As the fire slackened after dark, General Logan, the commander of the Army of the Tennessee, rode across the positions held by all three of his corps, spoke with each of the corps commanders, and sent a brief report to General Sherman that night. He informed Sherman that he had reinforced Bald Hill with some fresh regiments, for he recognized that that spot was “the key-point to my whole position.” Sherman relayed a synopsis of the day’s actions to be telegraphed to Washington. “Fighting has been severe,” reported Sherman, “and we have lost General McPherson, killed by shot through lungs while on a reconnaissance.” Sherman closed with his belief (and hope) that the enemy would not be a threat to them in the morning, but his last line was both obvious and ominous at the same time, “Hood fights his graybacks desperately.”33
Two miles west of Sherman’s headquarters, General Hood sized up the day’s outcome and wired the Confederate War Department of his conclusion. He gave Richmond the first news of McPherson’s death, confirmed the death of General William Walker and the wounding of brigade commanders. The “fog of war” was still apparent in that early message as Hood overestimated the number of cannons and prisoners he captured. He stated that Wheeler won at Decatur and that his infantry routed the Army of the Tennessee from its works. “Our troops fought with great gallantry,” effused Hood. That they did, but Hood failed to mention that Cheatham’s corps was turned away from its penetration point and that the enemy still held that hill, thus commanded the landscape around it, a fact and realization that would prevent Hood from launching another assault upon it in the morning.34
The second struggle for Bald Hill on Friday lengthened the overall casualty list with a thousand additional names, a list teeming with nearly 10,000 names on it for the eight primary hours of fighting east of Atlanta and extending to Decatur. On average, a soldier fighting in that battle was stripped from the ranks every three seconds; 1 out of every 5 men who entered that fight would not answer the following morning’s roll call. Soldiers from both sides had endured a most wicked day, one made almost unbearable by a combination of heat and carnage. It was a day more brutal than any other they had experienced in 1864, and for many, it was the most terrible day of their lives. For those who still cherished a romantic vision of the Civil War, the Battle of Atlanta defaced that image with a deep, crimson stain. “I can hardly write,” managed one of the unscathed soldiers in a letter sent home three days later; “I was not hurt, but came so close to being killed that there was no fun in it.”35
Morning’s light would prove all too revealingly that there was no fun in anything that happened on July 22, 1864.
11
IMPACT
Saturday morning’s light of July 23, 1864, was a sobering one for both punch-drunk “Tennessee” armies. The macabre was on display, hundreds of bodies strewn in grotesque forms. “I saw the worst shot man there that I ever saw,” remembered a Tennessee soldier; “A cannon ball cut him entirely in two except a little strip of skin on each side.” Three Confederate soldiers were found killed in a small plank house in front of the earthworks; an Alabaman claimed they “fell so near together that they could have been covered with a bed quilt.” Thirteen Confederate bodies were discovered in a pile at a fence corner, not placed there by a burial detail but from a small company falling in one spot. A soldier in the 20th Ohio drew a sketch of a pile of bodies near the earthworks and labeled it: AFTER THE BATTLE OF ATLANTA—FORTY-FIVE DEAD IN ONE PLACE.1
Three vicious years of war had hardened the veterans to those postbattle scenes. Many took the opportunity to pull desired items from the clothes and haversacks of the stiffening bodies strewn around them. “Our men are getting boots hats &c watches knives &c off of the dead Yanks near us in the woods—lots of them,” entered a Texan in his diary; “We cook and eat, talk and laugh with the enemy dead lying all about us as though they were so many logs.”2
Posturing was prevalent, but distance artillery dueling was the only action witnessed on Saturday. “Shells are thrown freely and frequently into the city,” wrote a newspaper correspondent from Atlanta at 10:00 A.M., “and I find it inconvenient to write a letter under their inspiration.” Hugh Black, a Florida lieutenant in Bate’s division, noted that Federal shells fell into the beleaguered city every day since July 20. It was all too much for him. “The morning after the fight I got as drunk as a badger and since that time I have not been called up to do any duty,” Black revealed to his wife.3
