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

by Hood, Stephen

  Even if Foster’s dubious claim was accurate, Hood’s flanking attempt at Columbia offered clear evidence of the general’s attempt to maximize the Confederate advantage. Franklin only became a necessity because of the failure at Spring Hill. Further, if Hood had not attacked at Franklin he would have lost the numerical advantage over Schofield’s exhausted Federal defenders and would have been at an even greater disadvantage later at Nashville. In terms of numbers and ground, Franklin was the best situation Hood could have encountered after the Spring Hill fiasco. Thus, even if Hood did promise what Foster later claimed, he did not lie and indeed, he delivered on his promise as best as he could given the circumstances on November 30.

  Civil War scholars have rewarded Foster—who literally damned Hood and called him a murderer—by including his tirades in almost all books and articles on the battle of Franklin. The eloquence of Foster’s rage seems to exempt him from any examination of his credibility as an observer, yet a close look at his diary suggests that he was a contentious and belligerent man. Foster made statements regarding Jefferson Davis’s removal of Joseph Johnston that could easily be interpreted as threatening the life of the president. In conduct clearly unbecoming an officer, Foster bragged of convincing a private to disobey a direct order from Hood after the evacuation of Atlanta. Furthermore, Foster accused Hood of having thousands of men “murdered around Atlanta, trying to prove to the world that he was a greater man than Gen. Johnston.” Yet, this same captain also complained about Hood bypassing the Federals at Resaca, Georgia, on October 12; he also complained that Hood did not attack the strongly entrenched Yankee garrison at Decatur, Alabama, on October 29. The malcontent Foster complained when Hood attacked and complained when he did not—and yet Foster’s credibility and bias are never questioned by scholars or other authors.14

  1 Johnston, Narrative, 372.

  2 M. C. Butler letter to John Bell Hood, July 18, 1874, John Bell Hood Personal Papers.

  3 Hood’s Oration; Grady McWhiney and Perry Jamieson, Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984), xv.

  4 Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 431.

  5 The Battle of Franklin, Wide Awake Films.

  6 Jacobson, For Causeand For Country, 27; Sherman, Home Letters of General Sherman, 299; OR 38, pt. 4, 607.

  7 W. D. Gale letter in Confederate Veteran, vol. 2 (February 1894), 4; E. A Pollard, Southern History of the War: The Last Year of the War (New York: Charles B. Richardson, 1866), 128; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 340.

  8 Dyer, The Gallant Hood, 89, 93; Ratchford, Memoirs, 19; Nicholas A. Davis, Chaplain Davis and Hood’s Texas Brigade, Donald E. Everett, ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1962), 91.

  9 Dyer, The Gallant Hood, 138-141; O’Connor, Hood: Cavalier General, 117.

  10 William Stanton letter to Mary Moody, January 17, 1865, Barker Center Archives, University of Texas at Austin.

  11 North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, vol. 14, 236-237, 462-463; Army of Tennessee General Order No. 57, November 6, 1864. Typescript provided to the author by David Fraley, in the Carter House files.

  12 OR 45, pt. 2, 769-770, 778.

  13 Foster, One of Cleburne’s Command, 151; Warwick, Williamson County, 179-181; Garrison Jr., Strange Battles of the Civil War, 271.

  14 Foster, One of Cleburne’s Command, 107, 133-134, 151, 142.

  Chapter 15

  “A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.”

  — Thomas Jefferson

  John Bell Hood and Frontal Assaults

  One of the most prevalent suppositions regarding the generalship of John Bell Hood is the persistent belief that throughout his tenure in the Confederate Army he preferred frontal attacks over any other tactic. As with so many claims about Hood’s command tenure at the head of the Army of Tennessee, this belief is also untrue and unsupported by the historical record.

