The Battle of Peach Tree Creek

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The Battle of Peach Tree Creek Page 27

by Earl J. Hess


  Unlike Tilly, the wife of Pvt. John Hart of Company E, 149th New York had accompanied her husband in the field and was with the wagon train during the fight of July 20. Hart was killed during the engagement, and his comrades buried him that night. Only the next morning did Mrs. Hart learn of his fate and rush to the field, desperate to see the body. The men felt so sympathetic they began to dig, but Mrs. Hart jumped into the hole just before they reached him and frantically used her hands to finish uncovering his face. That brought forth “the most excruciating cries of agonized grief” the men had ever heard. The cries brought tears to many eyes as she continued to grieve for him before Hart’s comrades finally had to physically remove her from the grave of her husband.68

  Soldiers met death in numerous ways at Peach Tree Creek, and for years after the battle as well, because of battlefield injuries suffered in Hood’s first attack at Atlanta. None met it with more resignation and acceptance than William Allen of the 123rd New York. He had taken a load of canteens to the creek and was bringing them back to the regiment when a bullet struck. Taken to a hospital, the surgeon told him bluntly he would die soon. “Well, here she goes,” Allen said, according to Henry C. Morhous, “and turning over on his side died soon after without uttering another word.”69

  11: July 21–22

  We have fought the battle of this campaign.—Charles Harding Cox

  I think we will have Atlanta in a few days if nothing gits rong.

  —Henry H. Maley

  I have every reason to believe that our attack would have been successful had my order been executed.—John Bell Hood

  Beginning on July 21, the men who survived the battle of Peach Tree Creek began a long process of coping in various ways with the experience of combat. For the Federals, the process was largely a joyous celebration that they had been taken by surprise and yet triumphed over Hood’s first attempt to crush Sherman’s advancing army. For the Confederates, the process was largely a painful exercise in justifying their failure or coping with the terrible truth that they had frittered away many advantages on the field. The men of both armies informed their loved ones what had happened, evaluated their commanders, themselves, and their enemy, and prepared for further movements and possibly another battle.

  There was a good deal of crowing to be done on the Union side of the contested field. “We have fought the battle of this campaign” exulted Charles Harding Cox of the 70th Indiana in a letter to his sister, “and given the enemy the soundest thrashing they have yet had.” For participants, the battle seemed enormously long, desperate, and “one glorious victory,” as John Marsh Cate of the 33rd Massachusetts phrased it. William D. Hynes of the 42nd Illinois conducted a quick survey of the position held by Newton’s division and drew an elaborate map for his brother back home so he could better understand the accomplishment of Newton’s veterans.1

  Not surprisingly, Federal troops praised their comrades enormously in letters home. “Our boys never done better,” asserted Lysander Wheeler of the 105th Illinois. They fired so effectively that slain Confederates were left in piles on the battlefield. The men of Coburn’s brigade in Ward’s division were especially exhilarated by their victory. After suffering the painful emotions of defeat and capture at the battle of Thompson’s Station more than a year before, their determined advance up the creek bluffs on the afternoon of July 20 seemed to erase all shame. In fact, someone wrote an eight-stanza poem about the brigade’s part in the battle. The author compensated for lack of artistic merit with an innocent fervency, including the casualties and naming each regiment in the brigade as part of its tortured wording.2

  Federal soldiers were not just reporters of the news; they were friends, brothers, and fathers of the recipients of it. They often inserted personal touches in their missives home. Judson L. Austin of the 19th Michigan apologized for the paper he used when penning a letter to his wife. She had sent it to him much earlier, but Austin had kept it in his cartridge box, and as a result it was quite messy. “Don’t look at the dirt but just read it over & imagen how I must look” as he sat down “under a bush on the leaves with men on every side doing almost every sort of business” while writing.3

  When Philo Beecher Buckingham penned a report of the 20th Connecticut’s role in the battle of Peach Tree Creek to be filed with the adjutant general’s office of his home state, he sent a copy of it to his wife so she could better understand what happened. The copy was written hurriedly under artillery fire, so Buckingham urged her to have their son George gain penmanship practice by writing it out again in a plain hand. He also wanted his wife to give a copy to his father, sharing this official document surreptitiously with many family members.4

