities. They left behind women and children facing a winter of starvation and destitution. The Confederacy ceased to exist for these people. “War is cruelty,” Sherman told the mayor of Atlanta, “and you cannot refine it.” Thousands of Southerners now experienced that cruelty, first-hand.

Sherman’s army also collected people along the route of the march. Tens of thousands of slaves — men, women with babies, even children — simply picked up whatever possessions they could carry and left to follow the Union army. The Union soldier with the blue coat and brass buttons meant freedom. Sherman himself was seen as an instrument of the Lord. Some people followed him and his army all the way to Savannah, others appeared and disappeared; many died along the way. Slavery, as an institution, simply disappeared in this part of the South.

A Christmas present

Savannah was strongly defended with entrenchments and protected by a small garrison of 9,000 men under the command of Lieutenant General William Hardee. Between December 17 and 21, Sherman deployed his troops in the hope of cutting off the city and winning it a fight. Hardee refused to surrender the city and made a brave show, but he knew that he had no chance. By December 21, the Confederates had escaped, leaving the city to Sherman. After nearly a month of silence, President Lincoln received a telegram from Savannah. “I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift,” it began, “the city of Savannah, with one hundred fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and about 25,000 bales of cotton.”

Assessing Sherman’s Impact

In about a month, Sherman’s army had marched 300 miles, hampered only by cavalry and militia, through the heartland of the South, wreaking devastation on the land and the people. He had cut off another source of supply to Lee’s army and was now in a position to join forces with Grant’s army. Most of all, Sherman had demonstrated to the South that their cause was hopeless and their destruction imminent. It was a brutal blow aimed at the will and morale of the Confederate nation. By his own count, Sherman estimated that he had destroyed 200 miles of railroad track, $20 million of property that held military value, and $180 million of other property, which he chalked up to pure waste and destruction. The Confederacy never recovered.