The Battle of Peach Tree Creek

by Earl J. Hess

  Evaluations of the battle’s outcome gravitated toward assigning blame or credit. Stewart wrote a veiled criticism of Hardee when he asserted in his official report that “had the plan of the battle, as I understood it, been carried out fully, we would have achieved a great success.” On the other hand, many Confederate and Union observers blamed Hood for mismanaging the affair. Henry Stone, one of Thomas’s faithful staff officers, vigorously asserted that his commander saved the day, and Sherman did nothing to help the Federal cause on July 20. In contrast, Jacob Cox argued that Sherman played a key role because he carefully managed the entire movement of his three field armies in a coordinated way to force Hood to call off further attacks late in the battle.4

  Latter-day historians have continued the fascinating task of evaluating the engagement and the men who commanded it, blaming Hardee for inexpertly handling his corps. Hood has come under extended criticism from historians for a variety of mistakes in conducting his first offensive as army commander. While Federal artillery played an important role in stopping Hardee, Confederate guns in contrast were ill-used on July 20. And historians have not ignored the fact that many Rebel soldiers failed to engage their enemy with spirit. “In brief,” concluded Albert Castel, “where the Confederates had the advantage in strength, they did not fight well; and where they fought well, they were too weak. And because they did not fight well enough where they were strong enough, they lost. This in essence is the story of Peachtree Creek.”5

  The battle of Peach Tree Creek was the largest tactical offensive mounted by the Confederates thus far in the Atlanta campaign. At Resaca, Joseph E. Johnston had attempted an attack on Sherman’s left flank with one division and tried again at Cassville with one corps. Neither attempt resulted in major fighting. At Peach Tree Creek, Hood mounted an assault by two corps. He struck also with two corps on July 22, but the battle of Ezra Church witnessed futile attacks by only three divisions. Once again employing two corps on the first day of Jonesboro, the Confederates compiled a rather spotty record of organizing large-scale offensive operations during the four-month-long campaign.

  Hood’s first strike at Peach Tree Creek was a test, and the Army of Tennessee largely failed it. The army had good material in the rank and file and among a handful of its generals, but there is some truth to Hood’s assertion that Johnston’s persistent retreat from early May until July 17 had sapped some of the offensive spirit this army displayed under Braxton Bragg at Perryville, Stones River, and Chickamauga.

  The corporate spirit of the Army of Tennessee had declined from its willingness to engage in fierce offensive tactics in previous battles to a decidedly defensive mind-set under Johnston’s questionable tutelage. Never before did units of the army display such unwillingness to attack as occurred on July 20, 1864. Far more men made only a show of obeying orders to advance, stopping well short of pressing home the assault, than had ever done so before. Peach Tree Creek marked a new low in the Army of Tennessee’s history of soldier morale.

  Soldier reluctance was not the only reason for the poor Confederate performance on July 20; Hood’s accession to army command, although not initially wanted by the young general, disrupted command and control from the top down and dispirited many men in the Army of Tennessee. Hood was utterly unprepared to take command, but circumstances demanded immediate action, and he was compelled to strike within two days after assuming charge of the army. He was woefully ill-informed of Schofield’s and McPherson’s movements, not even knowing that the Federals were on the Georgia Railroad until twenty-four hours after the fact. This was due mostly to Joseph Wheeler’s failure to position troops far enough to the east to find out this important fact and also to his unexplained negligence in communicating with army headquarters. Hood also mismanaged the army’s shifting to the right on the morning of July 20. This was due in part to Cheatham’s unaccountable failure to fully inform him of his corps’ needs and situation. That shifting had the effect of placing all Confederate units on unknown ground and under an imperative for Hardee and Stewart to attack immediately. But the shift also gave Hardee’s Corps a wonderful advantage in terms of bringing a numerical superiority of four to one over its opponent, Newton’s lone division. Hardee could not capitalize on that advantage; it is doubtful he even knew he enjoyed such an advantage. The shift did not afford Stewart much advantage if any.

