Unfortunately for the Confederates, they had approached the only unengaged corps of the Army of the Tennessee—Major General John A. Logan’s XV Corps. Logan’s southernmost division, the 4th, commanded by Brigadier General William Harrow, had extended from the XVII Corps line by bending due northward from a point above the Bald Hill. Harrow was a unique character for that Union army, a transplant from the Army of the Potomac who had enjoyed victory on the fields of Gettysburg the previous July. A tough disciplinarian, Harrow had attracted the wrath of his subordinates and soldiers, but his sound soldier experience and instincts in the early afternoon of July 22 saved his division from a disaster. Having heard the attack upon the flanks of XVI and XVII corps during the noon hour and watching Union stragglers, caissons, and wagons pour from the trees behind his left flank, Harrow applied some preventative medicine to his division. “I at once attempted to anticipate any action of the enemy, by directing Colonel Charles C. Walcutt to face to the rear, and swing his command around so as to face toward our left flank.”13
Harrow chose Walcutt’s brigade because it was the most successful and experienced brigade of his division in that campaign, a perception that placed Colonel Walcutt on a clear path to become the youngest general in the army at the age of twenty-six. Walcutt pulled his troops out of the division line as the bookend brigades extended their flanks to fill the new vacancy. Walcutt led his regiments into a cornfield 400 yards behind (east of) the main army line. Facing his men southward toward the tree line, Walcutt had barely put the units in line when the Texas skirmishers made their appearance by exiting the woods in front of him.
The Texas brigade closed in on their skirmishers and stopped in its tracks upon the unexpected appearance of nearly 1,000 blue-clad soldiers blocking its path merely 150 yards away. General James A. Smith needed support and he needed it immediately. “Finding that my brigade was far in advance of the troops on my right and left, and that the position was insecure, I dispatched an officer to communicate the same to the major-general commanding [Cleburne], with the requests that re-enforcements be sent forward,” Smith explained. As the time neared 2:00 P.M. General Cleburne determined it was unrealistic to send Smith timely assistance.14
Walcutt’s men refused General James A. Smith the time necessary for reinforcements. According to one of the Texans, “The Yanks had discovered there was only a skirmish line of us; they began to get over their scare and get together again, and began to shoot at us.” Walcutt’s brigade peppered Smith’s Texans with several volleys that were not returned with nearly the same intensity. General Harrow, overseeing the action, called it “short and decisive.” Perhaps so, but it was not by a simple counterpunch. Walcutt’s brigade received timely assistance to add power to that punch. Major Thomas Maurice, the chief of artillery of the XV Corps, placed 2 cannons in position to support Walcutt’s infantry. The guns swept a ravine holding prone Confederates, tormenting whom it could not kill. Major Maurice then moved 10 more guns in support of the battery section already in place. In all, he repositioned three batteries from their original line, where they had generally faced toward Atlanta, to points covering the region of woods and fields between the XVI and XVII Corps. The redeployment guaranteed no further advancement by the Texans as well as no surprises from behind, but it considerably weakened the support required by the remaining divisions of the XV Corps facing westward.15
Walcutt’s infantry and Maurice’s artillery successfully pinned the Texas brigade in the fields fronting the woods from which they emerged. General Harrow delivered the coup de grâce with the timely insertion of infantry from Colonel John M. Oliver’s brigade. Oliver sent out two regiments to extend the right flank of Walcutt’s infantry line. That they did, lying prone in the open field and trading fire with Smith’s Confederates. Oliver broke the stalemate by sending out one more regiment—the 15th Michigan—to charge from northwest to southeast beyond the right flank of Harrow’s improvised line.
