by Earl J. Hess
Dilworth caught the Confederates during a shift in the units responsible for holding this sector. A small Arkansas brigade led by Brig. Gen. Daniel H. Reynolds of Maj. Gen. Edward C. Walthall’s Division, Stewart’s Army of Mississippi, had earlier that day been positioned farther east, fronting the sector where Geary’s division was to cross. But Gist’s Brigade had relieved him at 1 P.M. before Geary moved over the creek. Reynolds then shifted his command west to cover a sector two miles long between Gist to the east and Brig. Gen. John Adams’s Brigade of Maj. Gen. William W. Loring’s Division, Stewart’s Army of Mississippi, to the west.22
Reynolds had to leave eighty men on the skirmish line when he shifted because they could not easily be removed during the day without dangerously exposing them to enemy fire. Those eighty men became the eastern boundary of his new sector. On the west, Reynolds relieved the 15th Mississippi and two companies of the 6th Mississippi with his 25th Arkansas, which became the western boundary of his new sector, ending 300 yards short of Moore’s Mill. Reynolds also placed the 9th Arkansas to extend the skirmish line formed by the 25th Arkansas toward the east. Even though the men were placed five to ten paces apart, the two regiments could not cover the two-mile sector; a gap existed between the 9th Arkansas and the eighty men left behind. But Reynolds allowed the remainder of his brigade to rest a bit to the rear, while he became more familiar with his new position and planned how to firm up the skirmish line.23
At this point in time, Clancy’s 52nd Ohio moved aggressively from its crossing of Peach Tree Creek and pushed back the 9th Arkansas until the Federals gained the ridge with the houses on it. At the first indication of trouble, Reynolds rushed back to his resting regiments and reacted quickly to the Federal push. He ordered the 9th Arkansas to counterattack and try to regain its former position, sending the 2nd Arkansas Mounted Rifles (dismounted) behind it as support. The 25th Arkansas to the west was not affected by Clancy’s advance and remained in place. The 9th Arkansas put a great deal of pressure on the 52nd Ohio, especially the left and center of Clancy’s line, but the Ohio men held on to the ridge from behind their slim breastworks and repelled the Arkansans.24
As the two Arkansas regiments vainly tried to restore the Confederate skirmish line, Reynolds formed the rest of his brigade in line and prepared a second attack. As soon as the two regiments returned, Reynolds added them to the 1st Arkansas Mounted Rifles (dismounted) and the 4th Arkansas, making four regiments in his brigade line. The 25th Arkansas remained detached about 200 yards off to the west, but Reynolds sent word to its commander to cooperate with his intended advance as best he could. Reynolds’s men “moved into line at a double-quick, and yet there was no confusion, although they knew the enemy were advancing and were but a short distance from them at the time.” Just then word arrived that Col. Michael Farrell of the 15th Mississippi offered to cooperate with Reynolds. Farrell had been resting his men after they were relieved by the 25th Arkansas. Getting wind of action to his right, Farrell was willing to use his own regiment and the two companies of the 6th Mississippi to help. Reynolds eagerly accepted and asked Farrell to coordinate his movements with that of the 25th Arkansas.25
Reynolds was fully aware that the enemy was in force south of the creek and that his own brigade had only a few hundred men available for duty. He hesitated to bring on a larger engagement but wanted to restore his skirmish line. Therefore, the general instructed both wings of his brigade line to advance while the center remained stationary, thereby hoping to pressure the enemy where they were likely to be vulnerable without committing all of his small force to a risky battle.26
When the Confederates advanced, they found Clancy’s skirmishers only seventy-five yards away from their starting point. The Federals were taken by surprise, and many of them became prisoners, including Clancy himself. But the initial Rebel success began to unravel as troops of the 9th Arkansas on the far right began to give way because they ran out of ammunition. When Reynolds learned of this, he feared the enemy would take advantage of it, advance, and cut him off from his ambulances and ordnance train. Reynolds sent his wounded to the rear and his prisoners to Adams’s Brigade, made sure more rounds were issued, and then stabilized his line.27