  One cannot blame Hood fully for the troubles his army encountered during the first days of his tenure in command. He tried very hard to catch up with the flow of events but had every disadvantage to labor under in trying to do so. While Hood did not seem to know how to gather useful information, Sherman relied on a multiplicity of sources for his news. He had scouts roaming the area behind Confederate lines, he talked to civilians, and he read Southern newspapers and listened to his own cavalry reports. As a result, Federal headquarters personnel were remarkably up to date about developments in the enemy camp. There is no evidence that Hood drew on any source other than his cavalry for information as to Federal movements. He had infantry skirmishers fronting Thomas’s approach to Peach Tree Creek, but there simply is no evidence that these skirmishers fed detailed and accurate information to army headquarters.

  The Confederates also failed to push forward strong skirmish lines on July 20 just before and during their attacks. Because they relied heavily on battle lines, their advance resembled a reconnaissance in force as much as a real attack by infantry formations. All Rebel corps, division, and brigade commanders seem to have possessed little information about exactly what they could expect to find once they closed in on the enemy.

  While Hood can be roundly criticized for undermining the administration’s confidence in Johnston, he did so not out of a Machiavellian plan to replace the older man with himself; that appointment was a genuine surprise to Hood. But Hood was probably the worst choice Davis and Bragg could have made. Other than an aggressive, confident spirit, Hood held no other qualifications for such an important position.

  Moreover, Hardee seems to have despised the young man and certainly did not handle his corps well on July 20, throwing away a surprising advantage over Newton’s division in terms of numerical superiority. Most of Hardee’s subordinates reflected their general’s lack of enthusiasm for the attack, moving their units forward enough to give a show of attacking but failing to press home their advance. As a result, the best corps in the Army of Tennessee, which had by far the best opportunity of exploiting a one-and-a-half-mile gap in Sherman’s line, flanking and overwhelming the only Federal division that stood in its way, accomplished nothing on July 20.

  Stewart tried very hard to push his Army of Mississippi forward with spirit and determination, and much of that rubbed off on his division and brigade commanders. But Stewart’s men faced considerable odds, outnumbered on their sector of the battlefield. Even though they had an advantage in Hooker’s faulty placement of Twentieth Corps troops, the Federals were able to compensate for this disadvantage with impressive fighting and held their line securely.

  It has also to be pointed out that even in Stewart’s Army of Mississippi, many Confederates failed to press home their attack with determination. At least one-third of Featherston’s Brigade elected to stay in the captured Union skirmish line along Collier Road rather than join their comrades in pushing down the ridge slope into the face of Ward’s Twentieth Corps division.

  The battle of Peach Tree Creek took place, out of necessity, during an interesting interim phase of the Army of Tennessee’s history, when it was undergoing intense and emotional transitions in its leadership and the men were still mourning the loss of their most-beloved commander. Two of its three corps commanders had never led a corps in battle, and the third was miffed at having to serve under an officer he did not respect. Considering this context, it is not so surprising that the engagement ended in Confederate failure.

  Could the outcome on July 20 have been different, and if so, what would have had to change to make it so? We can start at the top with
the timing of Johnston’s removal. Although it was pretty clear early on that Johnston was innately averse to offensive action, Davis waited too long before relieving him. That delay stemmed from his desire to give the commander every chance to prove his fears were misplaced, but Johnston was not the sort of man to change his stripes. He calmly retreated throughout the campaign, thinking there was nothing wrong with giving up territory while saving his troops. As a result, Davis relieved him at a crucial point in the campaign, exactly when Sherman crossed the Chattahoochee River and began bearing down on the city of Atlanta.

