The Union position was weak; less than a handful of regiments oriented in the direction of Stevenson’s attack (the rest of Harrow’s division was in the rear facing southward into the wooded gap between the XVI and XVII Corps). The thin segment of the XV Corps line north of Bald Hill was inviting a breech, but Stevenson’s attacking formation prevented the Confederates from exploiting the weak Union position. He advanced with two brigades in front and two behind. The result appeared as a halfhearted assault. Had Stevenson thrown in a third brigade in to the left (north) to attack with the other two, the sheer size and numbers of ten regiments of 3,000 Confederates would have been unstoppable for the skeleton force manning the works in front of them—just five total regiments in Harrow’s entire division faced in their direction with absolutely no artillery support. Instead, Stevenson’s attack petered out and the division commander seemed content to hold his position rather than commit any more to that assault.8
Stevenson’s stagnancy masked a weakness in the XV Corps defense and it was a big opportunity lost for General Hood. Stevenson proved true to form as a mediocre offensive tactician, for it was his third straight battle in which he was unable to meet the corps objective on the attack. Stevenson failed to take advantage of an exploitable Union position at Resaca on May 14 and at Kolb’s farm on June 22. The inability to muscle through the XV Corps line north of Bald Hill on July 22 was his most egregious of the three, and a huge source of relief for General Harrow on the other side of the line. If Stevenson fielded a report of the action, it has never come to light. It can be said that he followed to the letter of the order an assault plan that was designed to create a diversion. Yet, none of the other division commanders in Cheatham’s corps would be that passive.9
It was nearly 3:30 P.M. when the second division of Cheatham’s corps initiated its march to enter the fight. Brigadier General John C. Brown held the helm of that division, and while he could claim that he was more experienced with his command than his corps commander, the sobering fact was that Brown had been in charge of those 5,000 men for twelve days—just one week longer than Cheatham had with his corps. Like Cheatham, Brown was not a “homegrown” product with that force. He transferred from brigade command in Stevenson’s division after a severe eye injury took out the division’s original commander, Major General Thomas C. Hindman. That transfer was an unusual move considering that Brown held the same rank as Arthur M. Manigault, who was compelled to maintain command of his brigade and take his orders from a fellow brigadier general who outranked him by eight months from the date of his commission, but one who knew next to nothing about the same troops Manigault had known since the division was formed.
Brown appeared to never attract bitterness or criticism from his new command and even Manigault probably preferred to answer to Brown rather than the irascible Hindman, whose departure Manigault maintained was ironic, for Hindman had been “anxious to get away, and everybody else equally so to get rid of him.” General Brown also had a positive reputation across Hood’s army as an experienced, fearless, and talented leader. He had gallantly led troops at Perryville and Chickamauga, two iconic battles where he sustained wounds. He was also cited for his bravery at Missionary Ridge and Dalton, two contests where the Army of Tennessee was forced to leave the field. Brown’s promotion to major general appeared inevitable. He was imbued since his teenaged years with the prime ingredient necessary for success on the battlefield. As a seventeen-year-old back in 1844, Brown was in the audience when former President Andrew Jackson spoke of successful land acquisition in the Southwest and beckoned likewise for expansion of the country northwestward by declaring, “Now for Oregon and Fifty-four-forty!” Upon hearing “Old Hickory” refer to the latitude making the news that year, Brown yelled back to Jackson, “Or fight!” The two-word rejoinder completed a popular slogan that year; it also highlighted young Brown’s mantra that he maintained thirty years later.10
Unlike his former superior, General Stevenson on his right, Brown intended to commit his entire division to the fight. He ordered them out of the trenches and sent them eastward shortly before 3:30 P.M. The Georgia Railroad split the advance down the center and served as a guide for the flanking regiments of Brown’s four brigades. Manigault’s brigade of Alabamans and South Carolinians was north of the railroad, while Colonel John C. Coltart’s Alabama brigade was south of it. The two forces moved out in unison with each flank guiding twenty paces from the railroad. Colonel Samuel Benton’s brigade of Mississippi solders advanced behind Coltart’s men, and Colonel Jacob H. Sharp’s Mississippi regiments paced themselves behind Manigault. One mile separated the two jagged lines of earthworks between the two main bodies of troops.11
Opposing the advance of Brown’s division were two lines of human obstacles. A skirmish line of Illinois and Ohio troops confronted the Confederates 500 yards into their advance. Manigault’s and Coltart’s men swept them away seemingly in seconds, but 400 yards later a more significant blocking force, two regiments of infantry and a section of Illinois artillery, ensconced themselves behind a rudimentary earthen line on a rise of ground. The 2 cannons had been particularly troublesome for Manigault’s men; one South Carolina officer complained that they “gave us a lively shelling” even before the movement commenced. Cheatham, in overall command of the corps, responded with his own batteries, which rolled in behind the advancing lines of infantry, firing over their heads toward the Union pickets and beyond.
