Back at Fuller’s headquarters, a staff officer galloped up, dismounted, and entered the tent to inform Dodge that the Rebels were massing in force in the woods. “General Dodge forgot his dinner,” noted a member of the headquarters mess, but he did not forget the time. He made sure to note that the battle had opened with his corps “at two minutes after twelve.” Dodge instructed Fuller to post his regiments before mounting his horse and trotting westward to the position of his 2nd Division and its acerbic leader, Brigadier General Thomas W. Sweeny.10
Born in Ireland on Christmas Day back in 1820, the forty-three-year-old Sweeny was denigrated by a contemporary as “a little, ordinary man with a weak voice.” Sweeny could easily be distinguished within a gaggle of officers by his armless right sleeve pinned to his coat. The telltale reminder of his Mexican War experience underscored his fearless conduct in battle, for he had also survived an arrow through his neck in an 1852 Indian fight and two more less-prominent battle wounds in the first three years of the Civil War, including a musket ball embedded in his thigh. There were at least as many close calls with enemy bullets as there were scars from them. Two years earlier at the Battle of Shiloh, a bullet grazed the side of his face and deprived him of half of his mustache. Without emotion, Sweeny’s first reaction was to curse, “That’s a ____ rough razor to shave a man with.”11
Notwithstanding his unimposing appearance, General Sweeny stood out as one of the most blunt and abrasive offices in Sherman’s department. An underling claimed that Sweeny delivered his orders in three languages, “English, Irish-American, and profane.” He tended to lapse into the last of those tongues more frequently when excited, delivering the profanity-laden orders in staccato, “making it decidedly unpleasant for the person addressed.” The feistiness of “Fightin’ Tom” fit into the stereotype of his Irish birth, as did his disdain for peers with British blood coursing through their veins. That did not bode well for General Fuller, born in England. Yet, as in most cases, stereotyping Sweeny in that manner was a disservice. True, he disliked Fuller, but he apparently had no friends in the officer corps of the Army of the Tennessee.12
Sweeny’s past leadership experiences in Missouri, Tennessee, and Mississippi taught him to react reflexively to the desultory sounds of enemy pickets. Taking advantage of the vocal cords of his burly orderly—whose voice reminded one of “a big gray timber wolf”—Sweeny relayed orders to send out infantry skirmishers from each of his two brigades to replace the cavalry pickets that had instigated the opposing skirmish fire minutes earlier. Approximately 100 Iowa and Indiana infantrymen fanned out eastward toward the body of woods 800 yards away. No sooner did the skirmishers reach the timber than they tumbled back out, overwhelmed by a large body of Confederate infantry charging westward toward Sweeny’s soldiers. Sweeny sat mounted next to his orderly between the skirmish line and the hill when Confederate lead pattered around them. Sweeny swiftly sent another aide galloping back to his division to get them under arms and he trotted back to the hill where his men would be deployed. Writing to a friend a week later, Sweeny claimed, “I examined the ground as I returned, though fired on constantly by the skirmishers, and knew where to put every gun and regiment.”13
The noon-hour sounds of skirmish fire rippled northward to General McPherson’s lunch spot in the grove of oaks behind the XV Corps line. The generals had just completed their meal and were relaxing with lit cigars when the distinct rifle fire could be detected from the south. McPherson had just sent an orderly off in the direction where the XVI Corps stood to inform Dodge that he should send General Fuller’s four regiments half way to Decatur to tear up the railroad. As soon as the courier rode southward out of sight of them, an incoming shell from that direction crashed through the tops of the oaks above the generals, sending leaves and tree limbs in an all-too-familiar shower near them. Undaunted by the close call, General Logan turned to McPherson and quipped, “General, they seem to be popping that corn for us.” Sensing the sounds of Dodge’s return fire, McPherson, Logan, and Blair called for their horses. As McPherson mounted up, he already knew that the repositioning of Fuller would have to wait. The Battle of Atlanta had begun.14
The Confederate attackers hailed from Bate’s division, mostly from two of his brigades. One of those brigades was commanded by Brigadier General Joseph H. Lewis. That was the “Orphan Brigade,” five Kentucky regiments originally led by General John C. Breckinridge, the former vice president and a presidential candidate in 1860. Named for their inability to return home to the border state of Kentucky—else risk capture by Unionists—many members of the Orphan Brigade never made the attempt to visit their homes for the duration of the war. General Lewis had led the Kentuckians throughout the spring and summer in Georgia, bloody seasons for the Orphans who lost heavily at Resaca and particularly at the battle of Dallas, Georgia, on May 28 where more than 50 percent of the brigade was killed or wounded in an ill-fated charge against a heavily entrenched opponent. Lewis was left with fewer than 700 men in the entire brigade at the point of attack against Sweeny’s division on July 22.15
