The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta
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Northwest of Bald Hill, General Cleburne was unaware that the Union flank continued to grow and strengthen. Nor was he interested in Blair’s activities south of Bald Hill, for his division was still engaged in a death struggle with Leggett’s troops on the hill. Wave after wave of counterassaults had failed, forcing Cleburne to adopt the tactic of defensive fighting from breastworks his division constructed in the woods. Union cannon fire continued to swell the casualty list in the most gruesome manner. William W. Royall of the 18th Texas Cavalry crouched behind an earthwork next to Bill Simms, also from Company K. A cannonball glanced off the breastwork in front of the two Texans and careened into Simms, decapitating him. The severed head flew into the chest of Royall and knocked him on his back as it sprayed him with gore. The horrified survivor recalled, “In the evening when we left the breastworks our clothes were sprinkled with blood and men’s brains and the bottom of the breastworks were nearly half covered with blood.”38
Obviously affected by the brutality of the day, General Cleburne assessed July 21 as “the bitterest” fighting of his life. Back at Confederate army headquarters, General Hood had devised a plan for the following day that was destined to enhance that bitterness for the sake of ultimate victory.39
3
THE PLAN
During the sultry midafternoon hours of July 21, 1864, all indications and circumstances suggest that John Bell Hood planned to defend Atlanta to fend off attacks from General Thomas from the north, General Schofield from the northeast, and from General McPherson in the east. Two of Hood’s three infantry corps, under Generals Stewart and Cheatham, were deployed to face off against Thomas and Schofield, while over half of Hardee’s corps had dug in 2,500 yards east of Atlanta in a one-mile line extending southward from the Georgia Railroad. That Hood assured more support for Hardee’s line in a 2:30 P.M. dispatch promising that night to “fill the vacancy between Cleburne and Maney with infantry” strengthens the argument that the commanding general was not planning to conduct a tactical offensive for the rest of July 21 or even July 22 for that matter.1
Dramatically, Hood changed his mind and pulled the trigger not for a simple head-on attack plan for July 22, but one unlike any seen in the Western theater of the Civil War to date. Brewing factors led to the abandonment of his defensive posture, ones that not only involved the limited strength of his own defense but also the potential vulnerability of his opponent. Hood was relieved that Wheeler and Cleburne were able to stymie the advance of McPherson’s army (Hardee’s assistant adjutant general proclaimed it was a result of “a combination of good luck, audacity, and hard fighting”).2 But McPherson’s position added a threat from the east and potentially was a source of vulnerability to the Macon & Western Railroad, unprotected and only 8 miles south of McPherson’s left flank. The capture of that railroad would place the next rail line west of it, the Atlanta & West Point Railroad, in jeopardy for Hood. Alternatively, if Sherman gave McPherson permission to strike the main northward rail line above the East Point depot, a point merely 7 miles from the Union left flank, then the common line to those two railroads would be severed and all railroads to and from Atlanta would be owned and controlled by General Sherman. Even without a major battle, that would be “checkmate” for Hood and his army defending the Gate City.
Hood was determined to stop McPherson before his old West Point classmate could get fairly started. Hood’s army was down 2,500 men from the ill-fated assault against the Army of the Cumberland on July 20. Although he failed to trap General Thomas against Peachtree Creek, or in the least force him to cross back over it, Hood had temporarily paralyzed Thomas from launching any attack against him from Atlanta’s northern environs. McPherson was not likely to attack imminently after the casualties he suffered to claim Bald Hill. Hood felt like he had less than twenty-four hours to act, for even if the armies did not attack him, they could reinforce their positions with deep trenches and high earthworks, and plant several batteries to harass Atlanta.
What were his options? Attacking Thomas again, even if Hood committed all three corps, was the least attractive one. The Army of the Cumberland was the largest of the three armies in Sherman’s military district. Schofield’s Army of the Ohio was the smallest, but it also was the safest with his left flank covered by the Army of the Tennessee (although Hood noted a significant degree of separation between Schofield’s right and Thomas’s left). McPherson’s army had garnered a steady two-and-a-half-year record of success, primarily when it was commanded by General Grant. Since Sherman and McPherson had taken over, the record had been spotty. Arkansas Post and Kennesaw Mountain had been setbacks for the Army of the Tennessee. Could Hood deal it another blow?
