The Battle of Peach Tree Creek

by Earl J. Hess

  If Hood hoped to duplicate Robert E. Lee’s mode of operations in Georgia, there were many reasons why it would be a faint hope. The Federals dominated the strategic context of the war in the West far more than they controlled the strategic context in Virginia. They had not only more men but, importantly, a higher level of troop morale, a vibrant logistical system to sustain their deep penetration of Georgia, and a steady and confident leader in William T. Sherman. The Confederates could not hope to compete on a level of equality with their enemy in these areas. The team of Grant and Sherman posed a combination too tough for Lee to handle in Virginia and too tough for the Army of Tennessee (no matter who commanded it) in Georgia. The days of spectacular battle and campaign victories like those Lee achieved in the Seven Days campaign or at Chancellorsville were a thing of the past.

  This is not to assert that there was no hope of Confederate success in 1864, but the chances of success were far more remote than they had been one or two years before. Those chances were lessened even more by the fact that the battle of Peach Tree Creek was conducted by a general who had no experience at commanding an army, leading men who were depressed at the loss of his predecessor, and having to rely on subordinates who either were not up to their newly acquired command responsibilities or irritated that he had been elevated above them. No matter how hard he tried, the elements of success slipped from Hood’s desperate grasp at Peach Tree Creek.

  The battle of July 20 pitted old enemies. Ever since the second day at Shiloh, when the Confederate Army of the Mississippi engaged the Union Army of the Ohio, these two competing field forces had met on many battlefields of the Civil War. They became known as the Army of Tennessee and the Army of the Cumberland by the midpoint of the conflict. From Stones River through Chickamauga, these two armies carried the main burden of their respective government’s military efforts in the middle theater of war, along the rail lines linking Nashville with Chattanooga. Even after the shifting of massive reinforcements from Virginia and Mississippi to enable Grant to defeat Bragg at Chattanooga in late November 1863, the Army of the Cumberland constituted the bulk of the Union army group that Sherman led southward toward Atlanta in May 1864.

  At Perryville on October 8, 1862, Stones River on December 31, 1862, and again at Peach Tree Creek on July 20, 1864, the Army of the Mississippi/Army of Tennessee had taken the Army of the Ohio/Army of the Cumberland by surprise. The damage inflicted was far worse on the first two occasions than on the third, but the Federals survived all three encounters. Peach Tree Creek would be the last meeting of these two opposing field forces, although elements of both would clash again at Jonesboro, Franklin, Nashville, and Bentonville.8

  Arguments over who was responsible for success and failure on July 20, 1864, began immediately after the battle. But several decades elapsed before the veterans of Peach Tree Creek were willing to write about their experiences, visit the battlefield, or reconcile their wartime feelings toward the enemy. By the 1880s and 1890s, national reunion on an emotional level became a major feature of American life, allowing an interesting mix of interactions between North and South that helped in fundamental ways to shape American culture well into the twenty-first century.

  Stephen Pierson was among the first Yankees to visit the battlefield of Peach Tree Creek and leave behind a description of his experience. He did so with some Southern men who had served in the Confederate army, among whom was Capt. Evan Howell of the Atlanta Constitution. Howell’s battery had been located in a good position to pound the Twentieth Corps, and that position happened to be his grandfather’s plantation, “where I was born and raised,” as Pierson recalled the conversation, “and you may believe I made my guns talk for all they were worth that day.” Pierson was so impressed by this he took off his hat and shook Howell’s hand.9

  A group of Union veterans from the 27th Indiana visited Peach Tree Creek in September 1895 and sought the exact spot their regiment held during the heat of the battle. The ground was still undisturbed; the fieldworks they constructed on the night of July 20 remained intact. But the burial places of their comrades had been dug up, leaving in place some of the sandstone slabs hastily erected to mark their location. The bodies had long before been removed to a national cemetery.10

  A pamphlet issued in 1895 to promote the Atlanta area battlefields as a tourist attraction contained a map indicating that a number of streets and houses had already expanded into the western part of the July 22 battlefield and the eastern part of the Ezra Church battlefield by that time. But urban sprawl was still at least one mile away from the southern portion of the Peach Tree Creek battlefield. A couple of rail lines had been constructed across the southern extent of the ground, but the rest of these hallowed acres were still relatively undisturbed.11

