John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of a Confederate General

by Hood, Stephen

  These authors surely knew that command of the two corps of Lee and Hardee at Jonesboro had been delegated to Hardee, the senior corps commander. Hood, as described earlier, remained in the Atlanta entrenchments with A. P. Stewart’s corps and the Georgia militia in case there was a major attack launched against the city. Hardee, who angrily resigned a short time after Jonesboro and was later transferred away from the army, did not submit any after-action reports to Hood, and his own official report of the battle wasn’t produced until April 5, 1865, mere days before the demise of the Confederacy. Because of Hardee’s indifference, Hood had no facts to report to Richmond from his designated commander at Jonesboro, and thus was forced to rely upon information provided by Lee, who wrote in his official report: “The attack was a feeble one, and a failure, with a loss to my corps of about 1,300 men in killed and wounded,” and the assault “was not made with that spirit and inflexible determination that would ensure success.” According to Lee, some of the regiments and individuals behaved gallantly, “but generally the troops faltered in the charge” when they encountered enemy breastworks that were only “temporary and informidable.” Just as he had with Ezra Church, in order to submit an official report on Jonesboro, Hood was forced to rely upon whatever information was available to him—namely, the assessments of others and the casualty statistics they supplied him. General Francis Cockrell, one of the most distinguished brigade commanders in any army of the entire war, echoed Lee’s opinion of his own corps when he wrote to a colleague following the defeat at Jonesboro: “Many attribute the fall [of Atlanta] to the failure of Lee’s Corps to fight as was expected of them.” Cockrell’s use of the word “many” makes it clear that others believed this to be the case.17

  Regarding Hood’s often criticized use of the word “feeble,” it should be noted that other senior commanders of the Army of Tennessee used the same word to describe the occasional lackluster effort of their troops. In addition to Lee at Jonesboro, A. P. Stewart in describing the performance of part of his corps at Nashville reported that some of his troops put up “but feeble resistance” before fleeing the field.18

  Other Civil War commanders outside the Army of Tennessee also used the term “feeble.” After the battle of Sayler’s Creek in early April 1865, Confederate Gen. Richard “Dick” Anderson wrote, “The troops seemed to be wholly broken down and disheartened. After a feeble effort to advance they gave way in confusion.” Robert E. Lee implicitly, if unknowingly, supported Hood’s evaluation of his own Western army when he wrote in an April 10, 1865, letter to Jefferson Davis, “The operations which occurred while the troops were in the entrenchments in front of Richmond and Petersburg were not marked by the boldness and decision which formerly characterized them. Except in particular instances, they were feeble; and a want of confidence seemed to possess officers and men.” No reasonable person would ever misinterpret Lee’s words as blaming the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia for the loss of Richmond and Petersburg or accusing them of cowardice—or that Lee launched the forlorn hope against Fort Stedman at the end of March to punish his troops for their lack of former aggressiveness. And yet, this is precisely what critics and detractors of Hood alleged with startling regularity. The word “feeble” was a commonly used adjective in 19th century military idiom to describe an effort that lacked expected vigor and strength. A basic search in the Official Records for the word “feeble” yields numerous results that prove this point.19

  Hood’s comments regarding the Confederate effort at Jonesboro are commonly criticized and cited by authors as justification for contending that he was callous toward his troops. He repeated almost verbatim the words of Stephen D. Lee in his official report: “The vigor of the assault may be in some sort imagined, when only 1,400 were killed and wounded out of the two corps engaged.” The obvious point Hood was making by adopting the information Lee provided to him, however, was that losses of about seven percent of the 20,000 Confederate troops involved (two-thirds of the effective infantry of the Army of Tennessee) do not demonstrate the vigor required when tasked with deciding the fate of the Confederacy’s second most important city. In hindsight, the language used (questioning the valor of soldiers by measuring casualties) can be construed as insensitive, especially by modern standards. Such terminology and comparisons, however, were not uncommon during the Civil War era. Joseph Johnston commented on the approximately 3,000 Federal casualties sustained by his adversary William T. Sherman at Kennesaw Mountain: “Such a loss … by an army of almost a hundred thousand men, would have been utterly insignificant—too trifling to discourage, much less defeat brave soldiers.” Sherman admitted that he was developing an emotional indifference to casualties. In reference to his losses at Kennesaw Mountain, he wrote, “I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple of thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash.” What would Hay, Horn, Sword, or Lundberg have written about Hood if he had described the loss of 3,000 men, either Federal or Confederate, as “utterly insignificant,” “a small affair,” “trifling,” or “a kind of morning dash?”20