Hood set his sights southeastward, toward McPherson’s left flank. Wheeler’s and Cleburne’s engagement against the Army of the Tennessee had defined McPherson’s exact position for Hood. More specifically, he looked behind McPherson at Decatur, where he learned the vast supply wagons of the Army of the Tennessee tarried, lightly guarded. If Hood could somehow get around that flank and behind the Union army, the element of surprise would roll up that force in a panic. Because McPherson’s army was smaller than Thomas’s force, Hood reasoned that he could surprise it and rout it with his cavalry and one of his three infantry corps. Rolling up the Army of the Tennessee also removed it as an immediate threat to the vital rail lines south (Atlanta & West Point Railroad) and southeast (Macon & Western Railroad) of Atlanta.
Hood looked at the rout of McPherson’s army as an indirect means to accomplish the objective of sending Thomas and Schofield back to and over Peachtree Creek. Rather than isolate and annihilate the Army of the Tennessee by turning both of its flanks inward, Hood determined not to assault the right of McPherson’s position until the left had been so routed and rolled up as to disorganize the opposite flank as well. One Confederate corps could remain between Thomas’s army and Atlanta while the other shifted eastward to intensify the rout. Here, General Hood also had troops in the form of the Georgia militia, potentially 3,000 additional troops to reinforce the attackers once the rout was on. Therefore, Hood’s plan covered the contingency of protecting Atlanta from a southward thrust while simultaneously he removed the eastern threat and opened up the Georgia Railroad at the same time. The ultimate goal was to create a mass panic and roll all the armies in Sherman’s district—all 100,000 men—back to Peachtree Creek and severely wound Sherman’s entire campaign in the process.
The plan was audacious—reminiscent of what Hood had witnessed in the Eastern theater with the exploits of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. General Lee, like Hood, had replaced Joseph Johnston while the latter had his back against a major objective point for the Union. Back in 1862 that objective was Richmond and Robert E. Lee had successfully erased Johnston’s retrograde steps with the Army of Northern Virginia. First he stopped Union momentum at the gates of Richmond by completing the Battle of Fair Oaks/Seven Pines. Three and a half weeks later he pushed Major General George McClellan and his Army of the Potomac back down the Yorktown Peninsula in a series of near-daily clashes called the Seven Days battles. By the second day of July the threat to Richmond was removed as McClellan was licking his wounds on the banks of the James River. A few weeks later he and his army were returning to Washington while Lee was already fighting a second campaign in central Virginia.
The lesson Hood learned from Lee in that experience was the importance of aggression and a sustained offensive. Hood’s losses at Peachtree Creek and at Bald Hill on July 20–21 should not postpone or delay a major assault on July 22, based on the experiences around Richmond in the early summer of 1862. Back then General Lee sacrificed nearly 8,000 soldiers at the Battle of Gaines’s Mill, yet fought the pivotal Battle of Glendale less than seventy-two hours later, which began to force McClellan permanently away from Richmond at the cost of another 3,600 Confederate casualties. The very next day, while those Federals were retreating, Lee attacked them again at Malvern Hill, losing more than 5,600 men. The
entire Seven Days campaign cost Lee 20,000 soldiers—over 20 percent of his army—to achieve his goal of driving McClellan away from Richmond. General Hood had participated in that campaign as a brigade commander and nothing he bore witness to back then dissuaded him from the concept of sacrificing men in his own army two years later to drive the Yankees from the gates of Atlanta.3
Hood witnessed Lee accomplish that feat with subpar commanders, others who were inexperienced to lead men at that stage of the war, and even with one legendary commander—Stonewall Jackson—who was so mediocre throughout that campaign as to be fairly inconsequential to its successful outcome. Hood’s Army of Tennessee consisted of regiments, brigades, divisions, and corps composed of vastly more battle-tested men and commanded by more experienced colonels and generals than those who were subordinate to Lee back in the summer of 1862. The problem facing Hood is what faced him, for at the brigade, division, and corps level, the Army of the Tennessee in the summer of 1864 was superior to the Army of the Potomac as it existed in the summer of 1862, and the Western army had a record of success in every campaign in which those units participated to support that favorable comparison. For General Hood to measure up to the legendary Lee in his first campaign as an army commander, he and his army would have to overcome and rout an army that had never lost a campaign. The loss of 3,000 Confederate soldiers over the past two days would not dissuade him from attempting that feat.