  As the nineteenth century slowly merged into the twentieth, the pace of remembrance and reconciliation quickened. Both Northerners and Southerners used the pages of the Confederate Veteran to air memories or attempt to contact former enemies. Federal Capt. George H. Blakeslee wanted to return a Confederate belt buckle he took from a captain in Featherston’s Brigade on July 20 and to locate a young Rebel soldier he had helped off the field because the boy had lost both feet in the battle. A number of Confederate veterans wrote to the magazine to state the loss of brothers and sons at Peach Tree Creek as a way of coming to terms with their grief. J. L. Lemonds of the 5th Tennessee received the fourth wound of his war career on July 20, 1864, yet lived another thirty-eight years. Several men wanted to know where their relatives who were killed at Peach Tree Creek had been buried and sought help in the pages of the Veteran, while others used the magazine to urge the federal government to give up the Confederate flags captured at the battle and stored for decades in an attic of the War Department at Washington.12

  Expressing and promoting national reconciliation, 5,000 Civil War veterans gathered in a blue and gray reunion at Atlanta in 1900. Held on July 20, the event was also attended by Oliver O. Howard, Thomas J. Wood, Alexander P. Stewart, and Samuel G. French. The Aragon Hotel served as headquarters, but the opening ceremony took place at the Grand Hotel on the night of July 19, where Howard gave a rousing address. The keynote of his talk, and of the reunion, was “American Brotherhood,” or “No North, No South,” as Wood put it. Carriages took the visitors to the Peach Tree Creek battlefield on the morning of July 20, and a “big Georgia barbecue” climaxed the reunion that afternoon in the coliseum building at Piedmont Park, halfway between Atlanta and the battlefield.13

  The reunion coincided with major efforts by Atlanta officials to obtain federal government money for the surveying and marking of the ground at Peach Tree Creek. They estimated that $2,000 was needed for this purpose. The earthworks left behind by the Federals and Confederates were intact and, judging by photographs taken at the time, in very good shape. Jefferson E. Brant of the 85th Indiana actually stood once again in the trench his regiment constructed near Collier Road during the night of July 20, thirty-six years before. Pine trees a foot in diameter had grown over parts of the ground, and Brant had difficulty recalling the lay of the land. A group of Confederate veterans kindly pointed it out to him.14

  The federal government did not comply with the city’s request for funds, and the battlefield continued to be subject to metropolitan expansion. The city of Atlanta purchased Howell’s Mill dam in 1910 because sewage emptied into Peach Tree Creek and backed up at the place. The city dismantled the dam, destroying one of the cultural features of the battlefield. The U.S. Senate reconsidered the $2,000 needed to mark the field in 1910, but the appropriation was not approved. Meanwhile, the city already was beginning to encroach on the ground. Piedmont Hospital was constructed on the southern portion of the field in 1905. The Howell family donated 200 acres of land in the heart of the battlefield to the city in 1929. This became the Atlanta Memorial Park, originally planned as a “memorial forest.” However, only two years later, in 1931, the Bobby Jones Golf Course, one of the city’s five major golf venues, took
up most of the park, followed by the addition of a large tennis center and many walking trails, but no memorial to the battlefield.15 The small number of Atlanta residents who were interested in Civil War preservation sounded a note of alarm as the city slowly engulfed the Peach Tree Creek battlefield. The War Department proposed the creation of a triad park to link the battles of Peach Tree Creek, July 22, and Ezra Church with a touring road and three monuments located at each site. The estimated cost amounted to $315,000 and included the acquisition of forty-eight acres of ground, but nothing came of the proposal.16

  Then, after two years of negotiation, Ivan Allen Sr. and other concerned citizens finally convinced the family of Andrew J. Collier to donate twenty acres of land “along Collier road and both sides of Tanyard Creek” to Fulton County for a battlefield park by 1938. This would have preserved a small but important portion of the ground where Loring’s Division met the right wing of Ward’s division and the left wing of Geary’s division. Tanyard Creek was the modern name of what was more often called Shoal Creek, Early Creek, or Tanyard Branch in 1864. The proposed park would have connected with the Atlanta Memorial Park, which was owned by the city. Winship Nunnally also was willing to give up to twenty acres of his land as an important connecting strip so the combination of city and county park land would total some 400 acres sweeping across the heart of the fighting ground.17

  “This is one of the most important battlefields of the Civil War,” Allen asserted with heartfelt enthusiasm. “The blood of brave men on both sides of every State in the Union was shed here.” But the elaborate plans slowly fell apart. County officials did send convict labor to clear some brush from the Collier land, but efforts to secure $225,000 from the Works Progress Administration of the federal government fell through. The WPA assistance had been slated to construct two and three-quarters of a mile of paved roads and walkways at Collier Mill. As months drained by without any movement toward securing WPA help, the Collier heirs became frustrated, as did Allen and his compatriots in the Atlanta preservation community. Allen tried to convince everyone that the federal government would likely take over responsibility for the battlefield if the county could shepherd it through the early years of maintenance, but his dream broke apart within a few months of those heady days in late 1938.18

