by Earl J. Hess
Sherman received word a bit after 11 A.M. that one of his cavalry officers, Maj. Gen. George Stoneman, had spoken with a black man who fed him much information about what was happening on the Confederate side of the campaign. The fellow told Stoneman that the Union cavalry presence northwest of Atlanta had panicked the Rebels and they were preparing to retreat to Macon. The city was held only by the Georgia Militia, and the Army of Tennessee was “utterly demoralized and easily frightened,” in Stoneman’s words. Displaying a great deal of common sense, Sherman completely discounted this testimony as unreliable and proceeded with his operational plan, knowing that Hood and his men would not be so easily frightened.6
Hooker completed the movement of his other two divisions over the creek shortly after the noon hour. Although both divisions rested for several hours on the bottomland on the south side of the stream, they did send skirmish lines forward. Ward’s division skirmishers connected Geary’s skirmish line with Newton’s, thus creating a screen covering the gap between the two commands. This was good enough for Newton. He reinforced his skirmish line under Col. Wallace W. Barrett of the 44th Illinois. Barrett controlled the 36th Illinois, 74th Illinois, and 88th Illinois from Kimball’s brigade. Blake contributed to this skirmish formation by placing the 97th Ohio as a second skirmish line and providing the 27th Kentucky as a skirmish reserve.7
Barrett set out about 1 P.M. and pushed the Confederate skirmishers along the Buck Head and Atlanta Road on the double-quick. His men advanced 600 yards to a ridge that was higher than Newton’s present position. From there, Barrett saw that another, slightly higher ridge lay 400 yards farther south. He decided to continue moving forward and easily occupied this rise of ground too, capturing a surgeon and an ambulance along the way.8
The ridge that Barrett occupied was the best ground in the area, commanding the ground north toward Peach Tree Creek and not commanded by any ground farther south toward Atlanta. Newton quickly moved his entire division forward to occupy the ridge. Kimball also rotated regiments on the skirmish line to bring in fresh men. The 15th Missouri, 24th Wisconsin, and 73rd Illinois replaced Barrett’s five regiments, and Kimball placed Col. Joseph Conrad of the 3rd Missouri in charge of the new skirmishers.9
Newton admired the new place his division had taken. Calling it a “fine natural position,” he saw that the ridge began near the valley of Clear Creek, a tributary that flowed northward into Peach Tree Creek about a mile east of his division. The ridge seemed to extend indefinitely west, parallel to and about three-fourths of a mile south of Peach Tree Creek. A spur of high ground connected the ridge with the bridge over Peach Tree; the Buck Head and Atlanta Road ran along the top of this spur. Low and rolling ground lay to either side of the spur. Ridge and spur seemed of vital importance in maintaining a firm hold on lines of communication north to Buck Head and in terms of planting a solid anchor for the left end of Thomas’s line along Peach Tree Creek.10
Newton formed his division to hold the ridge in case of trouble. Kimball aligned mostly to the right of the road, although he placed the 88th Illinois to the left of it. Four guns of Lieut. Charles W. Scovill’s Battery A, 1st Ohio Light Artillery took position on the road between the 88th Illinois and the rest of Kimball’s infantry. Blake aligned his brigade to the left of the 88th Illinois, extending eastward. He refused the left end of his line because there were no friendly troops east of the division. Blake also placed the 28th Kentucky in reserve. Kimball did not refuse his right flank because he expected Ward’s division of Hooker’s corps to move up and connect to it at any moment.11
As Newton put it, his men “commenced naturally to throw up log and rail barricades.” Indeed, the hasty construction of field fortifications had become such a commonplace event that most Union soldiers did it automatically. It had for some, in the words of an anonymous correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial, become “the ruling passion of the campaign.” Kimball reported that his men stacked arms and “fell to work with the greatest activity” to protect themselves.12
When Bradley moved his brigade up to the new position on the high ridge, he formed it in a column of regiments along the road. As a reserve force, it would be easy to move the troops to right or left in this formation. Compared to the line ahead, Bradley’s column resembled the stem of a T in the division formation with the cross piece aiming south toward the Confederate line. Some men in Bradley’s column reported they also began to make light breastworks. According to William D. Hynes of the 42nd Illinois, the order to do so was not uniformly distributed. Many of the men had grown so used to constructing earthworks that they never used in battle as to become “very unconcerned in the matter” on July 20. They preferred to rest and “did not work with much spirit.” As a result, while Kimball and Blake had some protection for their connected line, Bradley essentially had no shelter worth speaking of in his column.13