But Reynolds mounted a second advance, and this time nearly overwhelmed the 52nd Ohio. Correctly seeing that he was opposed by several regiments, Holmes took command of the regiment when Clancy turned up missing. What was left of his skirmish line was driven back onto the skirmish reserve, and that was driven back into the regimental main line.28
Holmes was saved by the timely arrival of the 85th Illinois, the next regiment in Dilworth’s brigade column to cross Peach Tree Creek and move up to the ridge with the houses on it. Maj. Robert G. Rider pushed his regiment forward and took position to the right of the 52nd Ohio just in time to meet Reynolds’s big push. As the Confederate left wing approached the regiment, hand-to-hand fighting broke out. Losses were heavy in the right wing of the 85th Illinois, and there is evidence that some parts of it fell back to the creek bluff, but Holmes held his 52nd Ohio in place, and the rest of Rider’s regiment also stood firm until the Confederates fell back. The Union right was saved, and the left was helped a great deal by the lack of ammunition among the 9th Arkansas, which delayed the advance of Reynolds’s right wing.29
The battle for the ridge was a very close affair. “Without the Eighty-fifth Illinois,” Holmes wrote long after the war, “the Fifty-second Ohio would all have been killed or captured.” Davis’s movement across the creek also “would have ended in disaster and failure,” Holmes thought. His regiment lost eighty-two men in this spirited little fight, amounting to almost one-third of all casualties the 52nd suffered during the four-month campaign for Atlanta.30
Dilworth energetically pushed more regiments up the ridge to secure Holmes’s position, quickly outracing Reynolds in the effort to mass troops at the key point of the struggle. The 125th Illinois was next in his brigade column; it moved up to a supporting position behind Holmes’s 52nd Ohio. Then came the 86th Illinois, which extended the Union line to the left, and the 22nd Indiana, which extended it to the right. Firing continued on the Union right wing, wounding Maj. Thomas Shea of the 22nd Indiana and compelling Dilworth to shift his reserve, the 125th Illinois, to shore up his right.31
Reynolds was unable to bring all the Confederate units available to him into play. The 25th Arkansas, 15th Mississippi, and the two companies of the 6th Mississippi failed to take advantage of their position several hundred yards to the west to find and flank Dilworth’s brigade. Farrell connected his right flank with the left of the 25th Arkansas, which had fallen back from the skirmish line to form a regimental battle line. The two regiments advanced with the two companies of the 6th Mississippi, but they had to move obliquely to the right through woods in hope of connecting with Reynolds’s left flank. They drifted too far to the west to do so and fell back when the bulk of Dilworth’s brigade crossed the creek and extended the Union right wing in their direction. Adams brought other units of his brigade toward the scene of action, but they arrived too late to take part in the fight.32
While Confederate commanders on the ground could not coordinate their efforts, the Federals worked smoothly to bring more troops to the area. Davis quickly moved Col. John G. Mitchell’s brigade over Peach Tree Creek to support Dilworth. Mitchell sent three regiments to extend the left wing of the Union line and another to extend the right wing. Mitchell’s troops continued skirmishing with Reynolds’s men until dusk. Davis kept his last brigade, led by Brig. Gen. James D. Morgan, farther east to confront the Confederates who still stubbornly defended the crossing of the creek at Howell’s Mill.33
Dilworth and his men, especially those of the 52nd Ohio, deserved the high praise they received in official reports for the short but bloody battle of July 19. “The loss was heavy on both sides,” commented Jefferson C. Davis, “considering the numbers engaged and the short time the fight lasted.” Dilworth reported losing 245 men of his briga
de, 125 of them were seriously enough wounded to be transported to the Federal hospitals at Vining’s Station north of the Chattahoochee River.34
The battle made July 19 “an eventful day in the history of this brigade,” second only to the terrible drama of its assault on Johnston’s fortified line at Kennesaw Mountain on June 27. Elias Dimmit of the 52nd Ohio was jolted by a premonition that he would die that day. Sometime during the engagement, a bullet ranged through his knapsack and into his body, killing him. Frank Miser of the same regiment was badly wounded and left on the ground for some time before he could be helped. His comrades later found him dead, but Miser had scrawled a message on a piece of paper. “Dear father and mother, I am mortally wounded. I die like a soldier, and hope to meet you all in heaven.” Miser’s last message to his family remained a bittersweet memory for his comrades for the rest of their lives. During the night that followed this engagement and well into the morning of the next day, Dilworth’s troops cared for the wounded and buried their dead.35
