The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War

by Jeff Shaara

  He dies in Galveston in 1876, at age fifty-nine, and is buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile.

  In a perfect display of the contradictions that surround Bragg and his career, Confederate general Arthur Manigault, whose troops anchor the ill-fated center of Missionary Ridge, writes in his memoirs,

  I have always regarded him as one of the best organizers of an army and disciplinarians that I have ever met with, and he possessed many of the qualities essential to a commander. I think that the army, under his command, was in a higher state of efficiency … than ever before or after. He was not, however, a great general. He made many mistakes … was always overmatched in numbers, and when pitted against Grant, his inferiority was too evident. His campaign … after the victory at Chickamauga, showed great deficiency both as a tactician and strategist. The least said about it, the better.… Personally, I learned to like him.

  In contrast, a Richmond newspaper offers in its editorial, “An army of asses led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by an ass.”

  Referring to President Davis’s loyalty to Bragg, and to other officers who were elevated in rank by their friendship to Davis rather than any skills on the battlefield, Ulysses Grant writes in his memoirs, “Mr. Davis had an exalted opinion of his own military genius. On several occasions during the war he came to the relief of the Union army by reason of his superior military genius.”

  PATRICK CLEBURNE

  Cleburne and his division are recognized for their extraordinary defense of Tunnel Hill, and the successful defense at Ringgold Gap, with an Official Resolution of Thanks from the Confederate Congress, and the “Stonewall of the West” becomes one of the Confederacy’s brightest stars. Many in the Confederate high command, including William Hardee and Robert E. Lee, consider him the finest field commander in the Army of Tennessee.

  He spends the winter in a defensive posture near Dalton, Georgia, anticipating another Federal campaign. But the Federal army around Chattanooga and Ringgold makes good use of the winter for the same refit and rest so desperately needed by the Confederates. Cleburne’s division does not see combat until May 8, 1864, when he is attacked at Mill Creek Gap, just outside Dalton. The fight begins a campaign that will push both armies toward the city of Atlanta. The fights that take place throughout the next few weeks are bloody and in some cases, indecisive. But the Confederate commander, Joseph Johnston, adopts a strategy of tactical retreat in a way that infuriates Richmond, where it is believed that Johnston has conceded too much open ground to Sherman’s forces without exacting the proper toll in blood. In July 1864, Jefferson Davis’s frustrations with Johnston’s lack of success against Sherman’s army come to a head, and Johnston is relieved. He is replaced by John Bell Hood.

  The change does not improve Confederate fortunes. Cleburne is elevated to corps command, but under Hood, his skillful handling of troops does not measure up to what Cleburne had accomplished the year before. By September, Hood loses the battles for Atlanta, and thus he loses the city. Unable to dislodge Sherman’s forces from their new strongholds, Hood attempts to pull Sherman away by attacking Sherman’s supply lines northward into Tennessee. But Sherman remains in Atlanta, and to counteract Hood’s “invasion” of Tennessee, George Thomas is given command of the enormous Federal forces positioned at Nashville. Despite grossly inferior numbers, and questionable tactics, Hood drives northward in a fanciful effort to recapture Nashville.

  Cleburne, who has never found favor with Hood, returns to division command. On November 30, 1864, during the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, Cleburne loses two horses to enemy fire, and thus leads his troops against the staunch Federal defenses on foot. He is shot through the heart and dies immediately. He is thirty-six years old.

  Cleburne’s legacy spreads far beyond the battlefield. During the winter camps in 1863–64, Cleburne authors what he believes is a significant solution to the South’s shortage of manpower. With the same passion that he exhibits in the field, Cleburne insists that the South possesses an enormous untapped resource, and proposes that the slaves be freed, in return for their service in the Confederate army. To stunned officers who question this principle, Cleburne responds “they could be induced to fight as gallantly as the Yankees.” He argues vociferously that any costs involved in ending slavery would be offset by the enormous triumph of independence. “As between the loss of independence and the loss of slavery, we assume that every patriot will freely give up the … Negro slave rather than be a slave himself.” It is a lofty ideal, but not one that finds a receptive audience in Richmond, nor throughout most of the army, including a response from General William Bate that Cleburne’s notions are “hideous and objectionable … the serpent of abolitionism.” To salvage Cleburne’s well-earned reputation, the proposal is quietly put aside, and he is allowed to continue his military career.

  His premature death is marked by an additional tragedy. In January 1864, Cleburne attends the wedding of his commander, William Hardee, during which Cleburne is introduced to Sue Tarleton. The two become utterly infatuated with each other and within short weeks, they are engaged. But the duties of the army prevent the luxury of a wedding, and upon learning of Cleburne’s death, Sue goes into mourning for more than a year. Though she marries another Confederate officer three years later, her health never recovers, and she dies in 1868, at age twenty-eight.