Close to the same paltry numbers existed in Brigadier General Jesse J. Finley’s Florida Brigade, the other force in Bate’s division joining in the noontime assault. The third brigade of Bate’s division—Brigadier General Thomas B. Smith’s mixed brigade of Tennesseans and Georgians—was a nonfactor that day (most of them likely stood in the reserve line and never were engaged on July 22). Finley’s Floridians, though, made their presence known, for their left flank had the most unfortunate luck to beeline toward the only impenetrable position in the thin line of Sweeny’s division—the 6 guns of Lieutenant Seth M. Laird’s 14th Ohio Light Artillery.16
Laird’s position was fortuitous for the Union. Less than half an hour earlier, Lieutenant Laird had been ordered on the knoll in the field by General Fuller, whose division he supported. When Laird asked Fuller if there would be time to unhitch and water his horses in Sugar Creek, Fuller assured him, “Oh yes. We may stay here half the afternoon.” Fuller was half right. Indeed they would be staying the afternoon, but if the horses had time to be led down to the brook for a drink, they would not be rejoining the cannons before the rebel assault against their position.17
The Floridians jumped out of the woods and joined the assault of the Kentuckians, likely far enough off the flank for the Orphan Brigade not to even notice. “We opened at once with shell, firing as rapidly as possible,” Laird reported, “yet on they came.” One of the Florida regiments approached closer than the others, its color bearer jumping into a ravine within 50 yards of the battery. That intrepid but reckless flagman left the protection of the ravine and crawled closer and closer to the muzzles of the 3-inch-ordinance rifles—so close as to cause his flag to billow out upon every discharge of the guns.18 Unable to advance directly into the teeth of a seemingly impenetrable artillery position, the Florida men shifted northward to their right where the Kentuckians had already initiated their assault as the extreme right of the Confederate line. “It is supposed we have gone far enough to our right to overlap the left of the enemy & thus turn his flank,” surmised Sergeant John W. Green of the 9th Kentucky Infantry. As the Orphan Brigade pickets drove back the Federal skirmishers the rest of the Confederate attackers closed up with their skirmish line, absorbing them into the line of battle. Then all pushed forward.19
The bull rush of the Kentuckians was so sudden and swift that the Iowa and Indiana skirmishers had no chance to return to their lines. They were saved from immediate capture by General Sweeny’s orderly, whose booming voice could still be heard amidst the din of the Rebel yell. He split the skirmishers in the center by sending the Iowans northward and the Hoosiers southward. The Kentuckians immediately filled the breech as they poured out of the woods. First to emerge was the 5th Kentucky, followed immediately by the 2nd and 9th Kentucky. The only obstacle impeding their advance was a troublesome rail fence that separated the woods from the field. It was high enough to trap one Blue Grass soldier, who
was left dangling on the west side by his canteen strap (the canteen was lodged across the fence). Fortunately for him, a Yankee bullet hit the strap and cut him free to join his company mates in their charge toward the Union line.20
The Orphan Brigade rushed out directly in front of the eastward facing XVI Corps troops of Rice’s 1st Brigade. A veteran of several battles—and a victim of seven battle wounds over that span—General Rice was fighting the battle with a deep emotional injury; his brother Samuel, a general serving in the Red River campaign, died two weeks earlier from a bullet that shattered his leg. Nevertheless, Rice was awestruck at the gallant rush of the Kentuckians. “They burst forth from the woods in truly magnificent style,” raved Rice, mesmerized by the Confederate battle flags “proudly flaunting in the breeze.” His infantry was not in an optimum position to stop them. With only three of his four regiments in line (the 52nd Illinois was not up yet), the command had not had time to construct works. Rice admitted, “My position being in an open field, I could only rely on the bravery and endurance of my command.”21