Newton understandably was worried about the area east of his position, as yet uncovered by friendly forces. He called on Blake to send a regiment out into the area, and soon Lieut. Col. Willis Blanch’s 57th Indiana deployed as skirmishers from the left flank of Blake’s brigade east to Clear Creek. Blanch sent a detachment to the east side of the creek, but it found no Confederates. Blanch’s left flank was about 600 yards from Blake’s left flank, but at least there was a thin screen of Union troops extending to Clear Creek. Blake also sent Maj. Charles M. Hammond’s 100th Illinois to the left and rear where it held the area near the junction of Clear Creek and Peach Tree Creek, further shoring up Newton’s vulnerable flank.14
While Newton was positioning his division on the ridge, Conrad’s three regiments replaced Barrett’s five regiments on the skirmish line. Conrad moved out almost immediately under Newton’s order to explore what lay ahead. His 15th Missouri advanced left of the road and the 73rd Illinois to the right, with the 24th Wisconsin as a reserve. The two regiments pushed a few Confederate skirmishers back a quarter of a mile before meeting obstacles. The 73rd Illinois stopped in the garden of a house, and Rebel skirmishers fired so heavily that the bullets striking the garden fence “made quite a rattling, disagreeable noise,” according to the regimental historian. Conrad also stopped the 15th Missouri and refused its left flank for added protection. Scouts sent forward reported seeing a nearly continuous line of enemy earthworks—the Peach Tree Creek Line—and Conrad passed this information back to division headquarters. When Newton relayed it to army headquarters, Thomas told him to stay where he was for the time being. It was by now almost 3 P.M.15
Newton had gone as far as anyone felt comfortable, but the progress of Stanley and Wood continued to disappoint higher-ranking officers. Stanley left at 7 A.M. and moved to the South Fork of Peach Tree Creek an hour and a half later. Here he found some Confederate skirmishers. An officer from Schofield’s staff also found Stanley at about that time, 8:30 A.M., representing the first contact between Fourth Corps and Twenty-Third Corps generals in days. The officer told Stanley that Schofield was moving on a road one mile east, that the road eventually converged with the road Stanley was taking, and the two forces ought to link up at that point. This contact was in stark contrast to what had happened the day before when Schofield sent a staff officer and a courier to find Stanley at the North Fork of Peach Tree Creek. On that occasion, a misunderstanding led a detachment of the 75th Illinois from Stanley’s division to fire on the pair, wounding at least the courier.16
Stanley found it difficult to continue along the road. His men had to rebuild the burned bridge over the South Fork after his skirmishers waded the creek and drove enemy skirmishers away. Then at 10 A.M. Stanley’s division crossed the stream and cautiously moved forward, meeting Rebel skirmishers half an hour later. The Federals drove their enemy from slight rail breastworks and continued forward, but Rebel artillery now opened from a line of continuous earthworks one-third of a mile beyond the fortified Confederate skirmish line.17
Stanley was approaching the new east-facing Confederate line that Brown’s Division
had started to form on the evening of July 19. By the afternoon of July 20, however, Cheatham had shifted his corps until most of his units faced east. The result was that Confederate infantry now extended from the eastern flank of the north-facing Peach Tree Creek Line down to near the Georgia Railroad. Prisoners told Stanley that Stevenson’s Division stood in his way. As afternoon shaded off into evening, the Federals tried to deploy as many units as possible to face this new Confederate line. The area among the two forks of Peach Tree Creek was heavily timbered, forcing both Stanley and Wood to keep to the roads. Effective Confederate skirmishing had slowed their progress. That evening, Wood placed Knefler’s brigade to Stanley’s right and kept Hazen’s brigade in reserve on the north side of the South Fork of Peach Tree Creek. It was impossible to extend the line westward to link with Newton.18
But Stanley managed to make a tenuous connection with Schofield by evening, although it was difficult to do so. Cox’s division of the Twenty-Third Corps had crossed the South Fork of Peach Tree Creek and advanced to the Peyton Plantation, near the crossing of Pea Vine Creek, by the evening of July 19. On the morning of July 20, Cox advanced a short distance against heavy Confederate skirmishing until he realized the road he was on ran nearly parallel to the continuous line of earthworks held by Cheatham’s Corps on the west side of Pea Vine Creek. He had to stop his progress and deploy his entire division west of the road fronting that line. Cox placed three brigades in line with his fourth to the rear as a reserve.19