Colonel Wells S. Jones of the 53rd Ohio commanded the two lines of Union skirmishers, a responsibility Jones found out he was overqualified for because a half an hour earlier he received word that he had inherited the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Division of the XV Corps to which his regiment belonged. Jones had placed his second line of troops on the elevation late in the morning to support the skirmish line, which had disintegrated in front of him. As an awesome enemy force marched directly toward him, Jones ordered off the artillery and it rolled swiftly to the rear, pulled by galloping horses. The Union infantry line was uprooted from the primitive works and followed the cannons eastward, but Jones apparently had kept them there too long as Manigault claimed to have captured scores of surrounded soldiers. Regardless, Jones quickly returned his men to the main XV Corps line where he could assume command of his entire brigade for the first time.12
When he reached his new command half a mile farther at 3:30 P.M. Jones quickly formed them for the inevitable assault, one that all the XV Corps troops on both sides of the rail line could see. The two leading Confederate brigades of Brown’s division happened to be heading toward a stripped and relatively isolated infantry line. The strength was north of the railroad where Jones had six regiments positioned to meet the threat. They covered the works directly west of the redbrick dwelling of George M. Troup Hurt, a Georgia soldier and cotton plantation owner of Columbus, Georgia. Hurt had not yet finished that two-story structure that he had intended to use as a summer home, ostensibly locating it to be within hailing distance of his brother, whose mansion on the hill half a mile north of that house was currently used as General Sherman’s headquarters. The brick house faced south where the Georgia Railroad ran 250 yards in front of it. About 50 yards west of there the railroad and road to Decatur ran through a distinctive cut, one accentuated to 15 feet deep and 20 feet across by the construction of the earthworks. The railroad and road separated on each side of the cut, running perpendicular to the earthworks.13
Swampy ground isolated Jones’s brigade from their northernmost support—the 1st Division of the XV Corps commanded by Brigadier General Charles R. Woods. After he sent off Colonel Hugo Wangelin’s brigade to help fill in the gap between the XVI and XVII Corps, Woods’s remaining two brigades numbered 2,000 infantry officers and men in seven regiments, a force slightly larger than the number of soldiers in Jones’s six regiments. Between the left of Woods’s position and the right of Jones’s brigade was a swampy creek valley 250 yards across. No troops manned that area due to the constrictive nature of the
marshy ravine. That meant that Jones’s brigade would operate without reserves and without infantry support on its vulnerable flank.14
The weakest part of the Union infantry defense, however, was the entire stretch of works from the railroad cut southward for over half a mile. Only three regiments of one brigade remained to man that region with infantry. Ninety minutes earlier, half of that brigade and its commander, Colonel James S. Martin, had been sent southward to reinforce General Harrow’s repulse of General James A. Smith’s brigade of Texans from Cleburne’s division. They had not returned by 3:30 P.M., leaving Lieutenant Colonel Samuel R. Mott in charge of that paltry force of less than 1,000 men to stretch over 1,000 yards of ground. It meant no reserve line for the entire 2nd Division, the force of 2,500 men that stood directly in the way of a division that had around 5,000 men approaching them.