At 10:00 A.M. flags of truce were hoisted, allowing burial details from both sides to remove the wounded and to bury their dead comrades. Shovels were sparse, forcing the burial crews to use their tin pans, plates, and bayonets as makeshift spades. Confederates were carried back to Cobb’s Mill and Atlanta; Union men were treated in field hospitals east and north of the trench lines. The surgeons of both armies had worked without rest since July 21. The field hospitals on Saturday were an awful place to visit. Rough boards were placed parallel to each other to serve as makeshift operating tables where wounded men were placed to amputate their mangled limbs. An Iowan observed, “At the end of those tables, I saw piles of legs and arms two to three feet high.” 4
The battlefield remained as horrible a place for the soldiers—even without facing opposing fire. Bodies of humans and horses blackened and bloated in the heat of the sun. Stiff limbs protruded from all-too-shallow graves. Many of the wounded took an excruciatingly long time to receive treatment. A Mississippian complained, “I was shot through the head within twenty feet of their breastworks and never had a drop of water from 4 o’clock when I was shot till 6 o’clock next evening.” Another Confederate soldier took twice as long to receive care after he was struck by a piece of a shell, primarily because he crawled into a boxcar on the Georgia Railroad and was not found for two days.5
The Army of the Tennessee survived but it nevertheless was significantly wounded. It was wrecked more than any other Western army of the Union since the Battle of Chickamauga. Of the 25,000 officers and men engaged against Hood’s army on Friday, nearly 1 out of every 6 was not present for the morning roll call on Saturday. The official tally would take a few days and when it arrived the numbers were expected but still shocking. General Dodge’s two divisions of infantry of the XVI Corps, who fought to protect the Union rear near Sugar Creek and at Decatur, paid dearly for their stubborn defense. Eight hundred of his 6,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured, all but 33 coming from three brigades. Three batteries of the XVI Corps contributed 40 more men to the bloated list, most of those from the captured members of the U.S. Artillery, Battery F, who would have to adjust to their new life at Andersonville prison, 130 miles south of Atlanta. All 6 guns of the battery were captured.
The 15 percent casualty rate of the XVI Corps was higher than expected for a force on the defensive—although they were the only Union troops who fought without the aid of entrenchments—and reflected the back and forth action by Fuller’s men; the two fronts were fought by the brigade of Mersy (and later Adams), and the stubborn defense by Sprague’s men in their losing effort against Wheeler’s dismounted cavalry at Decatur. Two wounded brigade commanders (Colonel Mersy and Colonel Morrill) were Dodge’s most significant casualties in an undersized corps then reduced to the size of a division for the rest of the campaign.6
Yet General Dodge’s corps suffered the least compared to every other Union and Confederate corps engaged on July 22. The XV Corps awoke with a new commander, General Morgan L. Smith, due to John Logan’s ascension to command of the entire army, but they also awoke with 1,067 fewer men than the day before. Unlike Dodge’s corps, half of the losses of the XV Corps were tallied as “missing,” captured during the midafternoon assault by Cheatham’s corps north of Bald Hill, an attack that reduced the XV Corps artillery power by 5 cannons, 4 captured and 1 disabled. The 1st Division, fighting from a position north of the Troup Hurt house, lost only 78 men that day of the 2,000 engaged. Thus, two divisions—9,000 men—were more than decimated. The XV Corps needed to adjust m
ore than any other to new commanders. Not only was General Morgan L. Smith brand-new to corps command, so were two of his division commanders and three of their brigade commanders. All of that was due to General Giles Smith’s transfer to commander of the 4th Division and Logan’s ascension to army command. Notwithstanding the gritty and harrowing assault upon the XV Corps, it survived with a regimental commander—Colonel Lucien Greathouse of the 48th Illinois—as the corps’ highest-ranking battle casualty of July 22.7
For the number of men engaged on July 22, General Blair’s XVII Corps suffered the most of all the Union forces on the field, 1,800 officers and men killed, wounded, or captured. Not only did Blair’s two divisions take more losses than the five divisions of the XV and XVI Corps combined, but Giles Smith’s division took as many infantry losses (1,000) as the entire XV Corps—a result made more shocking by the fact that the division consisted of only nine regiments! Most of Blair’s casualties were captured soldiers, including an entire regiment (the 16th Iowa). Like Dodge, Blair’s whole XVII Corps consisted of four brigades, two of which had to adjust to new commanders with the loss of General Force (wounded) and Colonel Scott (captured) on July 22. The XVII Corps losses were exacerbated by the 800 casualties incurred in the evening of July 20 and morning of July 21, fighting the first of three separate battles for Bald Hill, a hill that retained the name of “Leggett’s Hill” from that day forward. Blair was reduced to fewer than 7,000 soldiers on Saturday morning, a far cry from the 10,000 officers and men he carried into the campaign six weeks earlier.8