Later in the afternoon, Hascall’s division moved up and deployed to Cox’s left, extending Schofield’s line toward the expected arrival of McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee. Schofield ordered Hascall to detach one of his brigades and send it to Cox’s right in an effort to make contact with Stanley. Hascall sent Col. William E. Hobson’s brigade, but Hobson received his instructions directly from Schofield. His task was to find and secure the junction of the two roads Schofield and Stanley were using. Hobson deployed a skirmish line supported by the rest of his brigade and moved out in the direction Schofield pointed to him. He met stiff resistance and had to reinforce his skirmishers, but the Federals were able to drive the enemy back to the road junction. There Hobson believed the Confederates were holding the crossroads in force. He advanced his entire brigade in two lines and, after eight minutes of heavy skirmishing, took the junction. Hobson’s men made rail breastworks to secure their hard-won objective and repulsed a Confederate counterattack. Later that evening, skirmishers from Stanley’s division appeared but did not have the strength to relieve Hobson’s men, so the Twenty-Third Corps troops remained at the crossroads indefinitely.20
The link with Stanley was slim at best, but there yet was no link with McPherson to the south. One of Logan’s staff officers rode to Schofield’s headquarters to at least open communications, informing Schofield that Logan was moving toward Atlanta one and a half miles from Hascall’s left flank along the road directly linking Decatur with the city. Sherman had hoped to sew up his line more firmly than this by the end of the day, but he had to accept the many obstacles to fast movement and coordination of dispersed parts of his army group as a fact of military life.21
For reasons still unclear, Hooker took his time in moving the rest of his Twentieth Corps across Peach Tree Creek and forming a solid line on the south side. At the beginning of July 20, he already had Geary’s division in place on good ground, but Ward and Williams had not yet moved over the stream, leaving two prominent holes in Thomas’s line. Howard had started Fourth Corps operations at dawn, and Palmer was ready to move his Fourteenth Corps south as soon as Hooker got in motion. But there was an unaccountable air of lassitude among Twentieth Corps officers during most of the day.
Hooker’s delay caused a good deal of anxiety at Army of the Cumberland headquarters. Brig. Gen. William D. Whipple, Thomas’s chief of staff, repeatedly informed the army commander that Palmer was waiting for hours to move forward, and Thomas finally lectured Hooker at 3 P.M., telling him that Newton had waited only until Hooker’s skirmish line was completed before advancing but Palmer had to wait until the Twentieth Corps main line was formed before moving south. Thomas wanted it done immediately, so army operations could proceed. Hooker responded defensively and with unclear language to argue that his command was in place. In short, he prevaricated because by midafternoon the Twentieth Corps main line was still not formed and those two gaps to either side of Geary’s division still existed. In fact, Thomas told Newton to stop his forward advance in part because Newton had hit stiff resistance and in part because he wanted Hooker’s main line to come up and support the lone Fourth Corps division. In his messages to Sherman’s headquarters, however, Thomas covered up for Hooker and stated that his entire army was across Peach Tree Creek before the afternoon of July 20 (which was true) and that “the line was adjusted” (which was at best only partly true).22
Joseph Hooker, whose Twentieth Corps was not fully ready to meet the enemy on the afternoon of July 20 despite having several hours in which to prepare. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-06979)
Fortunately for the Union cause that day, Hooker managed to at least get the rest of his corps over the obstacle posed by Peach Tree Creek on July 20. Ward scouted the possible crossings and decided to move his division over the bridge behind Newton’s division, where the Buck Head and Atlanta Road crossed the stream. The 22nd Wisconsin and 136th New York moved ahead and skirmished forward to establish themselves on the ridge between Newton and Geary. Then the division began to cross at 11 A.M., nearly five hours after the Fourth Corps had begun its own operations that morning. Once over the bridge, Hooker ordered Ward to rest his men in cornfields along the bottom land of the creek, at the foot of the bluff. Ward placed Col. Benjamin Harrison’s First Brigade on the right, Col. John Coburn’s Second Brigade in the center, and Col. James Wood Jr.’s Third Brigade on the left. Ward’s command formed multiple lines, but Hooker’s orders were to wait until further instructions arrived. As Wood understood it, “a farther advance was not at that time necessary.” Stephen Fleharty of the 102nd Illinois recalled that “we did not anticipate any very serious work—nothing more than a slight skirmish, when we should advance to construct works at the crest of the hill.”23