  After a fund-raising effort by many, including his former staff officer and law partner, Learned Mangum, a monument is created, and Cleburne is memorialized at the Evergreen Cemetery in Helena, Arkansas. Confederate general George Gordon eulogizes Cleburne with these words: “A truer patriot or knightlier soldier never fought and never died. Valor never lost a braver son or freedom a nobler champion. He loved his country, its soldiers, its banners, its battle-flags, its sovereignty, its independence. For these he fought, for these he fell.”

  General William Hardee writes, “He was an Irishman by birth, a Southerner by adoption … a lawyer by profession, a soldier in the British army by accident, and a soldier in the Southern armies from patriotism and conviction of duty in his manhood.”

  Historian Craig L. Symonds writes, “Cleburne was an emotional man who felt the pull of patriotic sentiment and romantic love as well as the burden of duty. In their name, he sought—and found—glory on the battlefield.”

  ARTHUR MANIGAULT

  One of the officers who serves Pierre Beauregard during the war’s first conflict at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Manigault serves capably in most of the major commands throughout Tennessee and Kentucky. He continues to lead troops in the battles for Atlanta, and accompanies John Bell Hood on Hood’s invasion of Tennessee. He is severely wounded at the Battle of Franklin, which forces his resignation from the army. He returns to his native South Carolina, attempts to reenter civilian life as a planter on his beloved rice plantation, and dies from the aftereffects of his wound in 1886. He is sixty-one. His memoir, A Carolinian Goes to War, is not published until 1983, and is an exceptional firsthand account of the struggle for Missionary Ridge.

  THOSE WHO WORE BLUE

  FRITZ “DUTCHIE” BAUER

  Bauer survives the horrific wound received on Missionary Ridge, but loses his right leg. Despite Bauer’s passion for life as a soldier, the wound, and the death of his closest friend, Sammie Willis, drain away Bauer’s desire for service. After his surgery in the army’s hospital in Chattanooga and a lengthy recovery in Nashville, he returns to the only other home he knows, the city of Milwaukee.

  With no talent for his deceased father’s sausage-making business, Bauer searches for any kind of work that allows for his disability, and finally lands a job as a newspaper reporter. At a gathering of Civil War veterans in 1869, he meets Hanna Rose, who writes for a war veterans’ journal in Chicago. They correspond for two years before Bauer builds the courage to propose. They are married in Chicago in 1871, and she bears him four children, including a son he names Samuel Willis Bauer. Three of his children reach adulthood, with direct descend
ants who survive to this day, including four veterans of the military.

  Bauer lives until 1904, and dies of pneumonia at age sixty-two. Hanna lives another twenty-four years, and dies at age eighty-four.

  GEORGE THOMAS

  After his army’s astounding success on Missionary Ridge, Thomas accepts the subordinate position to Sherman’s elevated command, and accompanies Sherman’s forces toward Atlanta. He serves Sherman well, but the two men can never be called friends, both recognizing their wildly differing personalities. Moreover, Thomas technically outranks Sherman, though Grant’s appointment of Sherman erases the distinction. It is the second time that Thomas finds himself subordinate to an officer he outranks (the first being Rosecrans).

  In July 1864, Thomas’s army decisively defeats John Bell Hood at the Battle of Peachtree Creek, which opens the door to Sherman’s conquest of the city of Atlanta. But Thomas’s penchant for attention to detail causes conflicts with Sherman, who, after capturing Atlanta writes to Henry Halleck, “I ought to have reaped larger fruits of victory, but a part of my army is too slow.” Halleck’s response is diplomatic: “Thomas is a noble old war-horse. It is true that he is slow, but he is always sure.”

  Responding to Hood’s invasion of Tennessee, Thomas arrives at Nashville on October 3, 1864, and immediately supervises the strengthening of Federal outposts and supply depots from Chattanooga northward. Though Ulysses Grant and most of official Washington expect Thomas to meet Hood’s challenge with a bold, aggressive stroke, Thomas prefers to strengthen his fortifications and encourages Hood to destroy himself. While tactically sound, the contrast with Sherman once again casts Thomas in an unfavorable light and gives fuel to his many critics. But Thomas’s efforts bear fruit when his troops crush Hood’s assault at Franklin, Tennessee. Again Grant has expectations that Thomas will finish the task and destroy what remains of Hood’s army before Hood escapes southward. When Hood refuses to retreat, Thomas reassures Washington that he intends to attack the stubborn and outmanned enemy, but Thomas injures his reputation by informing Halleck, “If I can perfect my arrangements, I shall move.…” The choice of words adds more fuel to the fires against him. Grant is aware that Thomas’s army outnumbers Hood’s by a substantial margin. Yet Thomas seems to have an instinct for his adversary, and instead of pursuing what should have been a Confederate retreat, Thomas fortifies Nashville into an invincible citadel. On December 6, 1864, an exasperated Grant orders Thomas to “attack Hood at once, and wait no longer.” The war of words heats up further, as Thomas attempts to explain his delays as an effort to protect his flanks, and put sufficient cavalry forces into the saddle, countering what he believes to be Hood’s only real chance for success. Grant’s frustrations with what he continues to see as Thomas’s reluctance to act results in a letter to Henry Halleck two days later, insisting that “if Thomas has not struck yet, he ought to be ordered to hand over his command.”