  There was a limit to reporting news of the battle. Samuel Merrill described it well to his wife up to a certain point but then stopped before illustrating the more horrid sights to be seen. “I can’t bear to write about such things any more than you could bear to think of the battle field if you had ever been on one,” he told his wife. Those bloody sights led more than one Federal survivor of the battle to thank God he had been spared injury or death. They also thanked what Benjamin Harrison called “a good Providence” that they had won the awful contest.5

  For Harrison, there also was an opportunity to brag about his personal role in the victory. Hooker rode along the line and praised Ward’s division for saving the day. He stopped at Harrison’s headquarters to shake his hand and tell him, “Harrison you did gloriously. I will make you a Brig Genl if my influence can do it.” But for the unassuming Hoosier this kind of praise “was satisfaction enough for me.”6

  Several Federal soldiers wrote letters to their hometown newspapers to spread the word of the battle. They generally wrote the same things they expressed in personal letters, emphasizing the suddenness of the Confederate attack and the crushing defeat suffered by Hood’s men. They portrayed Peach Tree Creek as a “bloody and terrific” battle and the assault of Hardee’s and Stewart’s men as “the most reckless, massive, and headlong charge of the war.” In general, Civil War soldiers did not trust the writing of newspaper correspondents to be fair and balanced, which was one reason they often wrote letters for newspaper publication. But Charles Harding Cox referred his sister to the pages of the Cincinnati Commercial for accurate information about the battle of Peach Tree Creek because, once started in describing the particulars, “10 pages would not contain what I would like to say.”7

  Confederate survivors of the battle tended to report the news far less than did their counterparts in blue, and when they did, it often was tinted by strenuous efforts to put the best face on the event. F. Halsey Wigfall on Hood’s staff emphasized in letters home that Hardee and Stewart “drove the enemy back to their works,” even if they failed to accomplish anything more than that. Robert W. Banks of the 37th Mississippi asserted to his father that the Army of Tennessee was in good heart and fully confident in its new general. “The grief for the loss of General Johnston was painfully borne by the troops in silence,” he wrote. But Maj. Thomas McGuire of Scott’s Brigade in Loring’s Division offered a very different view of the battle. “It was a shocking loss of life, without any results. We miss Gen Johnston so much. He would have retreated to Macon, rather than make such a sacrifice.”8

  Southern newspapers also spread the word of the battle less fulsomely than did northern sheets. The first news of Peach Tree Creek appeared in the Augusta Daily Constitutionalist by July 22. The tenor of the report reflected the view from Hood’s headquarters, echoing what Halsey Wigfall had written privately to his family. The Confederates attacked Sherman’s right wing, drove the Federals to their works, and captured several hundred prisoners. The report contained no word about the ultimate failure of the assault or the loss of life.9

  No one could know better the result of the battle than the men in blue and gray who survived it, and the Federals continued to praise themselves for a long time to come that they had finally met the enemy in a large battle. “It was an open, ‘sq
uare stand-up fight of give and take’ without cover or defense on either side,” proclaimed Edwin E. Marvin of the 5th Connecticut long after the war. Hood’s men were “driven back by downright hard fighting.” They often worded their description of this fight as “fair,” and thus a better test of manliness and battlefield prowess than one fought from behind breastworks. “This will ever be a memorable day in the History of this Rebellion,” concluded Alanson B. Cone of the 123rd New York.10

  Sherman evaluated the battle accurately in his official report of the Atlanta campaign, noting that the Confederate attack “was sudden and somewhat unexpected.” While Newton and McCook were protected by works, most of Hooker’s command, which bore the brunt of the engagement, was in the open. The most important fact, as expressed by Sherman’s chief engineer Orlando Poe, was that the Rebel effort “was completely foiled.”11