  To make the consequences of this timing even worse, Davis selected one of the least prepared and qualified men to replace Johnston. Hood badly needed several days, even weeks, to learn how to become an effective army leader. He was hampered in this effort not only by his lack of experience at high-level command but by his dismal performance as a corps commander during the previous two months and by his limited intellectual and scholarly abilities. To a significant degree, commanding a field army demanded a certain degree of abstract thinking, a great deal of anticipation of wants and needs, and a habit of thorough study of a myriad of topics associated with logistics, geography, politics, and morale. Hood was at a disadvantage in all these areas. Selecting Hood merely because he talked and wrote confidently was one of the worst personnel decisions both Davis and Bragg ever made.

  The timing of Johnston’s removal and Hood’s necessary transition phase into his new responsibilities altered everything about the battle of Peach Tree Creek. They prevented the Confederates from acting earlier and contributed to a near breakdown in the flow of detailed information coming into army headquarters. As a result, Hood was unaware of Schofield and McPherson’s progress toward Atlanta, and he did not know that a potentially dangerous gap existed in the Union position to the northeast of Atlanta. One wonders if Johnston would have labored under these handicaps; his innate caution might have led him to hesitate before committing himself to battle until he knew exactly where Schofield and McPherson were located.

  Hood also miscalculated the exact time when Thomas would be in the process of crossing Peach Tree Creek. Moreover, he spent too much effort trying to time his attack to hit Thomas when he thought the Federals would be most vulnerable. As Albert Castel has pointed out, Hood did not want to attack in the middle of Thomas’s crossing but after most of the Federals were on the south side of the stream and before they could secure and fortify strong defensive positions. That was far too fine a point to focus on given the difficulty of ascertaining such a moment because Federal skirmish lines prevented the Confederates from close observation of Thomas’s position.6

  Hood also concocted an attack plan that was too elaborate and difficult to execute. Even an army that worked better than the Army of Tennessee would have found it very difficult to advance en echelon by divisions, wheeling left at the point of contact and trying to drive the enemy toward a common point as if they were a herd of sheep. A simpler and better plan would have been for the divisions to advance simultaneously straight ahead. While the Confederate divisions did advance en echelon, they were unable to wheel and simply acted as the circumstances seemed to demand at the moment. There was little else they could do given the complexity of Hood’s orders.

  Hood thought 1 P.M. would be the best time to launch the attack, but the sudden news that McPherson was nearing Atlanta forced him to postpone that start time and shift the Army of Tennessee far to the right. Anyone who tends to blame Confederate failure on this delay of about two to three hours should keep in mind a salient fact. The Army of the Cumberland had already crossed Peach Tree Creek by about dawn of July 20. Newton’s division, Geary’s division, and most of the Fourteenth Corps were already well in place on good defensive ground with some degree of fieldworks to protect them by late morning. Only Ward’s division and Williams’s division of the Twentieth Corps were not in line. If the Confederates had attacked at 1 P.M. there is no reason to believe they would have had any more success than later in the afternoon.

  If the Confederates had attacked at dawn of July 20, especially with Cheatham’s Corps as well as Hardee’s and Stewart’s commands, then Thomas could have been in serious trouble. He would have been much more vulnerable not only because several divisions had not yet secured positions south of the creek by dawn but also because Schofield and McPherson were taking longer than one could reasonably expect to close up on Atlanta from the east. That closing up was the key reason why Hood could not use Cheatham in striking at Thomas.

  And yet, one wonders why Cheatham did not do more to help the cause on July 20, even within his primary role of protecting the eastern approach to Atlanta. His left flank was in a perfect position to explore forward and discover the one-and-a-half-mile gap in the Union line that separated Newton’s division from Wood’s division of the Fourth Corps. If anyone could have found and exploited that gap, it had to be Cheatham or his division commander on the spot, Henry D. Clayton. Yet nothing was done along these lines by anyone. No scouts were sent out, no skirmish lines pushed forward, and little was done even to support Bate’s Division attack other than advancing Gibson’s Brigade and keeping it idle in the woods all afternoon.