  The Colliers had actually deeded their property to the county, but a significant memorial to the battle of Peach Tree Creek never materialized. Only a few small memorials exist today. Tanyard Creek Park, which is actually in the center of the battlefield, is a tiny enclave within the busy northern suburbs of Atlanta, hardly noticeable to those who drive by. Inside the park, there are some millstones from the old Collier Mill (which was a landmark during the engagement) and a few markers commemorating the battle. The Atlanta Historical Society erected a “handsome marble monument” along Peachtree Road (the old Buck Head and Atlanta Road) on July 20, 1944, the eightieth anniversary of the battle. Modern-day Peachtree Battle Road, named to commemorate the engagement, actually lies entirely north of the creek and thus off the battlefield itself. Today’s Collier Road approximates the actual road that lay on the second ridge south of the creek, where the Federal skirmish line was located. As late as 1995 dedicated Civil War students could find only a few traces of earthwork remnants on the Peach Tree Creek battlefield if they looked for them. Like the battlefields of July 22 and Ezra Church, the residents of Atlanta claimed, destroyed, and covered up the ground upon which the men of Peach Tree Creek fought and died.19

  Order of Battle Peach Tree Creek, July 20, 1864

  Federal Forces: 20,000 engaged, lost 1,900 (9.5 percent)

  MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI: Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman

  ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND: Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas

  FOURTH CORPS: Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard

  SECOND DIVISION: Brig. Gen. John Newton, 2,700 engaged, lost 102 (3.7 percent)

  First Brigade: Brig. Gen. Nathan Kimball, 1,400 engaged, lost 34 (2.4 percent)

  36th Illinois: Col. Silas Miller

  44th Illinois: Col. Wallace W. Barrett

  73rd Illinois: Maj. Thomas W. Motherspaw

  74th Illinois: Capt. Thomas J. Bryan

  88th Illinois: Lieut. Col. George W. Smith

  15th Missouri: Col. Joseph Conrad

  24th Wisconsin: Maj. Arthur MacArthur Jr.

  Second Brigade: Col. John W. Blake

  100th Illinois: Maj. Charles M. Hammond

  40th Indiana: Lieut. Col. Henry Leaming

  57th Indiana: Lieut. Col. Willis Blanch

  28th Kentucky: Maj. George W. Barth

  26th Ohio: Capt. Lewis D. Adair

  97th Ohio: Col. John Q. Lane

  Third Brigade: Brig. Gen. Luther P. Bradley, lost 24

  27th Illinois: Lieut. Col. William A. Schmitt

  42nd Illinois: Capt. Jared W. Richards, lost 2

  51st Illinois: Capt. Theodore F. Brown

  79th Illinois: Maj. Terrence Clark

  3rd Kentucky: Capt. John W. Tuttle

  64th Ohio: Lieut. Col. Robert C. Brown

  65th Ohio: Capt. Charles O. Tannehill

  125th Ohio: Lieut. Col. David H. Moore

  Battery M, 1st Illinois Light Artillery: Capt. George W. Spencer

  Battery A, 1st Ohio Light Artillery: Lieut. Charles W. Scovill

  FOURTEENTH CORPS: Maj. Gen. John M. Palmer

  FIRST DIVISION: Brig. Gen. Richard W. Johnson, lost 125

  First Brigade: Col. Anson G. McCook, lost 67

  104th Illinois: Lieut. Col. Douglas Hapeman, lost 46

  42nd Indiana: Capt. James H. Masters

  88th Indiana: Lieut. Col. Cyrus E. Briant, lost 4

  15th Kentucky: Col. Marion C. Taylor

  2nd Ohio: Capt. James F. Sarratt

  33rd Ohio: Lieut. Col. James H. M. Montgomery, lost 6

  94th Ohio: Lieut. Col. Rue P. Hutchins, lost 8

  10th Wisconsin: Capt. Jacob W. Roby

  21st Wisconsin: Lieut. Col. Harrison C. Hobart, lost 3

  TWENTIETH CORPS: Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker

  FIRST DIVISION: Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams, 3,500 engaged, lost 580 (16.5 percent)

  First Brigade: Brig. Gen. Joseph F. Knipe, 1,000 engaged, lost 288 (28.8 percent)

