The Battle of Peach Tree Creek

by Earl J. Hess

  Lovelace and Watkins primarily fired at the position held by Marshall F. Moore’s brigade of Johnson’s division. In fact, Moore reported his men endured a “terrific fire” of enemy artillery that afternoon. He suffered thirty-seven losses both from the artillery and in skirmishing, even though the brigade was not attacked by Rebel infantry. Lieut. Ben Park Dewey of the 38th Indiana was reading a novel while the regiment waited in Moore’s brigade line. A shell fragment hit his hand, but Dewey was convinced the novel deflected most of its destructive force. The only real injury was a broken forefinger.70

  Federal guns went into action to counter this heavy Confederate fire. Capt. Hubert Dilger advanced his Battery I, 1st Ohio Light Artillery well forward of the main Union line. According to Richard W. Johnson, Dilger violated orders prohibiting the unnecessary exposure of his gun crews. Known as Leather Breeches because of his habit of wearing buckskin clothing, Dilger lost some men to Confederate skirmish fire. When Johnson remonstrated with him about it after the battle, Dilger claimed he lost no men. Johnson pressed him again, and Dilger finally understood what his division commander meant. “Oh, yes, with dem leetle balls; none by artillery.” Dilger “did not count a man killed unless he was killed by a cannon ball or shell,” Johnson explained in his memoirs. “He was a fearless fellow and had a splendid battery, and was never so happy as when engaged with the enemy.”71

  In addition to artillery, Stewart tried to engage his reserve division in the battle of Peach Tree Creek. Commanded by Maj. Gen. Samuel G. French, it anchored the left end of Hood’s Peach Tree Creek Line. Born in New Jersey and a graduate of West Point, French had served in the Mexican War and had married into the plantation aristocracy of Mississippi before the outbreak of the Civil War. He had largely been in various backwaters of that conflict until thrust into the Atlanta campaign in charge of a division.72

  At 4 P.M., French received word from Stewart’s headquarters “to move forward and attack the enemy, looking well to your left.” He was told to maintain an interval of 300 to 400 yards with Walthall’s Division to the right and instructed clearly as to Hood’s overall plan to strike the enemy and then drive him left toward the Chattahoochee River. French could use only two of his three brigades. Brig. Gen. Claudius W. Sears’s Brigade was his largest, but it was responsible for holding the Western and Atlantic Railroad near its crossing of the Chattahoochee River. Sears also strung out pickets along the south bank of the river and the southern bluffs of Peach Tree Creek. Cockrell’s Missouri Brigade, now led by Col. Elijah Gates, was positioned with its left flank on the road between Marietta and Atlanta, and Brig. Gen. Matthew D. Ector’s Brigade lay to Gates’s right. French issued orders for Gates and Ector to move by the right flank until they neared Howell’s Mill Road. Together, the two small brigades numbered only 1,500 men. Upon completing this maneuver the troops fronted north and then moved through the timber north of the Peach Tree Creek Line by the right flank of companies. They finally reformed a battle line at 5 P.M. just south of the location of Selden’s Battery.73

  French versus Moore

  French took the order to watch well to the left seriously. He felt more comfortable stopping Ector at this location behind Selden’s Battery and ordering Gates to move forward alone. As Gates advanced until he was stopped by a large mill pond about 300 yards from Moore’s brigade of Johnson’s division, French personally scouted the ground to the west. He found that a large open field was in the area and came to the conclusion that the Federals were making no moves to flank his division. French therefore ordered Ector to move toward Gates’s position through a skirt of trees to mask his movement from the enemy, and Ector did so, closing up with Gates and reinforcing the static position assumed by French’s two little brigades.74

  French also joined the two brigades and, upon examining their position more closely, became worried. He noticed that a ridge to the left could command his position. By this time Stewart had ridden to the place occupied by Ector and Gates as well. When French told him of his worry, Stewart ordered French to place some artillery on that ridge and support it with Sears’s Brigade. French told Ector to take charge of Gates’s Brigade as well as his own and rode off to make these arrangements. Stewart remained with Ector and Gates to observe events, but it was already late in the day. French was able to do little more than select a position for the guns on the ridge. Soon after, the battle dwindled to a close. Darkness began to fall before the artillery or Sears could move toward the ridge.75