Ward’s skirmishers had little difficulty clearing the way south. They easily took the first rise of ground south of Peach Tree Creek against light opposition. Then they crossed a ravine and ascended the next rise of ground, meeting stiffer resistance from Confederate skirmishers. The Federals took some prisoners and secured this ridge to connect with Newton’s division to the east and Geary’s division to the west. This ridge was the best defensive position in the area; a road and a rail fence ran along the top from east to west. The 79th Ohio of Harrison’s brigade detailed some men to escort Confederate prisoners to the rear. The Ohio troops also were told to round up Union stragglers from Ward’s march that day. The weather was hot, and the division had marched in a circuitous way to get to Newton’s bridge. The 79th Ohio men found sixty stragglers and returned them to their regiments.24
While this was going on, Ward’s men took it easy in the corn field that lined the southern bottomland of Peach Tree Creek, which extended as much as 200 yards from the stream. They were shielded from the skirmish action by the abrupt rise of the bluff land, but occasionally a few long-range shots from the Confederate skirmishers plunged into the bottoms. Many men took this opportunity to bathe in the red, muddy water of Peach Tree Creek. Even if they did not become clean, at least the washing cooled their skin in the increasing heat of the day. Other men kindled fires and began to boil coffee, the eternal stimulant of Civil War soldiers, and ate their midday meal.25
Williams’s division crossed Peach Tree Creek quite early on July 20. The van of the column marched across the bridge Geary’s division had constructed at about 6 A.M., while the tail of the column moved to the south side by 8 A.M. By then, the clouds had given way to a bright, hot sun. A Confederate battery opened fire on the crossing are
a just as Williams’s men were partly over the creek but did little harm.26
The division marched obliquely to the right as it tried to fill the gap between Geary and the Fourteenth Corps to the west. Williams “followed a farm road along a wooded ridge” that intersected the road south from Howell’s Mill at the plantation of Hiram Embry. Confederate skirmishers were dug in to cover this intersection, so Hooker ordered Williams to stop 600 yards short of the junction where some “deserted houses” were scattered along the farm road. Williams placed Brig. Gen. Joseph F. Knipe’s brigade on the right of the road and Col. James S. Robinson’s brigade to the left. He also moved Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Ruger’s brigade toward the right in an attempt to make contact with the left flank of the Fourteenth Corps. Most of the ascending terrain around Williams’s position was wooded and broken up into ravines.27
There was no sense of urgency, so Williams massed his brigades, and the men stacked their muskets to rest. Knipe’s brigade, for example, formed a frontage of only 250 feet according to Rice C. Bull of the 123rd New York. Hooker and Williams stopped at Knipe’s brigade to eat their midday meal under the trees. The men did likewise. “We made our little fires,” recalled Bull, “fried our pork, boiled our coffee, and ate our hardtack.” Then the men rested in the increasing heat of the early afternoon. “Some were soon sleeping, others reading books or papers, a good many were having a friendly game of cards using the greasy pack that always was handy when we halted.” Irving Bronson of the 107th New York caught a glimpse of Hooker “under the shade of a small tree with his hat, coat, and boots off, receiving and sending out orders.”28
This was the atmosphere at Twentieth Corps headquarters that lazy afternoon. “No orders were given to put our Brigade in position to defend itself in case of attack,” complained Bull in his memoirs. “During the campaign we had never been so massed while in the presence of the enemy unless a line of troops was deployed in our front and we were where we had time to form in line in case of emergency. But on this day, everyone from our Corps Commander to private soldier seemed certain that the enemy would make no stand until behind the entrenchments at Atlanta; so there was no need for placing our Brigade in line of battle. Our officers must have thought it unnecessary to use even the most ordinary precautions for the skirmish line was not advanced as far in front as usual. We were finally informed we would camp for the night as we were.”29