by Earl J. Hess
Hood was busy planning a major strike against McPherson on July 21 to take place the next day. But for the men of Henry D. Clayton’s Division, positioned on the far left of Cheatham’s Corps facing north at the eastern end of the Peach Tree Creek Line, there was a momentary alert. An order to attack the Federals circulated through the chain of command at 10 A.M. on July 21. The troops got ready and waited until noon when the order was canceled. This “relieved our feelings not a little,” commented Elbert D. Willett of the 40th Alabama. Who ordered this attack and why has never been explained, but Willett indicated it applied to the entire corps. Cheatham’s men endured a good deal of skirmishing all day of July 21.50
In Loring’s Division, Winfield S. Featherston tried to crack down on straggling in his brigade. Perhaps he was prompted by a realization that one-third of his command had failed to advance farther than the captured Union skirmish position the day before. On July 21, Featherston ordered all regimental commanders to retrieve their stragglers. “They will find out and report all cases of cowardice and stragling [sic] to the rear during the fight yesterday—also all cases of meritorious conduct.”51
Sherman sent his first full report of the battle of Peach Tree Creek to Washington at 8:30 on the evening of July 21. It was an accurate accounting of the battle. “On the whole the result is most favorable to us,” he told Halleck. At midmorning of July 21 Grant telegraphed the latest news gathered from the Richmond Whig edition of July 20, indicating that Hood had replaced Johnston and everyone expected severe fighting to result. Sherman’s intelligence gathering as well as Hood’s actions had already anticipated Grant’s news.52
By the end of day on July 21, McPherson, Schofield, and Howard had advanced far enough to lay Atlanta under long-range artillery bombardment. Sherman wanted them to begin firing on the city the next day in earnest. Thomas was not close enough yet to do so, but Sherman wanted him to clear away remaining Confederate strength from the railroad south of the Chattahoochee River. “I do not believe the enemy will repeat his assaults,” Sherman told Thomas, “as he had in that of yesterday his best troops and failed signally. Therefore I don’t fear for your right flank. Still, it is well to be prudent.”53
Hood’s plan for the attack on McPherson involved giving up the entire Peach Tree Creek Line and the Outer Line on the night of July 21. He wanted to shorten his defensive perimeter by retiring to the City Line much closer to Atlanta. Cheatham, Hardee, and Stewart pulled their troops out of the trenches at 9 P.M. and moved back without detection by the Federals.54
“Somewhat to my surprise,” Sherman admitted, reports filtered in during the early morning hours of July 22 that the works barring further progress toward the city were empty. “I confess I thought the enemy had resolved to give us Atlanta without further contest.” He assumed too much and even issued orders for Schofield to take possession of the empty city while Thomas and McPherson pursued Hood south. Capt. Henry Stone, Thomas’s assistant adjutant general, was no friend of Sherman’s, but his postwar account of what happened next can be taken seriously. Stone reported that Lieut. Col. Charles Ewing of Sherman’s staff (who also was Sherman’s foster brother) rode breathlessly to Thomas’s headquarters early on the morning of July 22 to announce that Atlanta was taken. He then rode away before anyone could question him about it. “The excitement was all his own, but the order was General Sherman’s.” In his memoirs, Sherman admitted that “for some moments I supposed the enemy intended to evacuate, and in person was on horseback at the head of Schofield’s troops” until it became obvious upon moving forward that the City Line was full of Confederates. By then it was too late to stop Ewing and other staff members from spreading the erroneous report that the city lay at his feet.55
Howard received reports of the enemy evacuation by 3 A.M. of July 22, and Wood occupied the empty Confederate skirmish line two hours later. At 5:30 A.M., Howard received Sherman’s order to pursue the enemy but to bypass Atlanta. Stanley and Wood moved out immediately, and many of their men, having heard the news, expected an easy march into the city. They scooped up nearly 100 Rebel stragglers before coming up against the City Line by late morning. All they could do was to develop another line fronting it. Amid heavy shelling and brisk skirmishing, the men of Stanley’s and Wood’s divisions dug in.56