  Meanwhile, Ector and Gates simply remained in place, sometimes showing their men at the edge of the timber fronting Moore’s brigade. The Confederates made no attempt to advance and challenge the Federals on this part of Johnson’s line. It was just as well. Lieut. Col. Daniel F. Griffin of the 38th Indiana thought Moore’s position was very strong and the Confederates “dared not try us.” Gates’s regiments endured pretty accurate Federal artillery fire for some time that afternoon. It “was heavy, and their guns well handled,” admitted Capt. Joseph Boyce of the 1st Missouri (CS). “They got our range in short order, but the shells burst just as they passed over our position, and as the fragments were blown forward, injured no one.” Nevertheless, French reported losses in his division of nineteen men, fifteen of them in Gates’s command and the rest in Ector’s Brigade.76

  Johnson was fortunate; his division was pressed heavily only on the extreme left where Hapeman’s 104th Illinois saved the day. Along the rest of his line, Rebel artillery and skirmishers harassed but did not seriously threaten his position. Johnson’s division lost 125 men on July 20. McCook’s brigade accounted for 53.6 percent of the division casualties. Surg. Charles W. Jones, who served as Johnson’s chief medical officer, transported the wounded to Vining’s Station north of the Chattahoochee River for treatment.77

  Palmer’s other two divisions were not attacked by the Confederates on July 20, but Absalom Baird’s command, immediately to the right of Johnson, received a good deal of artillery fire from Selden’s Battery and the Lookout Battery. In fact, Baird characterized the artillery fire “as constant and as terrible as any that I have ever witnessed.” He argued that the loss to his division was “considerable” although he did not provide statistics. James A. Connolly, one of Baird’s staff officers, claimed the division lost only twenty men. Connolly also was convinced that the troops would have handily repulsed any advance by Confederate infantry because they “had worked all the night before building strong breastworks, and so were better prepared for the attack than many other Divisions.”78

  Davis’s division, to Baird’s right, also received some of the Confederate artillery fire and returned it with a few guns. For Davis’s men, the battle of Peach Tree Creek played out on other parts of the long Union line. “I could see the smoke rise” off to the left and hear the sound of heavy musketry, wrote John J. Mercer of the 78th Illinois in his diary. Davis maintained a heavy skirmish line that fired at the enemy pickets, adding to the noise and smoke but contributing little to the progress of events that day.79

  In an effort to find help for hard-pressed parts of his line, Thomas sent a message to Palmer asking for a brigade to be sent to Newton “at once.” Two brigades or even a division would be better, the note read. Even though the message was sent at 5 P.M. and received later than that at Fourteenth Corps headquarters, Palmer did not respond to it. He could have spared troops but did not know what lay ahead in the Confederate attack plan. Playing it safe, Palmer retained his men, and Newton, as it turned out, needed no help.80

  9: Rest of Day, July 20

  This business of approaching prepared parapets, from the rough nature of this wooded country, was perplexing and dangerous.

  —Oliver O. Howard

  All your troops should push hard for Atlanta, sweeping everything before them.—William T. Sherman

  While the Twentieth Corps and elements of the Fourth and Fourteenth Corps battled it out with Hardee and Stewart, the rest of Sherman’s army group continued to advance cautiously along
its planned route. Even though within relatively short range of the battle, no one recognized the sound of a heavy fight taking place to the west. News of the Confederate attack did not filter through the rest of Sherman’s command until late in the night of July 20. Thomas’s men fought their great battle with virtually no one outside the engaged divisions knowing that a battle was taking place.1

  John Schofield continued to maneuver his Twenty-Third Corps in the intermediate space between Thomas’s command and McPherson’s Army of the Tennessee, mostly traversing the heavily timbered ground in the area of the South Fork of Peach Tree Creek. Jacob Cox’s division had reached the area of Peyton’s Plantation just south of the South Fork by the evening of July 19, close to where the road he used crossed Pea Vine Creek. Cox deployed his main line on the morning of July 20 to face the Confederate Outer Line, putting three brigades in position and holding one in reserve.2