The order turned out to be one of the timeliest of the battle. General James A. Smith had already concluded that he could not break the stalemate and that it would be suicide to continue to wait for Cleburne’s reinforcements—if they were to come at all. He had already lost over 100 in killed and wounded in that field. The cross fire by Oliver’s regiments was the deciding factor. Smith ordered his Texans and Tennesseans back into the protection of the woods. As he pulled back his men from right to left, he took a bullet or shrapnel from the Yankees and was forced to leave the field. Lieutenant Colonel Robert B. Young of the 10th Texas took over. Unfortunately for the Confederates, four companies of the 15th Michigan charged during the command change and the left side of the Confederate line apparently did not receive Smith’s order. The result was a catastrophe for that proud brigade. The consolidated 17th/18th Texas and a portion of the 5th Confederate were stuck out in front; those men were at least 100 yards in advance of the rest of the Texans retreating from their right and had no support on their left.
The battalion of the 15th Michigan rushed forward “on a dead run” and crashed into that exposed force. The gunfight between them was so close that one of the Texans described it as “almost a hand-to-hand encounter.” With a portion of Oliver’s brigade on their flank and rear, the ranking Confederate officer—Major Richard J. Person of the 5th Confederate Infantry—put an end to the inevitable and ordered his officers and men to surrender. Union Private Charles F. Sancraite seized the standards of the 5th Confederate. Along with that prize Sancraite would win the Congressional Medal of Honor.16
Three companies of the 99th Indiana west of the 15th Michigan also enjoyed a capture for Oliver’s brigade. As they ascended a small knoll they could see a Confederate flag 40 yards ahead of them, but the crest of the hill shielded each side from seeing the troops of the other. Captain William V. Powell of Company I was in charge of the Hoosier detachment and he took advantage of his unseen position by ordering his men to lie prone and fire a volley as close to ground level as possible. The tactic worked; bullets struck few Southerners, but the volley confused the little major commanding enough to lure him to the hill crest. Captain Powell and his men jumped to their feet and pounced on their prey without firing another shot. They captured more than 100 Texans and the cherished flag of the 17th/18th Texas (the same hard-luck regiment that lost most of a company to one artillery round a day earlier at Bald Hill).
A grudge prevented the Indiana men from being recognized for their exploit. Before he wrote his official report of the battle, Colonel John Oliver had passed around a petition to regimental officers in his brigade in an effort to obtain an impressive list of signatures to seal his bid for promotion to brigadier general. The colonel and lieutenant colonel of the 99th Indiana refused to sign it. Oliver stayed a colonel and may have enacted his revenge on the Indiana men. The official report he submitted omitted any mention of the Hoosier capture; instead Colonel Oliver credited the 15th Michigan—his former and favorite regiment—with the capture of the flags of the Texans and the 5th Confederate Infantry and all the 182 officers and men from those two regiments who surrendered to his brigade.17
The Texas brigade lost in excess of 250 men killed, wounded, and captured in the fight against the XV Corps—close to a quarter of the engaged force. The new ranking brigade officer was a lieutenant colonel while company officers were forced to lead each of the regiments as they dropped back into the woods; most of the force was too wounded and disorganized to be a factor for several hours. Harrow’s coup was accomplished by two brigades with tremendous artillery support. It not only saved the XV Corps from an unpleasant surprise from behind, it removed a quarter of Cleburne’s punch and did so with few recorded casualties.
Nevertheless, the XV Corps was then oriented on two fronts, facing east and south with a nearly equal split of artillery. At the conclusion of that rearward action, the corps lost its commander—not by attrition, but by promotion. The Army of the Tennessee staff officers assured General Sherman by 2:00 P.M. that McPherson w
as dead. Consequently, Sherman sent verbal orders to be delivered to Major General John A. Logan that, as the ranking corps commander of the army, he was then in charge. Logan turned over his corps to his ranking subordinate, Major General Morgan L. Smith. The loss of an army commander ultimately forced five officers into new and elevated roles: army, corps, division, brigade, and regiment. The new commands and change of position of the XV Corps would increase their vulnerability to a concentrated assault. None of that mattered at that moment to General Logan, who took the news of his commander’s death and turned it into a rally cry. “McPherson and Revenge,” Logan bellowed in his stentorian voice, trained for a decade to carry to thousands at political events. He also took his former experience as a jockey (racing for his father during his teenaged years) as he galloped at breakneck speed down the line of the XV Corps and veering eastward across the defense of the XVI, yelling out McPherson’s name to avenge.18
General Cleburne must have sensed the opportunity for victory escaping him. His division had begun their action so well about forty-five minutes earlier. Govan had overtaken the works originally created and held by Hall’s Iowans, but a combination of casualties, exhaustion, and confusion had prevented the Arkansas troops from routing Giles Smith’s division from their second defense line. The Texas brigade under General James A. Smith had not only slipped through the gap between the XVI and XVII Corps, a portion of the brigade carried the battle all the way up to the rearward position of the XV Corps, holding the upper midsection of the Army of the Tennessee. Still, part of James A. Smith’s brigade stayed with Govan on the left and another part had aligned with Mercer’s division and had taken a stab at Fuller’s men on the right—both of those attacks had been stymied. The bulk of James A. Smith’s command had been equally thwarted by Harrow’s Union division in the ravine one mile north of the flanks.