Although the attackers and defenders were roughly equal in number at that part of the field at noon that Friday, Sweeny’s force had a decided advantage. Their two batteries made all the difference. Adding their firepower to Laird’s Ohio battery were 6 cannons of Battery H, 1st Missouri Light Artillery, as they stood on the rise occupied by Rice’s brigade, wedged between the 2nd and 7th Iowa Infantry. Lieutenant Andrew T. Blodgett was in charge of those guns, all Napoleons. The smoothbore cannons, designed to throw twelve-pound rounds, proved to make the difference in the initiation of the contest. As the Kentuckians poured out of the woods the cannons belched out half a dozen shells directly at them. Fortunately for the Confederates, the rounds all struck 20 yards in front of the attackers, bounced over their heads and exploded well behind them. Manning their pieces without the protective cover of entrenchments in a large open field, the gunners did not escape injury. One sergeant and two of his underlings dropped with wounds early, reducing the number of men on that piece by nearly half. Another section commander went down with a bullet through his neck, but he refused to leave his guns. Eight men and eight horses were either killed or wounded by the Confederates, a testament to the close-range firing in the short-lived charge.22
General McPherson and his staff entered the open field in time to witness the attack of Bate’s brigades. They took position on a knoll well behind the artillery positions, and north of Fuller’s line. “The scene at this time was grand and impressive,” lauded Lieutenant Colonel William E. Strong of McPherson’s staff. “It seemed to us that every mounted officer of the attacking columns was riding in front of, or on the right or left of the first line of battle.” The staff officer noted that Bate’s assaults had Confederate artillery support posted on high ground and in the woods, but it was no match for the two Union batteries wreaking havoc upon the Floridians and Kentuckians. The Confederates, continued Strong, “showed great steadiness, closed up the gaps, and preserved their alignments; but the iron and leaden hail that was fairly poured upon them was too much for flesh and blood to stand, and before reaching the centre of the open fields, the columns were broken up and thrown into great confusion.”23
Scores of Kentuckians and Floridians were victimized by shrapnel and bullets ripping through and embedding in their bodies, but the rest kept coming. “Balls flew thicker than I ever experienced,” remembered a Confederate. “It seemed I was among a swarm of bees.” To General Rice, the rebel charge then was desperate with those in the rear urging the frontline ranks to keep moving. Even so, the desperation was matched within his ranks. On his right, eight companies of close to 400 men from the 66th Indiana had fired so many bullets at the Confederates that they had run out. That happened at the worst possible time—right as the Floridians advanced against them. They left the line, replaced by the 7th Iowa, carrying more than 2,000 rounds of lead to fire.
According to a lieutenant in the 6th Florida Infantry, Bate’s men charged “to within gunshot of the Yankees.” Rice boasted that his thin line of troops “stood like a fence of iron” in that moment of desperation. He claimed that a crisis point was approaching fast—“one or the other must soon succumb.” At that moment the 52nd Illinois, the lone reserve unit in Rice’s brigade, entered the fray and added fresh firepower to the line. The only protection for the Union troops was a short pile of fence rails hastily stacked in front of them to serve as a rudimentary breastwork.24
Onward rushed the Kentuckians and Floridians to within 200 yards as Lieutenant Blodgett ordered his sergeants (each of them commanded a section of 2 guns) to load canister. The round was essentially a can filled with iron balls, used only in close range encounters. The can was obliterated once it left the barrel sending dozens of the metal balls on errant paths of destruction. Blodgett ordered them to fire the canister at point-blank range. With perfect compliance, the gunners pulled the lanyards and the cannons belched forth the lethal rounds. The canister-spewing cannons simulated hundreds of infantrymen firing shotguns at the Orphan Brigade. Moreover, for the Kentuckians that effect was magnified twofold, for the Iowans and Illinoisans wedged between the batteries loosed a synchronized volley on command. The effect was devastating. According to a Confederate, the volley was “unusually destructive.” Of the Orphan Brigade, 135 men were killed or wounded by the infantry fire and artillery blasts.25
The Florida Brigade fared worse than the Kentuckians, for they appeared to head directly into the teeth of Laird’s 14th Ohio battery. Blodgett’s artillery was effective against the Kentuckians, but Laird’s battery devastated the Floridians. “Our guns are burning hot,” complained one of his gunners, “but still we pour the shell and [canister] in to their ranks.… We slaughter them as they come up and drive them back in confusion.” More Florida men dropped with gaping wounds in their arms, legs, and torsos. “An effort was made to advance,” explained a Confederate, “but the confusion and destruction rendered it futile.” An Iowan with a frontline view marveled at the tenacity of the Rebels, “They would waver, fall back, form and come again, only to be hurled back again with greater slaughter.” Lieutenant Laird seamlessly filled the void created by the sick captain of the battery. Laird coolly rode his horse to each end of his artillery line, directing his gunners to shoot to the best advantage. “We slaughter them as they come up and drive them back in confusion,” declaimed an Ohio artillerist, noting, “They do not attempt it again.”26