  “In love or war,” wrote historian Thomas Connelly, “Hood’s was a simple, naïve code—to attack head on.” Of the attack at Franklin on November 30, 1864, Connelly falsely claimed that Hood “later admitted that he utilized frontal assaults” to discipline his troops. Hood never said or wrote any such thing. In its attempt to establish the premise that Hood was too aggressive as a commander, the documentary film “The Battle of Franklin” narrated that the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee knew Hood “likes his men to assault head on,” and that as the commander of the Texas brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia, he cared little about his own casualties. Even the website of the Carter House in Franklin, Tennessee, once declared that Hood was “a firm believer in frontal assaults.”1

  Although Hood was an unapologetic advocate of offensive warfare (as were, among others, Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson), all credible evidence demonstrates Hood’s preference for flanking maneuvers rather than frontal assaults. Indeed, his well-known attack at Franklin on November 30, 1864—acknowledged by many contemporaries as a last resort against a trapped enemy after the failed flank attempt at Spring Hill—was the only frontal attack Hood ever ordered as an independent commander.

  Hood was a determined Lee and Jackson protégé. The military philosophy of Hood’s mentors relied heavily upon wresting the initiative from their adversaries. Jefferson Davis understood how and under whom the young general learned his craft: “Hood had served with distinction under Lee and Jackson, and his tactics were of that school.” His experiences under Lee in Virginia molded his military thinking. Hood’s small tactical victory at Eltham’s Landing and his larger spearhead assault that broke the enemy line at Gaines’s Mill in the spring of 1862 were a result of measured aggressiveness. Two months later at Second Manassas in August, Hood once again found himself and his brigade at the tip of the spear in James Longstreet’s massive counterattack that swept Gen. John Pope’s Federal army from the field. Hood repeated his success at the head of a division at Sharpsburg on September 17, 1862, with a swift and decisive counterattack that repelled the attacking Federals and reestablished Lee’s tenuous left flank. One year later at Chickamauga, Hood’s attacking division poured through a gap in the enemy lines. His deep and well-led assault helped precipitate the rout of Gen. William Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland and earn the Army of Tennessee its only major victory of the war.2

  Although clearly influenced by these aggressive tactical experiences, Hood was not a one-dimensional field commander. At South Mountain on September 14, 1862, where his brigade engaged the enemy at Turner’s Gap, Hood counseled Lee to withdraw his brigade from an exposed position. At Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, Hood did his best to avoid shoving his division over the rough ground west of the Round Tops in a direct assault into Federal strength by seeking permission to move around the enemy’s left flank. He tendered his request to corps commander James Longstreet four times, and was rebuffed on each occasion. Hood attacked as ordered, was severely wounded early in the fighting, and his division suffered heavy losses.3

  Hood joined the Army of Tennessee as a corps commander in the spring of 1864. Although he disapproved of Johnston’s Fabian-style retreats during the Atlanta Campaign, he advocated strategic withdrawals in specific instances where circumstances warranted prudence. For example, on May 19 at Cassville, Hood’s corps was set to initiate a major attack against part of Sherman’s divided command, but Hood wisely halted his advance when an unexpected enemy force of unknown size and composition appeared—and opened fire—on his right flank. Taking appropriate defensive measures, Hood elected not to ignore the threat and discontinued his forward movement. Ten days later at New Hope Church, Hood called off a planned attack after learning that the enemy had repositioned and entrenched during the night. On July 6, Johnston ordered the army to fortify along the north bank of the Chattahoochee River. Hood was instructed to locate his corps at a vulnerable point. “Hood’s corps fell to the line of rifle pits,” recalled Gen. Francis Shoup, Johnston’s chief of
artillery, “and General Hood began at once to declare his position unsafe.” Shoup, who had designed the fortifications that Sherman described as “one of the strongest pieces of field fortifications I ever saw,” conceded that Hood “was right enough, and he ought never to have been put into such a position.”4

  Although Hood’s record demonstrates a mixture of cautious, prudent decision-making with a preference for broad flanking maneuvers instead of direct assaults, historians and other writers insisted otherwise. An examination of his battles around Atlanta demonstrates this point of scholarly dissonance. After succeeding Johnston as commander of the Army of Tennessee on July 18, 1864, Hood launched four attacks in an attempt to repel Sherman or halt the Federal envelopment of the city. Each effort involved a flanking movement to some degree, and each was intended to catch the Federals before they could construct defensive fortifications.