  Late in the afternoon, Milo Hascall brought his division forward and deployed it to the left of Cox. On Schofield’s urging, Hascall then detached a brigade commanded by Col. William E. Hobson and sent it to Cox’s right. Hobson sent the 111th Ohio and two companies of the 13th Kentucky forward as a heavy skirmish line. The troops captured a ridge “with some loss,” driving back the Confederate skirmishers. When the Rebels counterattacked a bit later, they were repulsed. Hobson then extended Cox’s line to the west. Meanwhile, to Cox’s left, Col. Silas A. Strickland’s brigade also advanced and drove Confederate skirmishers with “a hell of a whoop,” as Lieut. Col. Thomas B. Waller of the 20th Kentucky put it. Strickland’s men pushed the opposing skirmishers back to the Confederate Outer Line and firmed up their position extending from the left flank of Cox’s division.3

  Sherman traveled with Schofield’s Army of the Ohio all day, expecting that Hood, if he attacked, would do so against either the Twenty-Third Corps or McPherson’s command. By 6:10 P.M., when the battle of Peach Tree Creek was winding down, the latest word to reach Sherman’s headquarters from Thomas was a dispatch written at noon, three hours before the battle began. It is unclear why there was such a long time lag between the sending of this dispatch and its delivery only a few miles away, but the delay kept Sherman in the dark as to developments on his right wing. For much of the time Sherman kept close to Strickland’s brigade, and according to Col. George W. Gallup of the 14th Kentucky, he “often exposed himself to fire.” One of Sherman’s staff officers had his horse killed while close to the commander.4

  The arduous task of David Stanley’s and Thomas Wood’s divisions of Howard’s Fourth Corps was to keep pace with Schofield and try to cover the yawning gap between Sherman’s right and left wings. Fortunately for the Federals, that gap existed in the cut-up and timbered ground between the North and South Forks of Peach Tree Creek, and the Confederates knew nothing about it. But Stanley and Wood were incapable of adequately covering the hole; in fact, they found it difficult to maneuver their brigades along the narrow roads so as to find Schofield and create the semblance of a line.

  Stanley led the way with Wood following and Howard along with the column. The Federals crossed the South Fork of Peach Tree Creek on the morning of July 20, moving Col. Jacob E. Taylor’s brigade across the stream. Taylor established a line to cover the pioneers as they rebuilt the burned bridge, and then he used artillery to support his infantry’s push against Confederate skirmishers on a commanding ridge nearby. After taking the position, Taylor formed his brigade on the ridge and prepared to deal with the next high ground, the last Confederate skirmish line before the Rebel Peach Tree Creek Line and the Outer Line. Assembling eighteen guns, the Federals mounted a major push against this position. Taylor advanced about 3:30 P.M. and forced the Rebel skirmishers away. He stopped his main line about 100 yards beyond the captured position and sent a skirmish line forward, which advanced so close to the Rebel main position that the 21st Kentucky found it too dangerous to dig in while it was still daylight. Col. William Grose’s brigade took position to Taylor’s right, with his skirmishers also advancing within thirty yards of the Confederate line. Col. Isaac M. Kirby’s brigade took position to the left of Taylor’s brigade, with skirmishers also well advanced close to the enemy position.5

  The Confederates who held this part of Hood’s position mounted a serious effort to push the Union skirmishers back. They advanced a heavy skirmish line in the afternoon along Stanley’s division sector. The Confederates came on with energy, but the Federals held their ground. The 101st Ohio of Kirby’s brigade had no breastworks, and “for the first time in the campaign two forces met, without works, in an open field,” commented William Lewis English. The regiment lost thirty-five men that day in a spirited but little-noticed fight. It was an “impulsive effort,” Howard thought, but his men met it with steadiness.6

  The Federals had another success late in the evening when Taylor energetically pushed his skirmishers forward once again to clear out Confederate troops who had not fully retreated from their earlier attempt to drive his men back. Lieut. Robert F. Drullinger of the 9th Indiana led this effort, which nabbed forty-three Confederate soldiers in the gathering dusk. The 30th Indiana supported this advance to Drullinger’s right. The Federals lost no men in this push, which allowed them to properly form a well-connected skirmish screen before Stanley’s division.7