In Newton’s division, the men were so buoyant over their victory on July 20 that they readily believed rumors that Hood evacuated Atlanta. “You would laugh to heare the boys talk of what they are going to do when they git into town,” wrote George W. Parsons of the 57th Indiana; “we hope that the Jonneys will leave us some tobaco if nothing else.” The division moved out at 9 A.M. as many men passed by “a nice, large, bay horse, lying dead in the road,” reportedly the mount which carried Clement Stevens when he was shot on July 20. Newton’s progress south was impeded by Hooker, whose men also used the Buck Head and Atlanta Road leading toward Atlanta. Thomas’s headquarters staff instructed Newton to wait until the Twentieth Corps had passed before resuming his march. Soon the unwelcome news that Atlanta was still in Confederate hands became known. Newton’s men formed a new line opposite the Rebel works by midafternoon and began to dig in, as Howard issued orders for Fourth Corps artillery to open fire on Atlanta.57
The move forward finally enabled Howard to unite the Fourth Corps. As Newton’s division moved south along the Buck Head and Atlanta Road, his left flank secured contact with the right flank of Wood’s division. Howard also firmly connected the left flank of Stanley’s division with Schofield’s right flank. This was in a way a historic moment. Ever since the start of the Union offensive south of the Chattahoochee River on July 17, various gaps had been necessary in the moving Union position. None of them had been so long-lasting or potentially dangerous as the gap within Howard’s corps line. Only because Hood did not know of that gap did it prove to be harmless. Now Sherman had a continuous, fully connected line of battle from one end of his massive army group to the other.58
Schofield also moved forward to follow up Cheatham’s evacuation of the Outer Line in his front. He discovered the Rebel pull out by 3 A.M., and the Twenty-Third Corps moved forward three hours later. The news that Atlanta was an open city had also circulated through the ranks, for Sherman was with Schofield that morning. In fact, the men of Cox’s division scrambled to be the first to enter. But they came up abruptly upon seeing the City Line. Most units in Schofield’s command found good ground where the men were able to see Atlanta as artillery duels developed along the corps sector and the inevitable earthworks began to appear on the top of ridges and hills.59
McPherson spread Sherman’s opinion that Hood had evacuated Atlanta to his corps commanders at 6 A.M. There was far less for the Army of the Tennessee to do that morning; it already had taken a portion of the Outer Line the day before and now merely had to adjust its position according to the new circumstances, which unfortunately for the Federals did not include a hot pursuit of the fleeing enemy toward Macon.60
Hooker also spread the word that the Confederates may have left Atlanta before his Twentieth Corps troops followed up the evacuation of the Peach Tree Creek Line, but he also warned them to be ready for another fight if the assumption proved wrong. The Twentieth Corps may need to defend itself once again or it may be the first Federals to enter Atlanta—that was the prospect he offered the troops early on the morning of July 22. As the men moved out, Ward’s division managed to get onto the Buck Head and Atlanta Road before Newton’s division, causing the Fourth Corps troops to wait some time before they could march south. Most of Ward’s men assumed Atlanta would be open to them. “The bands were heard way off to our left playing,” reported Maj. Levin T. Miller of the 33rd Indiana. “Officers and men were jubilant and in good spirits.”61
As the Twentieth Corps moved south it crossed the Peach Tree Creek Line. The Federals were surprised at how well constructed the entrenchment appeared to be. Some men of Geary’s division found a Confederate mail bag carelessly left behind, which includ
ed some letters detailing the heavy losses suffered two days before. A number of Confederate stragglers (or men who deliberately dallied to be taken prisoner) were scooped up by the advancing Federals. Some of these Rebels joked that “they were coming into the union” as they were taken to the rear. By early afternoon, after moving from two to three miles, Twentieth Corps troops came upon the City Line and realized it was full of Confederate soldiers. All they could do now was move off to right and left, select good ground, and begin the process of constructing works of their own under heavy artillery fire and the rattle of skirmishing.62
Along the way to this point many of Hooker’s troops encountered scattered Confederate graves. Members of the 27th Indiana had come to know a few Georgia soldiers because they held informal truces while standing picket along the Chattahoochee River before Sherman crossed the stream on July 17. In fact, the Hoosiers had come to know some of their Georgia enemy by name. Now those Indianans found the graves of several of these same Confederates behind the Peach Tree Creek Line, and the realization struck them with a deep awareness of the tragedy of this war.63