Unknown to General Brown was that his assaulting division held a nearly two-to-one advantage in infantry strength and the opportunity to exploit an isolated force without reserves. The other advantage unknown to General Brown was how raw the key leaders of the opposing division were. The new Union division commander (Brigadier General Joseph A. J. Lightburn), both brigade commanders (Wells Jones and Samuel Mott) and one quarter of the infantry commanders had just been promoted to those positions over the past hour and a half. The most important advantage for General Brown was also something that he could not yet appreciate—half of the Union artillery that buttressed the Union position around the railroad at 2:00 P.M. was no longer opposing him at 3:30 P.M. Two entire batteries that had flanked the southernmost region of Lightburn’s division had been sent to the rear and southward to support General Harrow. In addition, two howitzers from the 1st Division a half mile north of the Troup Hurt house were sent on the same mission. None of those artillery pieces had returned to the positions they held earlier in the afternoon.15
A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE CONFEDERATE EARTHWORKS AT THE GEORGIA RAILROAD.
From this position, General Hood’s diversionary assault was launched with two divisions of Major General Benjamin Franklin Cheatham’s Corps in the midafternoon of July 22. The tremendous action waged one mile east of this position (to the left of the picture) inspired the famous cyclorama of the battlefield. (Courtesy of MOLLUS-Massachusetts, USAMHI, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.)
What remained to repel the initiation of Cheatham’s attack were 10 cannons from two Illinois batteries surrounding Jones’s brigade and no cannons for nearly one mile southward from the railroad bed. Battery A of the 1st Illinois Light Artillery had 6 cannons positioned at the railroad and slightly north and south of it, and 4 cannons from Battery H of the 1st Illinois Light Artillery (De Gress’s Battery) occupied a position just north of the Troup Hurt house. Had General Hood ordered Cheatham’s divisions out to attack simultaneously with Hardee’s corps between noon and 1:00 P.M., Brown’s division would have been facing off against 10 more cannons and 1,500 more men than the force that then opposed him, a detached force that had yet to contribute in the new direction they were sent. So, by happenstance, Hood’s battle plan was providing a greater mismatch in his favor than he could have imagined.16
The half mile of terrain between the Union earthworks at the Troup Hurt house and the leading brigades of General Brown’s assaulting division was more open south of the railroad than north of it. Three homes stood across the works from the XV Corps position and down the road to Decatur. The southernmost home was owned by a planter named James Brown; slightly east of his house was another frame-constructed home on high ground, owned by a family surnamed Russaw. The northernmost home of the three stood closest to the Union works, just north of the road to Decatur and merely 150 yards southwest of the Troup Hurt house. To the soldiers that two-story dwelling was simply the “white house.”17
Manigault’s brigade enjoyed some protection from a belt of woods that covered them over the final quarter mile to the breastworks. The trees shielded them from the shelling of Union cannons and the carefully aimed fire from XV Corps sharpshooters. Manigault’s men took the brunt of the Union shelling about 100 yards from the opposing line. Forced to halt to wait for Coltart’s brigade to align with them south of the railroad, Manigault’s brigade was subjected to artillery fire from at least 8 cannons aligned on each side of the Troup Hurt house. Two Carolina regiments closest to the railroad had marched in more open terrain and seemed to suffer the most from the courage-robbing fire. Colonel James F. Pressley sent members of the 10th and 19th South Carolina into the white house just west of the XV Corps earthen line. Those Carolinians entered the frame building, raced up the stairs, aligned on the second-floor piazza, and pointed their rifles from upper-story windows. Those new sharpshooters began to pick off blue-clad soldiers by firing down upon them from a point less than 200 yards away while monitoring the strength of their opponent’s position.18