  5th Connecticut: Col. Warren A. Packer, lost 61

  3rd Maryland (detachment): Lieut. David Gove

  123rd New York: Lieut. Col. James C. Rogers, lost 44

  141st New York: Col. William K. Logie (mortally wounded); Lieut. Col. Andrew J. McNett (wounded); Capt. Elisha G. Baldwin, lost 74

  46th Pennsylvania: Col. James L. Selfridge, lost 109

  Second Brigade: Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Ruger

  27th Indiana: Col. Silas Colgrove (wounded); Lieut. Col. John R. Fesler

  2nd Massachusetts: Col. William Cogswell

  13th New Jersey: Col. Ezra A. Carman

  107th New York: Col. Nirom M. Crane

  150th New York: Col. John H. Ketcham

  3rd Wisconsin: Col. William J. Hawley, lost 3

  Third Brigade: Col. James S. Robinson

  82nd Illinois: Lieut. Col. Edward S. Salomon

  101st Illinois: Lieut. Col. John B. Le Sage

  143rd New York: Col. Horace Boughton

  61st Ohio: Col. Stephen J. McGroarty (wounded); Capt. John Garrett

  82nd Ohio: Lieut. Col. David Thomson

  31st Wisconsin (joined brigade July 21): Col. Francis H. West

  Battery I, 1st New York Light Artillery: Lieut. Charles E. Winegar

  Battery M, 1st New York Light Artillery: Capt. John D. Woodbury

  SECOND DIVISION: Brig. Gen. John W. Geary, 3,000 engaged, lost 476 (15.8 percent)

  First Brigade: Col. Charles Candy

  5th Ohio: Lieut. Col. Robert L. Kilpatrick or Capt. Robert Kirkup

  29th Ohio: Capt. Myron T. Wright (wounded); Capt. Wilbur F. Stevens

  66th Ohio: Lieut. Col. Eugene Powell

  28th Pennsylvania: Lieut. Col. John Flynn

  147th Pennsylva
nia: Col. Ario Pardee Jr.

  Second Brigade: Col. Patrick H. Jones

  33rd New Jersey: Col. George W. Mindil

  119th New York: Col. John T. Lockman

  134th New York: Lieut. Col. Allan H. Jackson (wounded); Capt. Clinton C. Brown

  154th New York: Maj. Lewis D. Warner, lost 7

  73rd Pennsylvania: Maj. Charles C. Cresson

  109th Pennsylvania: Capt. Walter G. Dunn, lost 16

  Third Brigade: Col. David Ireland, lost 233

  60th New York: Col. Abel Godard

  102nd New York: Col. Herbert von Hammerstein, lost 55

  137th New York: Lieut. Col. Koert S. Van Voorhis

  149th New York: Col. Henry A. Barnum, lost 19 killed, 25 wounded, 11 missing, total 55

  29th Pennsylvania: Lieut. Col. Samuel Zulick

  111th Pennsylvania: Col. George A. Cobham Jr. (killed); Lieut. Col. Thomas M. Walker, 200 engaged, lost 74 (37.0 percent)

  13th New York Battery: Lieut. Henry Bundy

  Battery E, Pennsylvania Light Battery: Lieut. Thomas S. Sloan

  THIRD DIVISION: Brig. Gen. William T. Ward, 4,000 engaged, lost 551 (13.7 percent)

  First Brigade: Col. Benjamin Harrison, 1,342 engaged, lost 181 (13.4 percent)

  102nd Illinois: Capt. William A. Wilson

  105th Illinois: Maj. Everell F. Dutton

  129th Illinois: Col. Henry Case

  70th Indiana: Lieut. Col. Samuel Merrill

  79th Ohio: Lieut. Col. Azariah W. Doan

  Second Brigade: Col. John Coburn, 1,315 engaged, lost 216 (16.4 percent)

  33rd Indiana: Capt. Edward T. McCrea

  85th Indiana: Lieut. Col. Alexander B. Crane

  19th Michigan: Maj. Eli A. Griffin (wounded); Capt. John J. Baker (wounded); Capt. David Anderson

  22nd Wisconsin: Lieut. Col. Edward Bloodgood

  Third Brigade: Col. James Wood Jr., 1,324 engaged, lost 143 (10.6 percent)

  20th Connecticut: Lieut. Col. Philo B. Buckingham, lost 55

  33rd Massachusetts: Lieut. Col. Godfrey Rider Jr.

  136th New York: Lieut. Col. Lester B. Faulkner

  55th Ohio: Lieut. Col. Edwin H. Powers