  The criticism of Thomas grows, spreading to the pen of Secretary of War Stanton, who tells Grant, “Thomas seems unwilling to attack because it is hazardous, as if all war was anything but hazardous.” Grant responds on December 9 by drafting an order to Henry Halleck instructing Thomas to turn his command over to General John Schofield, a Thomas subordinate. But Halleck is not one to hurry paperwork, and the order is not yet official when Thomas finally orders the attack. On December 15, Hood’s army is outnumbered two to one, and is utterly routed. Despite criticism of Thomas’s methods or attention to detail, his strategy is completely successful, and the Confederate threat to Tennessee is wiped away. What remains of Hood’s army withdraws into Mississippi, and Hood’s military career is terminated by Jefferson Davis.

  But accolades for the victory are delayed. Instead of allowing Thomas’s victorious army to rest in winter quarters, Grant immediately orders Thomas to resume campaigning southward, hoping to eliminate remaining Confederate strongholds in Mississippi and Alabama.

  In spring 1865, as the war concludes, Thomas commands occupied Confederate territory in the states west and south of the Appalachians, what is known as the Department of the Cumberland.

  In 1869, Thomas is assigned to command the Military Division of the Pacific, and moves to San Francisco. But his service there is brief. He dies in 1870, at age fifty-three, and is buried in Troy, New York. He is still considered a traitor to the Confederacy by his family, and none of his Southern relatives attend the funeral. But the list of those who attend his memorial service includes (now president) Ulysses Grant, and Generals Sherman, Meade, Sheridan, Rosecrans, and Hooker, among many others.

  It is an ongoing debate whether Thomas was grotesquely mistreated by both Grant and Sherman, both of whom condemn Thomas in their memoirs. Thomas does not live to counter the attacks on his character, though in subsequent years, a great many others, including Charles Dana and (later president) James Garfield, are effusive in their praise for Thomas as a commander. There is no confusion about the loyalty of his own troops, who vehemently defend his campaigning style. The United States Congress agrees, and even before the war’s end, in early March 1865, Thomas is presented with a formal resolution of thanks. Later that year, the state of Tennessee recognizes him with the issuance of a gold medal.

  One consistency to Thomas’s character is a lack of self-promotion, which in the end is likely responsible for his being overlooked by history. Unlike Sherman and Grant, Thomas does not write memoirs, and instead burns his private papers, saying “my private life is my own, and I will not have it hawked about in print for the amusement of the curious.” He dislikes public speaking, is no orator in any sense, and does not seek the accolades that come to him after the war, including an attempt by some to draft him as a candidate for president in 1867. In 1868, he refuses his nomination to the rank of lieutenant general, believing that his services “do not rank so high a compliment.”

  To this day, Thomas has both detractors and admirers, and his early death, compared to so many of his contemporaries, has likely erased a reputation that deserves far greater mention.

  With unexpected graciousness, General in Chief Sherman officially announces Thomas’s death to the army: “In battle he never wavered, he never sought advancement of rank or honor at the expense of anyone. Whatever he earned of these were his own and no one disputes his fame. General Thomas was the very impersonation of honesty, integrity and honor … the beau ideal of the soldier and gentleman. The old Army of the Cumberland … will weep for him many tears of grief.”

  Historian Bruce Catton responds to Thomas’s critics with even more enthusiasm: “What a general could do, Thomas did. No more dependable soldier for a moment of crisis existed on the North American continent … there was nothing slow about Thomas, nor was he primarily defensive. Grant was wrong.”

  The controversy is best summed up by historian Benson Bobrick: “Either Thomas was overcautious and deliberate … or quite simply, the greatest Union general of the war.”

  But this story continues. From Atlanta to the last struggles for the Confederacy in the Carolinas, the Federal army, led now by William T. Sherman, must confront the last stand of the Confederates and Joseph Johnston, in a campaign that tears and burns through the beleaguered lands and fading light of Southern hopes. It is a story to come …

  ALSO BY JEFF SHAARA

  Gods and Generals

  The Last Full Measure

  Gone for Soldiers

  Rise to Rebellion

  The Glorious Cause

  To the Last Man

  Jeff Shaara’s Civil War Battlefields

  The Rising Tide

  The Steel Wave

  No Less Than Victory

  The Final Storm

  A Blaze of Glory

  A Chain of Thunder

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JEFF SHAARA is the New York Times bestselling author of A Chain of Thunder, A Blaze of Glory, The Final Storm, No Less Than Victory, The Steel Wave, The Rising Tide, To the Last Man, The Glorious Cause, Rise to Rebellion, and Gone fo
r Soldiers, as well as Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure—two novels that complete the Civil War trilogy that began with his father’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, The Killer Angels. Shaara was born into a family of Italian immigrants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and graduated from Florida State University. He lives in Gettysburg.