The Battle of Atlanta forever altered the Army of the Tennessee. For the first time in the campaign they would be operating without General McPherson at the helm. The news of McPherson’s death hit everyone close to him hard. General Grant received the news at his Petersburg headquarters. Retiring to his tent, Grant wept. “The country has lost one of its best soldiers,” the commander later stated, “and I have lost my best friend.” Even General Hood, McPherson’s West Point classmate, was stricken with “sincere sorrow.” He graciously wrote a eulogizing statement from Atlanta.9
News of McPherson’s death was telegraphed to the family of his fiancée, Emily Hoffman, in Baltimore the day after the Battle of Atlanta—the same day McPherson’s body began its long trip to burial in his hometown of Clyde, Ohio. The message arrived near dusk while the Hoffmans were sitting in the unlit blue room. Emily’s mother asked her daughter to read the unopened telegram aloud to the family from under a lantern in the hallway. Emily departed the blue room, quietly read the devastating news, and collapsed in a dead faint while clutching the telegram. She never let go of the grief, secluding herself in her room for several days and refusing to speak for several weeks. Even a touching, heartfelt letter from General Sherman failed to lift her from her depression. She would mourn McPherson’s death for the rest of her life.10
McPherson’s name topped an enormous list of Union battle casualties. The total battle losses of 3,722 for July 22 (and exceeding 4,500 since the evening of July 20) slimmed an already lean Army of the Tennesee to roughly 20,000 officers and men, with two more brigades remaining detached farther north in Georgia. The numerical strength of this army was at that time rivaled by a single corps (the XIV) of the Army of the Cumberland. The casualties inflicted upon the Army of the Tennessee at the Battle of Atlanta exceeded any loss in a single day of battle suffered by this army since it was named the Army of the Tennessee in October of 1862 (the army took greater losses on the first day of the two-day battle of Shiloh before it received this official name). The Union casualties of July 22 exceeded by more than two-fold any other day of the Atlanta campaign for Sherman’s entire department. In the history of the Western-theater armies fighting for the Union, only Shiloh, Stones River, Perry ville, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga would post single-day losses exceeding the carnage incurred by the Army of the Tennessee east of Atlanta.11
The Confederate Army of Tennessee had worse days in terms of losses than seen at the Battle of Atlanta—but not many. The exact casualty figures for the battle were never officially tallied, forcing an estimate based on the known returns. Hood used two infantry corps and an undetermined number from Wheeler’s cavalry corps at Decatur to engage the Yankees. General Hardee’s adjutant tallied the total losses for Hardee’s corps attacking McPherson’s left on July 22 at 3,299 officers and men killed, wounded, or captured during its three hours of attacks from noon until 3:00 P.M. and the second assault of Bald Hill three hours later. The number Hardee calculated may have been underrepresented by his assistant adjutant general when he recounted the estimate twenty-four years later.12
Only Cleburne’s three brigadiers filed reports that have survived to posterity. Of the 3,500 soldiers engaged from his division that day, 1,388 were forced from the ranks as casualties of war. The 40 percent losses reveal how tenaciously Cleburne’s men attacked, both day and night. Maney carried the largest division on the field, four Tennessee brigades in excess of 4,000 soldiers. His casualty totals were posted as 619 killed and wounded, including two brigade commanders. If Maney had close to the same percentage of losses in captured and missing men as did Cleburne (over one-third), then his total casualties for July 22 approached 900 officers and men.13