As the time passed 4:00 P.M. the only significant action transpiring across the eastern Atlanta battlefield was Cheatham’s frontline pressing upon General Lightburn’s division. Coltart’s brigade descended upon the remaining three regiments of Martin’s brigade south of the Georgia Railroad while Manigault’s men emerged from the woods in front of Jones’s brigade. It was an awesome spectacle for those XV Corps soldiers, despite the fact that most of them had seen it so many times before, from Shiloh to Chattanooga, and more recently from Resaca to Kennesaw Mountain. Here, east of Atlanta, the sight and sounds of line after line of Confederate soldiers emerging from the trees was spectacular to behold. “How beautiful! How regular!” recalled Lieutenant George Bailey, a Missouri officer on General Morgan L. Smith’s staff, who admitted that at that moment existed “a conflict between fear and admiration.” General Manigault revealed equal admiration from the Southern perspective. Gazing upon the blue-clad lines with their flags fluttering in the breeze, Manigault recalled, “I saw and noticed all this only for a moment, and thought it looked very pretty.”19
Fear remained in some, but admiration gave way to resolve in the ranks of Blue and Gray. Manigault’s advance was slowed by fire from front and flank, as (XV Corps) 1st Division artillery a half mile north of the point of attack sent screaming iron into the Southern ranks while Captain De Gress had his 4-gun battery working with skill and rapidity from their position just north of the Troup Hurt house. De Gress had been firing both solid shot and exploding shells at distant Southern batteries of Cheatham’s corps for nearly two hours before the two front brigades of Brown’s division emerged in their front and left. De Gress was then permitted to fire canister once General Morgan L. Smith (the new XV Corps commander) had been assured that all of his skirmishers had returned to the works. That particular round was the deadliest to fire at ranges up to 500 yards. When the cylinder casing blew apart as the round left the muzzle of the cannon, a huge shotgun effect resulted by the creation of a vertical iron hail pelting anything in their paths. The round was deadly enough when spewed by cannons capable of ten or twelve-pound rounds, but De Gress’s twenty-pounder Parrotts were nearly twice as destructive. Forty-eight balls rained mayhem with each canister belched forth by each of the 4 guns. Two ten-pounder Parrotts from Battery A of the 1st Illinois Light Artillery stood on the other side of the brick house and lent their support to De Gress’s men, also firing canister from a deadly range.20
Manigault’s men were cut down or tormented by the fusillade of 500 of those balls every minute, mixed in with thousands of conical leaden bullets fired from the rifle barrels of Union infantry. The entire brigade was staggered by the devastating fire and blinded by the thick smoke that quickly enveloped the region. With no woods to protect him, Manigault saw the cohesion of his brigade disintegrate, replaced by huge gaps in his lines and a nearly frozen advance. Carolinians near the white house hid behind it for cover, but others without protection broke ranks and scampered for the safety of the rear. In doing so, they upset the ranks of the Mississippians of Sharp’s brigade, who were marching behind Manigault to support him. Lieutenant Robert Gill of the 41st M
ississippi was so disgusted with the display of his fellow Confederates that he called on his company “to shoot the cowardly scoundrels.” General Manigault was forced to admit at that moment “things looked ugly.”21
Things looked no better initially for the Confederates advancing on Manigault’s right, south of the railroad. Coltart’s men had lost their alignment and instead of keeping twenty paces from the railroad, a gap of nearly 200 yards had widened between the flanks of the frontline brigades. That not only exposed Manigault’s right flank to concentrate Union attention on him, it also shifted Coltart’s attack line farther to the south. That initially had forced the entire frontline of Brown’s division to halt for several minutes until General Brown rectified the problem by ordering the Mississippi brigade of Colonel Samuel Benton to move forward and replace the Alabamans in the frontline. One of Coltart’s Alabama regiments marched with the consolidated Mississippi regiments, boosting the frontline assault in that sector to 1,000 officers and men.22
The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta Page 19