  Could Joseph E. Johnston have conducted the attack better? We do not even know if Johnston was serious about conducting it at all, though there is a strong possibility that he did think about attacking Thomas when the Federals crossed Peach Tree Creek. Actually, such a scenario is highly reminiscent of Johnston’s battle of Seven Pines more than two years before, when the Confederates assaulted the Army of the Potomac as it was engaged in a long drawn out crossing of the Chickahominy River during the Peninsula campaign. That attack was poorly coordinated, fell far short of decisive results, and resulted in Johnston’s replacement as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia because of a serious wound suffered from the burst of a Federal artillery round.7

  But simply thinking of attacking at Peach Tree Creek was not the same thing as actually doing it, and we will never know how strongly Johnston was committed to taking the offensive now that the enemy was knocking at the gates of Atlanta. But, if he had been able to drum up the moral stamina to order the attack at Peach Tree Creek, most likely the Army of Tennessee would have performed better than it actually did under Hood. Many of the problems associated with conducting the battle of July 20 stemmed from the relief of Johnston; if that relief had not taken place, presumably those problems would not have hampered the army’s performance.

  The Federals were not without fault on July 20. There is no explanation for Hooker’s dereliction of duty in failing to put two of his three divisions properly in place to resist an enemy advance. While Geary’s division was formed in a column of brigades near Collier Road, Ward’s division and Williams’s division were allowed to rest for hours to the rear, leaving two potentially dangerous gaps in the Twentieth Corps line. Hooker assumed there would be no trouble that day, and he communicated this belief to many of his subordinates. No such feeling existed in Newton’s division, Geary’s division, or the Fourteenth Corps, all of which were in place and ready for action when the first Rebel infantry appeared on the open ground to the south. The prompt and spirited response by brigade leaders and the rank and file saved the day for the Twentieth Corps. Hooker did little to compensate for his mistake; he did not even admit he had made one. The men of Ward’s division tended to exaggerate the intensity of their battle with Featherston’s Brigade, but it has to be repeated that they heavily outnumbered their opponent, bringing three Union brigades against only about two-thirds of one Confederate brigade.

  Hood was wise to take the tactical offensive at this stage of the campaign. Johnston should have done so much more often before the course of events brought the opposing armies to the Chattahoochee River. But any attempt to stall or turn back Sherman at any stage of the campaign had to be well planned and executed by spirited troops and commanders. The Rebels had many things working against them on July 20, not the least of w
hich was an enemy for the most part well positioned and ready to respond if challenged.

  It was impossible for Hood to know this, but striking McPherson offered a better chance of success than attacking Thomas. McPherson mishandled his part of Sherman’s program. He took far too long to move to Decatur and then steer a course toward Atlanta, allowing Wheeler’s badly outnumbered cavalry to delay him considerably. Even upon assuming a position on good ground within artillery range of the city by July 21, McPherson failed to properly protect his left flank. By the time Hood realized this important opportunity, the battle of Peach Tree Creek had been fought, followed by a grueling small battle for possession of Bald Hill east of Atlanta on July 21. Time was of the essence; Hood moved Hardee’s fatigued troops in a long flanking march that took the entire evening and night of July 21 to find and strike McPherson’s exposed flank by noon of July 22. Hardee’s Corps attacked in piecemeal fashion, allowing the harried troops of the Seventeenth Corps enough breathing room to repel one assault after the other and save Sherman’s flank.

  In the best of all possible worlds, from the Confederate viewpoint, if Hood could have canceled the strike against Thomas on July 20 and awaited McPherson’s approach, he could have struck the Union flank with fresher troops, with more time to gather information and to plan, and with more chances of accomplishing something. He needed but one clear-cut victory to take a giant stride toward success in the campaign, and this scenario could have given it to him. Instead, his army wasted much of its strength, energy, and morale on a strike that resulted in nothing worth the expenditure of life on July 20.