  The first offensive at Peachtree Creek on July 20 was designed to attack a portion of Thomas’s Army of the Cumberland (which was separated from the balance of Sherman’s forces) while they were crossing the creek, and before they could entrench on the south bank. The attack was delayed, poorly coordinated by Gen. William Hardee, and ultimately failed. The second major engagement, the July 22 battle of Atlanta (Decatur), was designed as a broad sweeping maneuver into Sherman’s left and rear. Once again, Hardee did not get his corps in position on time and attacked piecemeal; when he did attack, he struck a Federal corps that fortuitously found itself in the right place at the right time.

  Hood’s third engagement at Ezra Church on July 28 was intended to block Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s XI corps’s move around Atlanta to the west with Stephen D. Lee’s corps, and then strike Howard’s exposed right flank the following day with A. P. Stewart’s corps.5 Hood delegated independent command of the Ezra Church operation to Lee, who would lead both his own and Stewart’s corps. During the movements preceding the July 28 battle, Hood repeatedly instructed Lee and Stewart to exercise caution, and he directed that if an attack was necessary and possible, only to do so in flank. Hood remained in the Atlanta fortifications with a single infantry corps and local Georgia militia in case Sherman made a direct attack against the city. At noon on the day of the battle, Hood’s adjutant conveyed the following message to Lee: “If the enemy should make an assault on our left the general directs you to strike him in flank.” Later that day, Hood ordered Lee to hold the Federals and “do no more fighting than necessary, unless you should get a decided advantage.” Instead of following instructions to limit fighting or to strike the enemy in the flank, Lee ignored his superior and ordered frontal assaults. This was Lee’s independent action and contrary to Hood’s instructions.6

  The final large scale battle fought around Atlanta at Jonesboro on August 31 and September 1 was a blocking effort by two of Hood’s corps, intended to prevent the severing of the last open railroad line into the city. Just as he had done at Ezra Church, Hood delegated independent command to a subordinate, this time William Hardee, who moved south with his own corps and that of S. D. Lee. Hood ordered Hardee to attack the Federals immediately after they had crossed the Flint River and before they could construct defenses. The piecemeal, fitful attacks that followed were largely frontal affairs. Historian Albert Castel blamed Lee for most of the problems: “At 3 P.M… . Cleburne’s skirmishers start forward. Lee, displaying the same aggressive spirit and talent for blundering that he revealed at Tupelo and Ezra Church, mistakes their fire for the beginning of Cleburne’s assault. At once he commands his corps to charge.” If the assaults by the Army of Tennessee at Ezra Church and Jonesboro are construed by analysts to be frontal, they must be attributed to S. D. Lee, and not John Bell Hood.7

  After evacuating Atlanta on September 2, Hood moved the army west of the city to rest and resupply his men. A month later, Hood resumed operations against Sherman’s supply lines in northern Georgia, the same area where the two armies had fought six months earlier. Hood was keenly aware of his meager resources when he wrote, “Sherman is weaker now than he will be in future, and I as strong as I can expect to be,” and noted the difficulty of obtaining reinforcements or recruits. On October 12, he bypassed the strong Federal positions at Resaca rather than attack them. After capturing the Federal garrison at Dalton on October 13, Hood listened to his subordinates and withdrew the army west, rather than confront enemy reinforcements en route from Atlanta. On October 21, a frustrated Sherman wrote of his adversary’s cunning maneuvers in northern Georgia: “To pursue Hood is folly, for he can twist and turn like a fox and wear out any army in pursuit.” General James Wilson, George Thomas’s cavalry commander who would later resist Hood in the Tennessee Campaign, wrote of his movements after the fall of Atlanta: “The fact is that [Sherman] could neither overtake nor bring that wily and fleet-footed commander [Hood] to an engagement.”8

  During the maneuvering prior to the Tennessee Campaign (as noted earlier in this book), Hood bypassed a heavily outnumbered but defiant Federal garrison at Decatur, Alabama, on October 29. An attack, he explained, would have brought about a “great and unnecessary sacrifice of life.”9