  Hood and Stephen D. Lee were not alone in their opinion of the performance of the Army of Tennessee at Jonesboro. Other sources, both unofficial and official, noted the diminished zeal of the Rebel soldiers during the battle. According to Federal and Confederate accounts, Southern troops who had valiantly assaulted the enemy on so many other battlefields seemed timid and hesitant at Jonesboro. Confederate Gen. Patton Anderson, who was seriously wounded in the attack, reported an incident in which the color bearer of a Louisiana regiment was unsuccessful in attempting to rally forward his retreating comrades. To Anderson’s dismay, neither the soldiers nor their officers could be inspired. According to Anderson, the same troops who had previously performed honorably “brought discredit upon a gallant regiment from as gallant a State as shines in the Southern constellation.” Likewise Capt. Bushrod Jones of the 58th Alabama Infantry reported that his skirmishers had been sent forward and then, without orders, halted and sheltered themselves behind a pile of fence rails. “The men seemed possessed of some great horror of charging breastworks,” wrote Jones, “which no power, persuasion, or example could dispel.” Even Gen. William Hardee wrote, “It is true that the attack could scarcely have been called a vigorous one,” although he attributed the lackluster effort to exhaustion from previous “dear-bought and fruitless victories” ordered by Hood.21

  Many Federals formed similar opinions. A Yankee officer thought that the explanation for the lethargic Confederate effort at Jonesboro was attributable to exhaustion by a long campaign. “Besides losing a host of men in this campaign,” he noted, “the Rebel Army has lost a large measure of vim [vigor], which counts a good deal in soldiering.” Major Thomas Taylor of the 47th Ohio was likewise unimpressed with the Rebel attack, calling it “wholly disorganized” and “scarcely respectable,” nothing more than “colors advancing after some stragglers with hardly a guard and the remainder of the line straggling after.”22

  Although mischaracterized by historians as a mean-spirited accusation of cowardice, Hood’s concern regarding the army’s lost aggressiveness was obviously a very real problem, as duly noted by Stephen D. Lee, who joined the Army of Tennessee shortly after Johnston’s removal. Lee wrote the following in his official report regarding the army’s reluctance to attack the enemy:

  As a corps commander, I regarded the morale of the army greatly impaired after the fall of Atlanta, and in fact before its fall, the troops were not by any means in good spirits. It was my observation and belief that the majority of the officers and men were so impressed with the idea of their inability to carry even temporary breastworks, that when orders were given for attack, and there was a probability of encountering works, they regarded it as reckless in the extreme. Being impressed with these convictions, they did not generally move to the attack with that spirit which nearly always assures success. Whenever the enemy changed his position, temporary works could be improvised in less than two
hours and he could never be caught without them.

  After noting some exceptions, Lee reported that the feeling of an inability to carry even the slightest of enemy breastworks was so widespread in the army that “anything like a general attack was paralyzed by it.” He continued: “These feelings were freely expressed” to Hood.23

  A similar set of circumstances, wherein a portion of the Army of Tennessee failed to act with expected effort, occurred during the first week of December 1864. The cavalry and infantry force under Forrest was ordered to Murfreesboro by Hood to attack the Federal garrison and to neutralize the effect of the enemy threat to Hood’s right flank at Nashville and his supply line leading south into Alabama. In an attack on December 7, two brigades of Confederate infantry in William Bate’s division suddenly halted and withdrew. Forrest described the move as “a shameful retreat,” in effect calling into question the courage of the soldiers involved in a manner that Hood never did. As mentioned earlier, the cavalryman wrote in his official report: “I seized the colors of the retreating troops and endeavored to rally them, but they could not be moved by any entreaty or appeal to their patriotism.” Historians have never accused Forrest of questioning the courage of men under his command, but one can envision what certain historians would have alleged had Hood uttered the very same words.24

  Hood’s counterpart at Atlanta, William T. Sherman, once expounded upon the benefit of aggressive tactics and the “moral effect” on the troops, writing in his official report on the battle of Kennesaw Mountain: “I perceived that the enemy and our own officers had settled down to the conviction that I would not assault fortified lines… . An army to be efficient must not settle down to a single mode of offense… . I wanted, therefore, for the moral effect to make a successful assault against the enemy behind his breastworks.” In a June 18, 1864, letter to Ulysses S. Grant, Sherman expressed his displeasure with the timidity of Gen. George Thomas and his soldiers, writing. “A fresh furrow in a plowed field will stop the whole column, and all begin to entrench.” Sherman informed Grant that he had repeatedly urged Thomas to be more aggressive, yet “it seems the whole Army of the Cumberland is so habituated to be on the defensive that, from its commander down to the lowest private, I cannot get it out of their heads.” Have any historians ever accused Sherman of calling Thomas and his soldiers in the Army of the Cumberland cowards because he acknowledged the improved morale of an army that assumes the offensive? Have historians asserted that Sherman’s attack at Kennesaw Mountain was a vindictive act intended to teach his men a remedial lesson, as many authors have depicted Hood’s attack at Franklin?25

  Another common and unjust criticism of Hood stems from a misinterpretation of words he used to express his attempt to renew the morale of the Army of Tennessee. Stating that he was trying to eradicate the “evil” of lost aggressiveness, Hood’s words have been twisted to the point that he has been accused of calling the soldiers themselves “evil.” As experts in Civil War history, historians, and other authors know or should know there are major differences between 19th and 20th century idiom. The word “evil” was commonly used in the former century to describe a negative or harmful trait or characteristic. For example, on May 10, 1863, Robert E. Lee wrote to Jefferson Davis regarding the reorganization of the Army of Northern Virginia after the death of Stonewall Jackson:

  I have for the past year felt that the corps of this army were too large for one commander. Nothing prevented my proposing to you to reduce their size and increase their number but my inability to recommend commanders. Each corps contains, when in fighting condition, about 30,000 men. These are more than one man can properly handle and keep under his eye in battle in the country that we have to operate in. They are always beyond the range of his vision, and frequently beyond his reach. The loss of Jackson from command of one-half the army seems to me a good opportunity to remedy this evil [emphasis added].26

  Another example is found in an October 8, 1862, letter from the secretary of war to the Confederate Congress: “The subject of the efficiency of the Army is one of paramount importance, and the letter of the Secretary of War herewith submitted has been elicited by correspondence with the generals of our armies in the field, whose practical experience of the evils [emphasis added] resulting from the defects in our present system entitles their opinion to great weight.” To imply that Hood intended the word “evil” to apply in any way to the personal character of his troops is unreasonable and wholly incorrect.27

  Among the many examples of officers concerned about the morale and fighting spirit of their commands was Chaplain James McNeilly of Gen. William Quarles’s brigade, who recalled Gen. William Loring crying out to his troops during a critical juncture in the Franklin combat, “Great God! Do I command cowards?” Loring’s exhortation is never characterized as insulting or as blaming them for the Confederate defeat at Franklin. Historians have never attempted to vilify Loring (as they have Hood) by mischaracterizing the intent of his words.28

  Other examples abound. After the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Hardee, then commander of the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana, distributed public notices in an attempt to convince members of the captured and paroled Confederate garrisons to return to military service by gathering in Enterprise, Mississippi, on August 28, 1863. In the publicly distributed notices, Hardee declared that any soldier who did not return was “a wretch” and that the public would “despise your cowardice.” Was Hardee accusing paroled members of the captured Vicksburg and Port Hudson garrisons of being wretched cowards, or was he simply exhorting the soldiers to return to duty by using the language and methods common to that era?29

  Yet another example is found in Douglas S. Freeman’s classic Lee’s Lieutenants. In a passage dealing with the Army of Northern Virginia’s retreat from the lines around Richmond and Petersburg westward to Appomattox, Freeman quoted the postwar memoirs of Gen. William Mahone describing the conduct of Lee’s troops during this time. Mahone recalled Lee’s effort trying to rally the fleeing men, writing, “At this spectacle Gen. Lee straightened himself in the saddle, and looking more the soldier than ever, exclaimed, as if talking to himself: ‘My God! Has the Army dissolved?’… I replied, ‘No General, here are troops ready to do their duty’; when, in a mellowed voice he replied, ‘Yes General, there are some brave men left.’”

  In his May 30, 1865, proclamation E. Kirby Smith severely condemned the thousands of deserters melting away from his army. Although he did not directly question their individual courage, he nonetheless called their conduct “unpatriotic” and accused his men of having “voluntarily destroyed our organization and thrown away all means of resistance.” Smith has escaped any harsh or extreme interpretation of his language. Is there any doubt that John Bell Hood would have been savaged for stating that the Army of Tennessee had only “some” brave men left during his movement north to Nashville after the Franklin defeat, or during retreat from Nashville after his defeat? Unfortunately, this double standard toward Hood has become the norm in Civil War scholarship.30

  Much of what Hood actually said and wrote about the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee has been omitted from many popular books about the man and his battles. Hood’s estimation of the bravery his men demonstrated at Franklin is revealed in his own memoirs Advance and Retreat. The men at Franklin, Hood boasted, were “gloriously led by their officers.” He went on to discuss “the valor displayed at Franklin,” which “deservedly won the admiration of the Federals.” Hood praised “the gallantry so conspicuous on that field” and lauded the “courage displayed at Franklin.” “Never did troops fight more gallantly,” he wrote. He complimented their “extraordinary gallantry” while lamenting the “brave soldiers” of the Army of Tennessee lost in the battle. His praise for his army at that fateful battle was unambiguously given and truly heartfelt. These quotations are explicit evidence of Hood’s admiration and high regard for the extraordinary courage and soldierly conduct of his army at Franklin, yet readers of Civil
War literature are hard-pressed to find citations of Hood’s praise for his men in most of the books cited herein.31

  Perhaps the greatest offense historians have committed against both Hood and his troops is the omission of his highest tribute, when he compared the Army of Tennessee’s performance at Franklin to the efforts of his namesake Hood’s Texas brigade—some of Robert E. Lee’s most acclaimed soldiers—in what the Texans themselves considered their greatest victory. “The attack [at Franklin], which entailed so great a sacrifice of life, had become a necessity as imperative as that which impelled Gen. Lee to order the assault at Gaines’ Mill, when our troops charged across an open space, a distance of one mile, under a most galling fire of musketry and artillery, against an enemy heavily entrenched,” wrote Hood. “The heroes in that action fought not more gallantly than the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee upon the fields of Franklin.”32

  Hood could not have paid a greater compliment to the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee than by comparing them to his beloved Army of Northern Virginia. However, this unambiguous praise of the gallantry of his soldiers does not appear in any of the major books on the Tennessee Campaign or the Army of Tennessee.