Realizing he could not dislodge Rice’s brigade, Lewis ordered the Orphan Brigade and Finley commanded his Florida men to return to the protection of the woods. The Confederates found their quarter-mile march back to the woods a most harrowing experience. “As we turned our back upon them,” recalled Sergeant John W. Green, “they poured the shot into us & caused many of our dear boys to bite the dust.” The Iowans watched three color bearers of the 5th Kentucky drop in succession, with no further attempt to rescue the flag. John McKee of the 2nd Iowa told his diary, “Their colors fell repeatedly, and finally I saw one stand fall and no one picked them up and then the whole line faltered and fell back in confusion.” One of McKee’s regimental comrades, J. A. Cease of Company C, rushed out and retrieved the flag and brought it back to Rice’s line.27
General Bate brought up Captain Cuthbert H. Slocomb’s Washington, Louisiana, Battery of smoothbore cannons, but they came up late. After they left the road, the cannons could not be rolled between the trees of the dense woods. Artillerists became temporary axmen as they blazed a trail to the destination point, which was reached after Bate’s infantry assault was thwarted. Slocomb’s battery deployed behind Bate’s line—“where we ought to have been the entire time,” complained one of the artillerists. There they fired a few rounds without any discernable effect. Blaming General Bate for the lack of coordination between infantry and artillery, as well as their poor position, a member of the battery insisted that they “were not in a position to do any execution.”28
General Bate dec
ided against forcing his men to charge again, lamenting that “the condition of my command did not justify a renewal of the assault.” The condition of his command was deplorable. Two of his brigades were wrecked. The total casualties were never tallied in official correspondences, but the private letters of the soldiers suggest how devastating it all was. Gervis Grainger of the 6th Kentucky insisted that “not more than” half of the regiment re-formed behind a hill; his company was down to a handful of members. Letters from Union soldiers in Rice’s brigade claimed scores of killed and captured Confederates, “there being hardly a grease spot left of the Kentucky Brigade,” portrayed an artillerist to his brother.29
The Confederates did not disagree. “The most of the division was captured,” lamented a soldier in the 6th Florida Infantry. Although that was overstated, his claim that Finley’s brigade was down to fewer than 400 men was not, and the reason that they had even that many could be attributed to the immense straggling that took perhaps more than 300 men in each brigade out of the fight—the equivalent of two regiments. “Our Regiment went into the fight on the 22nd with ten good large companies and they are now consolidated,” he wrote four days after the battle, insisting that the ill-fated attack reduced the regiment to five very small companies. Bate lost about 500 officers and men killed, wounded, and captured—more than 40 percent of his attacking strength. With nearly sixty years of reflection, a lieutenant in one of the Kentucky regiments considered that assault as “the most ill-conceived and unsatisfactory executed plan of battle of the whole war in which I participated.” Sensing the loss of valuable officers throughout the brigade, the lieutenant seethed, “The whole thing was disappointing and to me really disgusting.”30
Rice and his men had saved the Union left. His unprotected flank position had been sniffed out by Hardee and assaulted, and it should have cost his brigade dearly—particularly given that the attack was a complete surprise. Regardless, he escaped with 3 men killed and 30 wounded in his four infantry regiments of perhaps as many as 1,500 officers and men. The low casualties can be primarily attributed to the firepower of the 12 cannons of Laird’s and Blodgett’s batteries. Laird tallied 650 rounds of ammunition fired for the entire day—most of them were expended within half an hour after deploying on the hill. Similar to Blodgett, Laird reported 2 men killed and 6 injured, but “2 of the 6 were wounded but slightly and continued to do duty.” One of those two, Henry Everingham, continued to man his gun after his wound, but could be forgiven if he was overly jittery about it. A rebel ball skimmed the top of his head, carrying away the hair and some scalp all the way from the forehead to the crown.31
The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta Page 10