Morgan’s brigade made little headway in the area of Howell’s Mill on the evening of July 19. Col. Charles M. Lum sent sharpshooters from his 10th Michigan down to the creek on both sides of the mill, but they reported the stream too deep, its current too rapid, and the opposing bluffs too near for a crossing. Confederate skirmishers not only held the bluff but occupied the mill building. Lum’s men observed all they could while daylight lasted, and then Capt. John Algoe organized a select group of soldiers into three squads of ten men each. At dusk, one squad advanced upstream and another downstream, while Algoe led the third squad directly toward the mill building. Advancing quietly, they managed to break down the door before they were detected, but the Confederate skirmishers inside escaped through another door, ran across the mill dam, and disappeared into the growing darkness. The Confederate line on the south bluff was close enough so that a rain of rifle balls descended on the mill area for quite some time, and Algoe lost two men to it. Two companies of the 10th Michigan relieved Algoe’s troops at midnight and worked to destroy the flume, thereby letting the water flow more freely past the dam to lower the level of Peach Tree Creek.36
For the time being, Davis’s was the only Fourteenth Corps presence on the south side of the stream. His troops consolidated their tenuous hold by continuing to fortify their position on the ridge. They advanced skirmishers a short distance forward of the main line in the darkness and made a series of works consisting of rails with dirt thrown over them big enough to protect eight to ten skirmishers each. A few wounded and well men crawled back to the Federal skirmishers under cover of night, having lain between the lines since the fight that afternoon. Dilworth’s command also constructed a proper bridge over Peach Tree Creek to facilitate communication with the north side. The troops obtained timber by tearing down a nearby house and, while working, noticed the body of a young Federal soldier floating down from the Twentieth Corps sector. They could not identify him but interred the body with their own men who had been killed in the battle.37
On the Confederate side of the field, Adams visited Reynolds about dusk and urged him to relieve the 15th Mississippi and the two companies of the 6th Mississippi. Adams also wanted his 20th Mississippi back, a regiment he had brought up to Farrell’s position after the battle had ended. Reynolds explained that he had little more than 600 troops to cover a sector two miles wide. Furthermore, he was worried about a gap in the Rebel position to his right and had asked Walthall for reinforcements but could not guess when or if they would arrive. His main line was little more than 200 yards from the Federals. Adams returned to his sector but later sent a message once again urging Reynolds to help him. Just then, the 1st Alabama arrived from Brig. Gen. William A. Quarles’s Brigade. Reynolds used that regiment to relieve the 15th Mississippi, 20th Mississippi, and the two companies of the 6th Mississippi at 11 P.M.38
Adams later created a controversy by denigrating Reynolds’s handling of the affair. On the basis of Farrell’s report (Adams had no opportunity to observe the battle personally), the brigade leader claimed that Reynolds requested Farrell to help him. He argued that the 15th Mississippi advanced and compelled the surrender of an entire Union regiment; but Farrell had to release most of them and retire because Reynolds’s men failed to advance and support him. The 15th Mississippi retired but claimed to have captured all the Federals who had gotten to its rear area, including Lieut. Col. Clancy of the 52nd Ohio. Adams believed that a haul of 1,000 Federal prisoners could have been taken if Reynolds had acted with more skill. This story was widely believed among the men of Adams’s Brigade.39