Unlike General Bate and General Walker, Cleburne was able to deploy a battery to soften the position he intended to assault. Captain Thomas J. Key had ascended to command of Hotchkiss’s Battalion the day before, taking over for the wounded namesake commander. After being forced back from attempting to turn the captured Illinois guns upon their own troops, Key brought up sections of the batteries of Hotchkiss’s Battalion through the woods north of Govan’s position and spliced in guns from Captain William B. Turner’s Mississippi Battery. He succeeded in disrupting the developing Union defense with several rounds of canister, cutting off 400 Iowans from their new position. (They escaped as soon as Key stopped firing.)
Cleburne stood well behind Govan’s brigade where he and General Hardee monitored the progress of his division’s offensive. Here, the general would have received Govan’s request for reinforcements and he would have fielded J. A. Smith’s request as well. Captain Key found him there; proud of his brief artillery barrage, Key haughtily announced, “Generals to the front”—a remark Key noted caused Cleburne to smile. Savvy and experienced with a cool head in the midst of the crash and commotion of battle, Cleburne appears to have recognized the gap that then existed between his two committed brigades, an opening that must be exploited by his third and final brigade. He ordered Lowrey’s brigade to break the stalemate in the Union rear.19
The Battle of Atlanta had just completed its second hour when the entry of Patrick Cleburne’s third and final brigade magnified the character and intensity of the contest. Brigadier General Mark P. Lowrey—a former Baptist minister in Mississippi—entered the fray leading six regiments and a battalion of Alabamans and Mississippians. Lowrey’s brigade had fought in each of the past two days at Peachtree Creek and against Bald Hill; his ranks were thinned by ninety losses in the process. The remaining brigade was experienced but tired for they had spent a second sleepless night near Atlanta.20
Like the other two brigadiers in Cleburne’s division, Lowrey had commanded a brigade throughout that active campaign and had led them well, but the woods south of the attack line proved to be the great neutralizer for him as he was frustrated in attempting to keep a 500-yard interval behind J. A. Smith’s brigade before Smith’s entered the contest. The constant shifting of the lead brigades as well as the limited view irritated Lowrey to the core. Making matters worse was the mass confusion in one of General Maney’s Tennessee brigades behind him. Maney’s men broke their instructions to stay 300 yards behind Lowrey and instead they marched through his ranks, costing Lowrey considerable time to reestablish his marching formation. Ordered by General Hardee to move by the left flank to support Govan’s attack, General Cleburne rescinded that order just as Lowrey had his brigade in motion toward that direction. Lowrey’s final instructions were “to move rapidly to the front and charge the works.” Cleburne added that “no time must be lost.”21
Lowrey had little support from his right for his brigade’s assault, but the left flank added Tennesseans from Colonel John C. Carter’s brigade of Maney’s division. With the added troops, Lowrey’s force would mount a formidable assault if he could concentrate his men on a weak or unsuspecting portion of the Union line. Govan’s men had overtaken the works of Hall’s Iowans on Lowrey’s left, but they had not yet been able to reform and apply pressure to the new line of Giles Smith’s two brigades then facing eastward and expecting the Arkansans to renew the assault. Lowrey’s men passed General James A. Smith’s brigade on its right; “which had been repulsed and was reforming” noted Lowrey, an obvious reference to the bloody nose the Texans received by the punch of the XV Corps. At least three of Smith’s regiments, the 6th, 10th, and 15th Texas, had reorganized and then supported Lowrey’s right, adding a few hundred more soldiers to Lowrey’s attack. Other parts of the Texas brigade were sent out as detachments in the woods. Captain Samuel Foster, heading one of those detachments, bore witness to a surreal aspect of combat:
We started back through the wood, but had not gone more than fifty yards before a Yank appeared before us. I ordered him to throw his gun down. Instead of doing so he cocked his gun, and aimed at me not more than 20 feet away, and in an instant would have fired, but one of my men (Jake Eastman) was too quick for him and shot him down, the ball passing in the lower part of his bowels and out at the small of his back, which dropped him in his tracks. Eastman then went up to the Yank, gave him some water and they made friends, the Yank forgiving him saying, that he had done wrong, in not throwing his gun down when I told him to.22
General Cleburne’s new wave of assaults—consisting of Lowrey’s brigade and a small portion of Smith’s brigade and assisted by Tennessee regiments from Carter’s brigade in Maney’s division—angled westward in the woods close to 2,000 strong. It was thus far the largest assaulting force of the day and they were destined to strike the Union line south of the new XV Corps position and north of Hall’s original breastworks.23
The Confederates advanced unimpeded through the wooded gap despite Union efforts to close that open door. Minutes before the catastrophe that befell General McPherson, he had ordered a reserve brigade of the XV Corps to hustle down and fill the gap. The brigade was the Missouri men under Colonel Hugo Wangelin. With nearly 1,000 soldiers in his six regiments, Wangelin received his orders close to 2:00 P.M. and headed southward from a reserve point near the railroad. He traversed the ground originally occupied by the right flank of the Texans when they had been thrown back from their attempt to strike the rear of the corps, and their line of march was well east of Lowrey’s advance from the opposite direction. Once he reached the gap, Wangelin ordered his regiments to construct breastworks and they spent the next three hours doing just that, not realizing the two close calls they had experienced during their march to fill the gap. General Blair was not pleased at the lack of succor provided to his XVII Corps, complaining that Wangelin’s brigade “was so very small … that it did not near fill the gap, and the enemy had already, before this brigade had time to assume its position, passed through the interval and attacked the Seventeenth Corps directly in the rear.”24
Lowrey’s men struck the northern sector of the X
VII Corps nearly one hour after Govan’s Arkansans had initiated Cleburne’s attack upon the southern flank of Blair’s corps. It certainly wasn’t planned that way, and the long interval between the Confederate brigade offensives should have provided ample warning to the Union troops manning the trenches on and surrounding Bald Hill. Those were the two brigades of Mortimer Leggett’s division, the same troops that had seized the hill from Cleburne’s men the day before. Ironically, those two divisions were facing off in consecutive days but in opposite directions.
MAJOR GENERAL PATRICK RONAYNE CLEBURNE, C.S.A.
Hood’s most experienced and talented division commander, Cleburne zealously hurled his three brigades against the Union rear throughout the afternoon of July 22, and he followed up with a spirited evening assault. He survived the battle and the Georgia campaign but was killed four months later in Tennessee at the Battle of Franklin. (Courtesy of MOLLUS-Massachusetts, USAMHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.)
General Leggett was not oblivious to what had transpired behind his lines over the past two hours. His division consisted of three brigades, although one of them was only a regiment, and a battalion (about half of a regiment). In all, Leggett had nine infantry regiments from Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio—the heart of the Old Northwest Territory—manning earthworks that stretched 600 yards up and over Bald Hill. His men had faced westward throughout the morning, but ever since Hall’s brigade was overrun south of him, Leggett realized that he was potentially threatened in three directions: front, flank, and rear. Minutes earlier they had heard the fighting of the Texas brigade against Walcutt’s division of the XV Corps northeast of where they stood. Believing they were about to be challenged by the Rebels, an Ohio infantryman confessed, “We felt the situation was awful.”25
The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta Page 16