To achieve his goal, Hood wished to repeat the ingredients of a previous success. Stonewall Jackson secured his legendary status on May 2, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville. On the second day of that battle he marched his entire corps clandestinely on a wilderness road that eventually placed them on the unsuspecting right flank of the Army of the Potomac. Late that afternoon, he charged his men on that open flank and proceeded to roll it up during the evening hours. Jackson was mortally wounded that night, but his immortality as a Confederate icon was established in the process, for that famous flank march and subsequent surprise assault secured Robert E. Lee’s most audacious victory of the entire war. Hood wished to supplant Lee’s mark with an equally audacious plan with more salvaging results.
In his words, General Hood hoped that the assault upon McPherson’s left flank and rear “would result not only in a general battle, but in a signal victory to our arms.” During the waning afternoon hours of July 21 Hood called in his four infantry and cavalry corps commanders, and Major General Gustavus Smith, in charge of the Georgia militia. At Hood’s headquarters they all gathered and listened to his battle plan for the following morning. No one voiced an objection to the outlines of what Hood was expecting and all accepted their respective missions. Hood pegged Lieutenant General William J. Hardee to be his Stonewall Jackson for that flank march. Hood personally was not fond of Hardee and still justifiably blamed him for tactical blunders that weakened his punch at the Battle of Peachtree Creek. For that reason alone, Hardee was a reluctant choice. Still, few corps commanders in the war were considered more dependable than William Joseph Hardee, a general whose very nickname was “Old Reliable.”
Hardee was a forty-eight-year-old Georgian with a distinguished military career prior to the Civil War that included two brevets for gallantry in Mexico. Hardee’s reputation and acumen were so solid that an infantry-tactics manual he authored was used as a standard text for training troops from the North and the South. Hardee was not spectacular during the first three years of the Civil War, but he was solid enough to be awarded a lieutenant generalship in 1862 and had led a wing or a corps for two years. During the previous November, after Braxton Bragg resigned for his abysmal performance at Chattanooga, Hardee commanded the army in the interim for the winter. President Jefferson Davis offered the command of the Army of Tennessee to Hardee, but Hardee turned down the offer and disappointed his president, who was forced to settle on Joseph E. Johnston, a man Davis loathed.
Hardee was friendly to General Johnston throughout the spring and early summer campaign in Georgia, but when talk brewed in Richmond that Johnston needed to be removed, Hardee again seemed the most available and obvious replacement. Hardee had grown disillusioned with how frequently Johnston had backpedaled with the army. Here, he was in agreement with General Hood, but Hood (with the help of Braxton Bragg) conspired behind the scenes to give President Davis the impression that Hardee shared the same mindset as Johnston. Regardless, Davis had been burned once when he offered Hardee the army and he decided against offering it to him again. The command went to Hood. Hardee generally kept his feelings to himself in the first five days he served under Hood; his later writings suggest he was resentful because of Hood’s ascendency over him. The ill feeling was reciprocated on July 20 when Hood firmly believed that Hardee was anything but reliable in his lackluster performance at the Battle of Peachtree Creek.4
LIEUTENANT GENERAL WILLIAM JOSEPH HARDEE, C.S.A.