Reynolds was flabbergasted when he learned of all this and retorted a few days later with a full description of the affair. He discounted the story completely and pointed out that the prisoners his men captured, who were sent to Adams’s Brigade for safekeeping, were later credited as a joint capture of the two brigades by one of Adams’s staff officers. In fact, Reynolds argued that if Farrell had commanded his regiment more effectively to cooperate with his own command, the Confederates might have been able to achieve an impressive tactical victory on July 19. Adams had not the temperament for the position his brigade held that day. He complained that Reynolds’s command was too small to support his right, and he also complained that Brig. Gen. Matthew D. Ector’s Brigade of French’s Division to his left was too small to protect that flank as well. He also argued that Walthall’s Division and Walker’s Division should have counterattacked on the night of July 19 and driven the Federals back to the north side of Peach Tree Creek. Adams’s alarmist reports were taken seriously by Loring, but they did not resonate at higher command levels.40
Hood was pleased to learn that Reynolds had struck vigorously against the Fourteenth Corps crossing that afternoon, relaying the news to Richmond as the first evidence of a new spirit in the army since he took command. Reynolds spent the night gathering abandoned small arms within reach of his brigade. The moon shone brightly that night, and the Confederates had to be careful so as to avoid a shot from Federal pickets. His men also constructed breastworks of rails with dirt thrown over them. Reynolds reported losing fifty-nine men in the battle that lasted from 3 P.M. until 7:30 P.M., a much lighter loss than Dilworth suffered. Hood had reason to be encouraged by such a differential, but it also points out, once again, the wisdom of a forward and aggressive defense at natural obstacles such as Peach Tree Creek. If every Federal crossing of the stream was attended with such resistance and loss of life, it would have taken the edge off the extremely high Union troop morale, drained some manpower, and slowed Thomas’s progress.41
As Davis led the Fourteenth Corps across Peach Tree Creek, the other two divisions of Palmer’s command waited and then followed. Early on the morning of July 19, Palmer told Baird to reconnoiter in the direction of Atlanta. Baird’s party found that all the bridges over Peach Tree Creek were destroyed. He then waited nearly all day; when Davis crossed the creek, he received orders to follow. Baird moved Col. Moses B. Walker’s brigade across a ford located just upstream from Davis’s position. The water was waist-deep here, but the 89th Ohio led Walker’s brigade through it, followed by the 82nd Indiana, sometime after 6 P.M. The Ohio men deployed as skirmishers and pushed the Confederate skirmishers back to enlarge Davis’s small bridgehead, connecting to Davis’s left flank. Baird realized that the bridgehead on the south side was still too small for both divisions. He retained his other two brigades on the north side for a while until the combined effect of Geary’s crossing and Davis’s crossing compelled the Confederate skirmishers to fall back even more, allowing room for further Federal deployment on the south side. Baird crossed his remaining two brigades near Howell’s Mill after constructing a bridge. It was midnight before his entire division was over and dug in south of the stream.42
Johnson was delayed in crossing his division over Peach Tree Creek. Finally, late in the evening, his men began to move across near Howell’s Mill following Baird’s troops. Johnson took position to Baird’s left
in an attempt to reach far enough east to connect with Hooker’s right flank. He was unable to do so because Hooker had not yet crossed all his corps.43
At the end of the day, Thomas had barely made enough progress over Peach Tree Creek to facilitate Sherman’s overall plan. Most of the crossings had been contested, with Dilworth fighting a bloody battle to secure Davis’s hold on the south side. Moreover, Sherman began to worry about the gap in his general line, which continued between Schofield and Howard. Reacting to an erroneous report that Thomas had retained many troops on the north side of Nancy’s Creek, he berated his subordinate for not spreading the men out well enough so that Howard could close the gap and maintain firm contact with Schofield. He envisioned Buck Head as the center of Thomas’s line and wanted the entire Fourth Corps to cross both forks of Peach Tree Creek to find the Twenty-Third Corps. Even though Thomas had no troops north of Nancy’s Creek, he still was unable to stretch out far enough. Both Schofield and McPherson were in the area but shielded by Confederate ignorance of their exact positions.44
The gap was not really Thomas’s or anyone else’s fault. According to Cox, Sherman admitted that the maps he used were inaccurate, making it difficult to estimate distances and plot locations for each of the corps in the army group. Everything east turned out to be farther away from locations such as Howell’s Mill than anticipated, and Cox also correctly pointed out that there were in fact two Howell’s Mills, one on Nancy’s Creek and the other well-known one on Peach Tree Creek.45