William Walker’s division lost its namesake commander, killed on the field, and all three brigade commanders were wounded. Guyton’s brigade went through four brigade commanders (Mercer, Barkuloo, Rawls, and Guyton) and lost 165 other officers and men (a number recently claimed as underreported with reasonable justification); thus Mercer’s old brigade lost two brigade commanders and at least 185 officers and men. The entire division (Walker’s, then Mercer’s, including Gist’s brigade) likely suffered 500 killed and wounded men as did Bate’s division, with the Florida Brigade taking the brunt of the losses in front of the devastating Ohio battery they were forced to charge. Captured and missing Confederates in those two divisions were incredibly high and likely were underreported in Southern documents. The enemy they faced—three brigades of Dodge’s corps—reported the capture of 750 Confederates and at least 119 bodies discovered near their defenses. The discrepancy between Union and Confederate claims on missing soldiers may never be resolved, but it suggests that Hardee’s losses for July 22 could have climbed 500 men higher than the original suspicious report to a total of 3,800 officers and men killed, wounded, or missing.14
Cheatham’s corps losses are nebulous. His three divisions initiated their en echelon attacks nearly four hours after Hardee’s men opened the battle and their assaults were ended in about ninety minutes. These circumstances suggest that his total losses fell considerably below those suffered by Hardee. Three brigades of Clayton’s division reported losses of 511 officers and men; the fourth brigade was in reserve and likely had not suffered appreciable losses. Brown’s division appears to have tallied up to three times what Clayton suffered. Manigault unofficially claimed 400 losses in his brigade, and “over 1,000” losses for Brown’s entire division, a total that was likely between 1,200–1,500 based on scattered reports from regiments in Coltart’s and Sharp’s brigades. Pure guesswork for Hood’s losses at Atlanta is required for Stevenson’s division, with only two of its four brigades known to be engaged in front of Bald Hill; it likely lost no more than 100–200 soldiers. Wheeler’s cavalry divisions also have no known casualty figures at Decatur. Since he attacked Sprague’s XVI Corps brigade there and inflicted more than 250 losses upon the Union defenders, a reasonable assumption is that Wheeler lost more than 300 men because an attacking force usually suffers more losses than the defenders. General Gustavus Smith’s Georgia militia division suffered about 50 casualties. Thus, Hood’s entire loss for the Battle of Atlanta and Decatur will never be known with certainty, but a total loss in the range of 5,700–6,300 appears reasonable.15
Upward of 10,000 Americans were killed, wounded, or captured fighting for and defending the rolling landscape east of Atlanta on July 22, 1864. The Battle of Atlanta was the deadliest contest of
the entire Atlanta campaign. No single day of action in any theater for the remainder of the Civil War would match the carnage of this battle. The battle was the bloodiest day of the last ten months of the war.16
Hood ordered 30,000 soldiers into battle of July 22 (two corps plus the Georgia militia) and another 3,000–5,000 to Decatur with Wheeler’s divisions. Of this available force, 27,000 to 30,000 men were engaged (three brigades from Cheatham’s corps did not enter into combat). Hood’s losses equated to nearly 20 percent of his engaged force. The Army of Tennessee took greater losses in both percentages and numbers at Shiloh, Stones River, and, most recently, at Chickamauga, as well as comparable losses at Chattanooga. But this was different—very much so. The Confederate army, which burgeoned with more than 77,000 soldiers at the end of May, was for the first time in this campaign truly weak in numbers. The grand total present for duty the day after the battle was slightly over 50,000 officers and men, but more than a fifth of this force was represented as cavalry. The infantry numbers for all three of his corps dipped below 40,000. Conversely, General Sherman’s army group, after the losses at Peachtree Creek and Atlanta, had 75,000 infantry and 90,000 soldiers in all three branches to nearly double Hood’s defenders.17
Hood’s force was weaker in the quality of leadership as it was in its depleted numbers, for the Battle of Atlanta bled an unusual number of generals, colonels, and other regimental officers from his ranks. His corps commanders came through without injury and General Walker was the only division commander killed or wounded, but eight brigade commanders went down during this fight. More than twice as many inexperienced officers—many of them captains—were forced to lead regiments for the first time in the war due to the killing or wounding of the regimental commander who directed them onto the battlefield, or the regimental commander taking over a brigade vacancy during the course of the battle. The brigadier losses included the proven experience of Generals States Rights Gist and Otho Strahl, and up-and-coming talent like Colonels Francis Walker and Samuel Benton.
The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta Page 25