  Stanley opened communication with Schofield’s headquarters on the morning of July 20 and by late evening extended his skirmish line to the left far enough to connect with the right flank of the Twenty-Third Corps. But to the right the huge gap still existed. Grose detached the 36th Indiana and 59th Illinois to screen that gap as far as they could until Wood’s division made its appearance at about dark. Wood placed Col. Frederick Knefler’s brigade to the right of Stanley’s division and Col. William H. Gibson’s brigade to Knefler’s right, holding Brig. Gen. William B. Hazen’s brigade in reserve on the north side of the South Fork of Peach Tree Creek. Wood extended his division line to cover as much of the gap as possible. Knefler and Gibson put every regiment they had in one line “with considerable intervals between, . . . leaving a large interval between the divisions, occupied only with a skirmish line.” According to Howard’s brother and staff member, this enabled the Fourth Corps troops to place Gibson’s right flank close to the junction of the two forks of Peach Tree Creek. That still left about a mile and a half of ground uncovered between Wood and Newton. Wood’s division was not engaged in skirmishing on July 20.8

  “This business of approaching prepared parapets, from the rough nature of this wooded country, was perplexing and dangerous,” Howard later wrote of his advance on July 20. Stanley and Wood accomplished all that was reasonably possible, just as Schofield had done. Neither force could have accomplished more given the terrain and the presence of a full Confederate line in their front that was protected by earthworks. By midafternoon, the Army of Tennessee had shifted dramatically to the right so that Stevenson’s Division faced east, its left flank resting at the sharp angle where the north-facing Peach Tree Creek Line met the east-facing Outer Line. Cox’s division of the Twenty-Third Corps and Stanley’s division of the Fourth Corps faced Stevenson. Brown’s Division extended the east-facing Outer Line to Stevenson’s right in an effort to support the Confederate cavalry opposing McPherson’s tentative advance toward Atlanta. To Stevenson’s left, occupying the right end of the north-facing Peach Tree Creek Line, Clayton’s Division opposed part of Stanley’s division and all of Wood’s deployed division. The left wing of Clayton’s Division and Bate’s Division of Hardee’s Corps faced the gap of one and a half miles in the Union position.9

  McPherson faced less opposition than did Schofield or Howard, yet he made slow, uncertain progress. Ironically, he worried his opposing Rebel commander so much that Joseph Wheeler called loudly for help, prompting a major and unexpected change in Hood’s battle plans for July 20 at the last minute, a change that prevented Hardee from launching what might have been a promising second attack by his corps against Newton’s embattled divi
sion.

  Yet one wonders at the fact that McPherson, who controlled 25,000 men and was opposed by only 3,500 Rebel cavalry supported by 700 Georgia Militia, allowed himself to advance at a snail’s pace on July 20. Albert Castel has estimated that both McPherson and Schofield advanced that day at a rate of one mile in three hours. The terrain accounted for Schofield’s and Howard’s slow pace, but McPherson had good roads and more open country to traverse. He missed a good opportunity; an aggressive advance that pushed Wheeler away and turned Brown’s flank would have been disastrous for the Army of Tennessee, with most of its strength arrayed against Thomas along Peach Tree Creek.10

  Wheeler failed to keep Army of Tennessee headquarters fully informed of developments on his front. He did request reinforcements at midmorning of July 20 but imparted no sense of emergency in his dispatches until late in the afternoon. As Castel has written, Hood’s battle plan for July 20 was based on the assumption that he had time to deal with Thomas before McPherson approached close enough to Atlanta to pose a threat. Wheeler’s late afternoon dispatches destroyed that assumption and forced Hood to call on Hardee for a division, and the only division Hardee could send was the one he was about to launch in an attack on Newton.11

  McPherson therefore accomplished something on July 20, but it was a small part of what it might have been possible for him to do that day. As it was, the Army of the Tennessee got within long artillery range of Atlanta by that evening. Capt. Francis De Gress fired three shells from his Battery H, 1st Illinois Light Artillery at a range of two and a half miles. The 20-pounder Parrott rifles became the first to hurl artillery rounds into the city. McPherson positioned his infantry so as to be ready for striking the Confederate Outer Line the next day.12