  After the war Sherman saw Peach Tree Creek from a broader perspective. “We had . . . met successfully a bold sally,” he wrote in his memoirs, “had repelled it handsomely, and were also put on our guard; and the event illustrated the future tactics of our enemy.” On one level these new tactics played into Sherman’s plans. He preferred to fight the Army of Tennessee in the open on favorable terms rather than “being forced to run up against prepared intrenchments.” Yet on another level the Confederates had some advantages in this phase of the campaign. Using the defense line around Atlanta as a base, Hood could “mass a superior force on our weakest points. Therefore, we had to be constantly ready for sallies.” As long as his men were indeed ready for those sallies, Sherman felt he possessed the advantage, for they brought his enemy out in the open.12

  For the men who had repelled Hood’s first sally, however, the battle of Peach Tree Creek demonstrated the futility of the new Confederate mode of operations at Atlanta. “This grand charge was Hood’s inaugural,” commented John W. Geary, “and his army came upon us that day full of high hope, confident that the small force in their front could not withstand them, but their ardor and confidence were soon shaken.” Every Federal commentator saw Peach Tree Creek as proof of Hood’s failure. The Confederate commander “thought to rip the federal army all to pieces by the way he dashed into us,” announced Miletus Tuttle of the 111th Pennsylvania, “but how handsomely he has failed.” The fact that much of the battle took place in the open field accentuated Hood’s failure in the view of most Federals, for it demonstrated that even without the aid of fieldworks the Yankees were a match for the Rebels in any type of fighting. They took away from the engagement of July 20 a conviction that Hood definitely was a fighter compared to Johnston, but it did not daunt Union courage or faith in Sherman’s ability to handle the new man.13

  Union troops evaluated the rank and file of their enemy with respect for the courage they displayed in the attack of July 20. As Geary put it, they “seemed to rush forward with more than customary nerve and heartiness,” and John Marsh Cate reported the enemy “fought like very Devils.” Of course, praising the Confederates for fighting hard simply emphasized the victory achieved by the Federals. John Potter of the 101st Illinois noted that Northern endurance won out over Southern enthusiasm. “Our men in this bloody battle certainly outwinded the Confederates,” he concluded.14

  One Federal soldier, however, believed that Southern enthusiasm had been bolstered by liquor. Albert M. Cook of the 123rd New York surveyed the battlefield soon after the firing ended and found “several whiskey bottles which show what gave them the courage to attack.” Cook asserted that many Rebel prisoners appeared to be drunk, but there is no corroborating evidence for his assertion that whiskey played a role in the Confederate attack on July 20.15

  The Rebels seem to have bolstered their courage with reports that the Yankees were out in the open with no breastworks for protection. Prisoners frankly told their captors this point after the battle. Their officers had assured them that “it would be easy to drive us into the creek and then they could shoot us down at their leisure,” reported Harry Stanley of the 20th Connecticut. When they found some Federal units such as Newton’s division behind works, the realization “astonished” the Confederates.16

  When the Union soldiers evaluated their own commanders, Sherman of course came off very well, even though he had no direct, personal connection with the battle of Peach Tree Creek. Some men, such as Emerson Opdycke in Newton’s division, thought Sherman could have reaped the benefits of the victory on July 20 more fully by taking the offensive against the Confederates, but he was content to know that his commander preferred to move slowly and surely.17

  Even though Hooker had dallied too long in placing Williams and Ward before the battle, thus endangering the corps position, his troops overwhelmingly loved him as their commander. “When there was anything going on he was there at the head of his men,” wrote John H. Roberts to his sister, “while other Generals were back in the rear. . . . Every one that knows old fighting Joe as all of the boys call him like him.” Hooker’s praise was sounded by most men of the Twentieth Corps, but the western regiments of Ward’s division tended to be more enthusiastic than the easterners who had experienced Hooker’s great fiasco at Chancellorsville more than a year before the battle of Peach Tree Creek.18