  In the midst of the Tennessee Campaign, two days before the assault at Franklin on November 30, Hood’s army intercepted Gen. John Schofield’s Federal army at Columbia, Tennessee. Although he outnumbered the Federals by almost 10,000 men, Hood decided to avoid a pitched frontal engagement and instead flank the entrenched defenders. He held Schofield’s attention by feigning an attack with Lee’s corps and the army’s artillery, while simultaneously marching Frank Cheatham’s and A. P. Stewart’s corps on a flanking movement into Schofield’s rear at Spring Hill. Schofield was still 40 miles from reinforcements at Nashville, but Hood seized the opportunity of a flanking maneuver—an option he would not have two days later at Franklin. Stanley Horn was the only modern author to recognize Hood’s preference for flank attacks when he wrote of Spring Hill, “Here again, as so often in the past, he had recourse to his pet scheme of a flank movement—if he kept trying it, surely it must prevail some time.”10

  Even at Franklin, Hood’s vanguard force of Stewart’s corps made first contact with the Federal rearguard on the southerly slopes of Winstead and Breezy hills—but did not attack. Instead, Hood diverted Stewart east and successfully flanked the defenders, who withdrew to Schofield’s main line at Franklin.

  The record is unambiguous. Hood was not an inept and unsophisticated tactician who advocated only reckless frontal attacks. None of his four major battles around Atlanta were intended as such; he bypassed the enemy at Resaca, Georgia, and Decatur, Alabama; and he flanked Schofield at Columbia so successfully that the Confederates came within a whisker of cutting off and destroying Schofield’s entire army at Spring Hill.

  The only full frontal assault ever ordered by Hood during his entire tenure as commander of the Army of Tennessee was at Franklin, and then it was a last resort. Because of its proximity to Nashville, Franklin was Hood’s final opportunity to destroy the trapped Schofield before he reached the relative safety of the Nashville fortifications and joined Thomas’s gathering forces. At Franklin, any flanking movement would have required the fording of the rain-swollen Harpeth River and a cross-country march of several miles with only three hours of daylight remaining, resisted the entire way by Federal cavalry, infantry, and artillery.

  After Franklin, Hood moved to Nashville and, rather than assault Thomas’s entrenched command, entrenched himself, sought reinforcements, and awaited an attack by Thomas. Hood dispatched a cavalry and infantry force to Murfreesboro under Nathan Bedford Forrest to contain the large Federal garrison there and protect his own right flank and logistical lifeline. He again demonstrated restraint when he explicitly ordered Forrest not to attack the Federal fortifications, and if attacked, to only drive them back to Murfreesboro.

  Author Barbara G. Ellis did not let facts get in the way of her melodramatic writing, despite Hood’s documented dislike of frontal assaults and demonstrated preference for flanking maneuv
ers. Despite experiencing “colossal” casualties in his battles, wrote Ellis, Hood “was of the rash-action school of frontal offensives … so beloved because of the potential for heroics.”11

  On the matter of direct assaults, a careful examination of the historical record upsets the current paradigm. John Bell Hood was not an unthinking careless commander who callously hurled his men against enemy breastworks. In fact, he designed creative strategies to defeat his opponents, and none of his battles (except for Franklin) called for a head-on attack.

  1 Connelly, Autumn of Glory, 322, 504; The Battle of Franklin, Wide Awake Films.

  2 Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. 2, 488.

  3 Hood, Advance and Retreat, 41, 58-59.

  4 Ibid., 120-122; F. A. Shoup, “Dalton Campaign—Works at Chattahoochee River— Interesting History,” Confederate Veteran, vol. 3 (September 1895), 264; www.comdev.cobb countyga.gov/historic-markers/downloads/appendix.d.pdf.

  5 Castel, Decision in the West, 435.

  6 OR 38, pt. 5, 919.

  7 Ibid., 502; McMurry, Atlanta 1864, 187.

  8 OR 39, pt. 2, 862; ibid., pt. 3, 378; Hood, Advance and Retreat, 262-263; Wilson, Under the Old Flag, 11.

  9 OR PAGE45, pt. 1, 648.

  10 Horn, The Army of Tennessee, 384.

  11 Ellis, The Moving Appeal, 290.