Another burial site struck other Federals with an unexpected view of their enemy. Capt. Edward H. Newcomb served as aide-de-camp to Alpheus Williams when wounded on the picket line sometime on July 21 and was taken prisoner. He died in Confederate hands, and the Federals were surprised to find that Newcomb had been buried with care, and a headboard marked the site. Albert M. Cook of the 123rd New York considered it “very strange that the enemy should take so much pains to bury one of our officers and mark his grave.” But the Federals had taken equal pains to inter Col. Jabez L. Drake of the 33rd Mississippi. Officers, especially those who were easily identified, tended to receive far more attention at burial time than enlisted men in both armies.64
With Ward’s movement south, his medical staff received orders to move the field hospitals of the division south as well. George Martin Trowbridge was told to be ready for another battle on July 22. He took over a house along the Buck Head and Atlanta Road near the Peach Tree Creek Line, often referred to as the White House, a prominent landmark at a key location. “Am ready for another siege at operating table soon as fortunes of war furnish material,” he told his family. He also shifted movable wounded from the July 20 battle by ambulance to Marietta. Some of the wounded Confederate prisoners were well enough by July 22 to feel their oats, bragging to their captors that Hood told them “he was not going to fight with picks & shovels but with guns” and that Confederate success was inevitable. But there was no resumption of fighting north of Atlanta. Stewart’s troops remained on the defensive in the City Line. By July 24, Sherman wanted to use the White House on the Buck Head Road as his headquarters, so Trowbridge had to evacuate the place and rest his wounded under tents in the woods half a mile away.65
On Palmer’s Fourteenth Corps front, Union skirmishers entered the abandoned Confederate works by 2 A.M. of July 22 and reported them to be in a very strong condition. Still the corps waited until 8 A.M. to allow the men to cook and eat breakfast before following up the Rebel withdrawal. Word circulated along the moving mass that Atlanta had been abandoned, and the mood of everyone soared to new heights of expectation. As the move continued, many Federals could see the church spires of the city “and all were joyous and happy at the thought that we would soon be there,” admitted James M. Randall of the 21st Wisconsin. Before long they ran “smack against the same old foe, and him strongly fortified.” It was a severe disappointment, “but a soldier becomes accustomed to this,” mused Randall.66
Palmer’s men now established a new line and started their earthworks, skirmishing heavily with the Confederates and enduring incoming rounds of artillery fire. Rather than an easy walk through Atlanta, they tended wounded and had more dead to bury on the evening of July 22. Now that the enemy had given up all the ground north of the City Line, Davis was able to move his division so as to secure the area along the south bank of the Chattahoochee River and the burned railroad bridge that took the Western and Atlantic Railroad across the stream. He rested his right flank at Proctor’s Creek northwest of Atlanta. Federals who wandered about the abandoned Peach Tree Creek Line found places where Palmer’s artillery had devastated parts of the works with concentrated fire. “To look at it and see the marks of shot and shell I don’t see how any person could live in there,” thought William Bluffton Miller of the 75th Indiana, “but the killed and wounded have all been removed.” Fourteenth Corps artillery now began to fire shells into Atlanta itself.67
The Federals were now in complete control of the battle area and could plainly see the effect of their artillery fire on the trees fronting the Peach Tree Creek Line. “[I] counted 114 shotes in one tree 3 feate over,” reported William Cline of the 73rd Ohio. In other places Cline noted that “the timber is literley moad off By grape and Shell ande the timber is cut to peaces Buy Hour mineyes.” Similar scenes were reported by other observant Federals as well.68
By 11 A.M. it had become abundantly clear to Sherman that he was mistaken in believing Hood would evacuate Atlanta. Instead, “we again found him occupying in force a line of finished redoubts which had been prepared for more than a year, covering all the roads leading into Atlanta.” The Confederates already were busy improving the basic line around the city, which had been constructed by Capt. Lemuel P. Grant beginning in the summer of 1863. Soon the City Line would be one of the most impressive semipermanent fortifications of the Civil War, laced with layers of obstructions to trip up an attacker and studded with redoubts heavily armed with artillery. Sherman’s chief engineer, Orlando M. Poe, was impressed by the City Line and described it in detail in his report of the campaign. Poe also was fairly impressed by the Peach Tree Creek Line, although it was evident to him that it was not meant to serve as the main defense position of the city.69