Nicknamed “Old Reliable,” Hardee was ordered to conduct an overnight march to gain the flank and rear of McPherson’s army and attack it with his entire corps. That mission was reminiscent of Stonewall Jackson’s at the Battle of Chancellorsville nearly fifteen months earlier. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Under the best circumstances, Hood would have preferred to bestow the honor of the flank march to Major General Alexander P. Stewart and his corps, but Stewart’s men were the farthest northwest of all of Hood’s corps from McPherson’s army and would require the greatest distance (and time) to conduct the required march. Hood also justified Hardee over Stewart because he “commanded the largest corps, and [his] troops were comparatively fresh as they had taken but little part in the attack of the previous day.”5 Here Hood was wrong for Hardee’s men had indeed fought at Peachtree Creek, losing about 1,000 men compared to Stewart’s 1,500. Cleburne’s division was also taking losses that very day near Bald Hill and brought Hardee’s casualty totals over the past two days much closer to Stewart’s aggregate losses. Conversely to Hood’s line of thinking, two of Stewart’s three divisions were actually fresher than two of Hardee’s.
More puzzling perhaps was Hood’s decision not to spearhead that very important movement with the most rested troops of his army—his own former corps, commanded by General Cheatham. By the late afternoon of July 21 Cheatham’s corps may have been the largest of Hood’s army with over 14,000 officers and men present for duty. Those men were undoubtedly fresh, for they had only been minimally engaged on July 20 and July 21. Hood dismissed any consideration for using them for the flank march by claiming, “I selected Hardee for this duty because Cheatham had, at that time, little experience as a corps commander.” True as that statement was, it cannot be overlooked that Cheatham was one of the most experienced division commanders to take over a corps in the history of the Army of Tennessee. Moreover, Hood did not apply that logic to himself as a general who “had, at this time, little experience as” an army commander. Given that Hood knew those troops better than any other and had achieved some success in previous battles during the Atlanta campaign, his insistence to forgo his former command in favor of a more fatigued corps led by a commander who disappointed him the previous day was the weakest branch of his decision tree.6
With Hardee chosen to lead the flank assault, Hood explained to all of his chief subordinates that the other key to the success of the attack was Wheeler’s cavalry. Wheeler had approximately 7,500 men under his command, but half of them probably were not available that night. Still, adding Wheeler’s force magnified the size of the flank and rear assault to 17,000–18,000 foot and horse soldiers. As their movement around the flank commenced, the remaining Southern infantry was ordered to pull back and entrench in a stronger ring of works clockwise one mile north and east of Atlanta. That was to commence after dark; i.e., overnight on July 21–22. Then Hardee and Wheeler were to move out together on the flank march overnight, obtain the flank and rear of the Union army, and attack “at daylight”—about 5:30 A.M.—“or as soon thereafter as possible.” Once Hardee and Wheeler
succeeded in forcing back McPherson’s left flank, Cheatham was told to use his corps “to take up the movement from his right and continue to force the whole from [Cheatham’s] right to left down Peach Tree Creek.” In other words, Cheatham was to serve as bellows to a fire started by Hardee and Wheeler, stoking the flames of the rout. General Gustavus Smith was also instructed to assist Cheatham with his militia.7
Those instructions revealed a unique and ambitious battle plan, one that has been misinterpreted and misunderstood for nearly 150 years. It is clear from Cheatham’s role—and to a lesser extent, Smith’s—that Hood was not attempting to isolate the Army of the Tennessee from the rest of Sherman’s department. The destruction of McPherson’s army east of Atlanta was not the goal. If it was, Hood would have instructed Cheatham to assault the Union right flank as soon as he heard Hardee’s attack upon the left, or shortly thereafter, with the goal of turning the flank southward as Hardee was turning his northward. That Hood ordered Cheatham to pick up the anticipated rout by attacking from right to left (south to north) with his three divisions contradicts any notion that Hood was attempting to trap the army between Bald Hill and the Georgia Railroad to destroy it there. Because McPherson and Schofield were adjacent to each other, Hood essentially saw that as one entity, a four-corps army slightly separated from General Thomas’s three-corps army. Benjamin Cheatham’s and Gustavus Smith’s mission to send the panic created by Hardee northward assured that Schofield would be extricated from his position with the rout of McPherson. It was Hood’s hope that that would instigate Thomas’s departure from his position north of Atlanta.