  Ordinary Federal soldiers evaluated their own performance in the battle in overwhelmingly positive tones. “Everybody seems pleased that everything appears to have gone right yesterday,” wrote John Wesley Marshall of the 97th Ohio, “and nothing but encomiums and congratulations are heard on every side.” The men of Newton’s division saw it as payback for their bloody repulse at Kennesaw Mountain on June 27. Many viewed the battle as proof that “‘Yankee pluck’ was more than a match for ‘Southern dash.’” Despite the surprise attack, the Federals were able to respond quickly and effectively. “It is not over-praise of the National Army to say that its veterans were panic-poof,” concluded Jacob D. Cox after the war, “and its well-tried courage was so intelligent and quick-witted that the smallest detachments could be relied upon to do a wise and bold thing in almost any juncture.”19

  The Unionists took away from Peach Tree Creek a deepened confidence in themselves that strengthened Sherman’s prospects in the campaign. “I think we will have Atlanta in a few days if nothing gits rong,” asserted Henry H. Maley of the 84th Illinois on July 21. The reason for this self-confidence was not difficult to see. James A. Connolly of Baird’s division staff was sure the toughest fighting of the campaign “would take place between the river and the city.” The battle of Peach Tree Creek seemed to prove him right, and it also proved that the Federals could handle the increased danger and still beat Hood’s army. “We are like the big boy, ‘too big to be whipped,’” Connolly wrote.20

  When Confederates evaluated the battle of Peach Tree Creek, the tone of their writings contrasted starkly with that of their enemy. For L. D. Young, who served in the Kentucky Brigade of Bate’s Division, the engagement did not even seem like an engagement. It was “a straggling, haphazard kind of hide and seek affair, magnified into a battle.” For J. Cooper Nisbet of Stevens’s Brigade in Walker’s Division, the attack was “a miserable affair . . . from start to finish. For the want of concert of action, the army lost many valuable lives and accomplished nothing of benefit.” Rebel survivors tended to blame Hood for the failure, although some of them argued that the rank and file attacked with spirit even though depressed by the loss of their beloved Johnston.21

  Convinced that Johnston had already planned to attack Sherman at Peach Tree Creek and that Hood had inherited the scheme, Charles H. Olmstead of the 1st Georgia (Volunteer) in Mercer’s Brigade summed up his view of the battle in his memoirs. “A man of only moderate intellectual power, suddenly called to execute the plans of a military genius, with an army of disappointed discontented men without confidence in their leader, under changed conditions from those upon which those plans were based, was not the one to command success.”22

  But some Confederate soldiers looked sympathetically upon Hood, noting tha
t with time his popularity increased among the rank and file. Some also recognized the context within which Hood tried to exercise command and saw the many difficulties he had to face. Higher-level officers tended to be more positive about Hood. Winfield S. Featherston, whose brigade lost its contest with Ward’s division on July 20, retained faith in Hood’s battle plan even after the war ended. In a long letter to Hood, Featherston praised the concept of the battle, argued that many other officers felt the same way he did, and blamed the failure on Hardee’s Corps. “Had the attack been vigorously made by all the troops on our right,” Featherston wrote in 1866, “and the plan of the battle been strictly carried out, I then believed and still believe the victory would have been a brilliant one, and the Federal forces on the South Side of Peach Tree creek, would have been all either killed, wounded, or captured.”23

  Featherston’s letter must have encouraged Hood tremendously because it reinforced his own view that Hardee was the chief culprit of July 20. In his official report of the Atlanta campaign, written in February 1865, Hood began a long process of officially attaching blame on Hardee for not vigorously pressing the attack and thereby making it impossible for Stewart to achieve success. “I have every reason to believe that our attack would have been successful had my order been executed,” he stated in this official document.24

  When the report became public, Hardee was of course incensed at this slur. In his official response to it, Hardee admitted that he had not wanted to serve under Hood. He felt the young man “unequal in both experience and natural ability to so important a command” as the Army of Tennessee. When his request to be transferred was denied, Hardee remained and “gave to the commanding general an honest and cordial support.” Hood never indicated that he had any ill feeling toward him until the publication of the official report “with its astonishing statements and insinuations.”25

 

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