Swallowing his disappointment, Sherman instructed Thomas “to press down close from the north and use artillery freely, converging in the town,” and Thomas did as best he could on July 22. By the time the Army of the Cumberland came to rest at the end of the day, Thomas reported that no real fighting had taken place. He nabbed a few dozen prisoners and found good terrain for his new position. Earthworks were well begun and several points on this line offered Federal artillery the opportunity to bombard Atlanta. Thomas also moved a cavalry division under Edward McCook to screen his right by occupying a position along Proctor’s Creek. Capt. John C. Van Duzer, who was in charge of Sherman’s telegraph operations, began to stretch a wire along the railroad over the Chattahoochee River to a point within three-quarters of a mile of the City Line. From here Van Duzer stretched wires across the countryside right and left behind the new Union position to link Sherman with the headquarters of his chief subordinates. Here the Army of the Cumberland would stay for more than a month.70
Midday, July 22
Sherman’s men had come a long way since the onset of the Atlanta campaign. “We have finally swept over all natural obstacles between Chattanooga and Atlanta,” mused James A. Connolly of Baird’s division staff to his wife. “The rivers are all crossed and the mountains all scaled, and nothing now remains between us and the doomed city but the ridges of red clay thrown up by the rebel army. We have crossed hundreds of such ridges between the Cumberland and the Chattahoochee, and the fair presumption is that we can cross those in our front now.”71
Conclusion
Union and Confederate observers tended to judge the battle of Peach Tree Creek in clear and decided ways, reflecting a sense that the event had resulted in clear and decided victory or defeat on the tactical and strategic level. Unlike many major battles of the Civil War, the fight that took place on July 20 north of Atlanta tended to elicit unqualified praise from one side and frustrated disgust from the other.
“The engagement at Peach-tree was the turning-point for the overthrow and destruction of the rebel army of Georgia,” asserted Asbury Kerwood of the 57th Indiana. His meaning was echoed by the judgment of Confederate
artilleryman Philip Daingerfield Stephenson. “It was revealed in this very first move, that Hood was not able to handle great bodies of men for battle.” Arthur M. Manigault, whose brigade missed the fight of July 20, also thought any possibility of victory that day had been wasted by “the unaccountable remissness or deficiency of our commanding officers [who] failed to take advantage” of opportunities.1
One such opportunity lay in the fact that the Federals were surprised by the assault and, on the Twentieth Corps sector, unprepared for it. A ready response and spirited fighting averted disaster on Hooker’s line, but many Confederates admitted that their comrades did not engage the enemy with much enthusiasm on July 20. “The Peachtree fight was a tame and spiritless affair,” complained Joseph B. Cumming, an officer on Walker’s Division staff. “The fact is the army was dispirited by the removal of General Johnston and the assignment of General Hood. Nothing was accomplished by it.” Many Federal veterans of the battle saw this too. “They don’t fight with the courage and desperation that they formerly did,” noticed Harry Stanley of the 20th Connecticut. “They seem to have lost all spirit and determination, though they still make some desperate attempts to retrieve their lost fortunes.” In fact, according to Hooker, Loring confided to him after the war that if the Rebels had known the Twentieth Corps opposed them on July 20, “the attack would not have been made” in the first place.2
In contrast to the Confederate rank and file, the Federal armies opposing Hood were filled with men accustomed to winning on the battlefield. Edmund Randolph Brown of the 27th Indiana believed his comrades had become by this stage of the war immune to sudden attacks. “These Union soldiers would not give ground when properly commanded, and could not be forced to do so, unless they were fairly whipped . . . all that was needed was to give them a reasonable chance, and they would fight at one time, or facing in one direction, as well as another.” Day Elmore of the 36th Illinois in Newton’s division expressed this kind of confidence when he told his parents that Peach Tree Creek had been “a splendid open Field fight and we shipped them good.”3